More information on Mac OS X Tiger
It's a good day to be a Mac geek--trumping Redmond yet again with a fully updated OS in Tiger, adding over 200 new features, as well as hot rod dual 64-bit G5 desktops shipping with dual-layer drives. Kinda takes Rip, Mix, Burn to a whole new level, doesn't it...? As of this writing Saturday morning, Bittorrent sites are already either crashing under the load of uploaded Tiger torrents, or being forcibly shut down under Apple's recently draconian measures regarding Tigers being released, GM or not. [Britt Godwin]
What I find rather interesting is the feature creep in the Longhorn blogs and information releases regarding "new features in Longhorn that will make it easier and more intuitive to use." Let's analyze a few of these--the new search function is supposed to simplify searching through files by checking not only file names but meta tags and content. Hmmm, haven't we seen that somewhere before? Mac OS has supported searching the comments box since at least OS 8, and the new Spotlight feature of Tiger will search nearly any file for nearly any key, from town names on a .pdf map to tags in a Photoshop document, and beats Longhorn to the punch with file organization, "so the same file can appear in multiple Smart Folders without moving from its original saved location on your system." (Apple.com, 4/29/05) This seems to resemble nothing so much as the elegant iTunes search feature already in widespread use, essentially pre-training users on how to navigate Tiger. In addition, these meta tags containing information about things like people's names in photos and other sensitive information are securely stored, making posts on websites or other methods of disseminating potentially hazardous information safer. Sure, I'll probably pick up a copy of Longhorn when it comes out, but I think I'll wait until Service Pack 2 or 3 first… [Britt Godwin]
