What So Great About Tiger

[Raskita]

Currently I'm using Mac OS X 10.3.9 and it runs smooth from the first time I installed it to my iBook. Now I'm thinking about upgrading it to Tiger, but before I do it I wanna know if It's worth to upgrade because the price isn't that cheap ($129 last time I checked).

What does Tiger has which Panther doesn't?
In term of performance, is it better using Tiger?
What other features does Tiger has other that Widget and Dashboard?

I would be happy to throw $129 to something, but only if It's worthed.

Thanks.

[Rayd]

over 200+ new features, take a look

http://www.apple.com/macosx/newfeatures/over200.html

[tommelbourne]

Tiger, as it stands at 10.4.2, seems to be more buggy then the ever-stable 10.3.9.

I personally am kinda wishing i did not upgrade to Tiger on my iMac, although it has brought about a slight speed increase the computer seems to crash more often than it has in the past.

Other features, besides the widgets and spotlight (which are overrated in my opinion), are the new versions of Mail and Safari, both of which i quite like.

[rrs]

I've upgraded my iMac to Tiger as well but have had a better experience. Sure OSX seems to load faster and Dashboard is cool/handy, but spotlight has been my favourite feature for many years in computing. I don't have to fiddle around with Finder to launch an app or file hidden deep within my HD (you know... /Applications).

For me Spotlight works very well especially with Finder's shortcomings.

But I guess in the end all of the Tiger features that were advertised are not really necessary. They simply make things quicker to do I guess.

Also, Safari RSS and Mail are quite good. Mail has now replaced Thunderbird as my email app (Though I'm not sure if you can import Thunderbird mailboxes ).

Unlike tommelbourne, Tiger hasn't been less stable than 10.3.9 for me but I use my iMac for very simple uses - surfing, email, iCal/Address Book, iLife, Word, QuickTime/VLC, bittorrent, iTunes... you get the idea. No Logic or Photoshop or anything. So I can't comment on Tiger's stability with large apps.

I'm only fairly new to Macs, but am I right in saying that Tiger's best new features are mainly under-the-bonnet, supposedly to be used by future apps?

[conditionals]

Originally posted by Raskita@Sep 22 2005, 02:53 PM
Currently I'm using Mac OS X 10.3.9 and it runs smooth from the first time I installed it to my iBook. Now I'm thinking about upgrading it to Tiger, but before I do it I wanna know if It's worth to upgrade because the price isn't that cheap ($129 last time I checked).

DON'T DO IT!

Seriously, all these peopple, ALL OF THEM, are jive sukkas out to fool you. 10.3.9 is the best OSX there is at the moment in terms of performance, stability etc. Get konfabulator if you want widgets.

I know you won't listen to me. I too was once young and foolish and wanting tiger. But look at me now, OLD AND HARROWED!

[applecollector]

Originally posted by conditionals@Sep 22 2005, 04:53 PM
DON'T DO IT!

Seriously, all these peopple, ALL OF THEM, are jive sukkas out to fool you. 10.3.9 is the best OSX there is at the moment in terms of performance, stability etc. Get konfabulator if you want widgets.

I know you won't listen to me. I too was once young and foolish and wanting tiger. But look at me now, OLD AND HARROWED!

Hello,

I too have had many problems with Tiger and last week after using Tiger for about 4 months i went back to Panther 10.3.9.
It's better and slightly more stable.

[Disko]

For me - spotlight and automator have made daily tasks easier. Expose is an essential, but that's in panther as well. Dashboard actually does make data access easier and more convinient - especially after you've broken the "i'll just check that page" habit and start to rely on the widget.

Tiger is worth the cash in my opinion.

[nicwithsticks]

I bought Tiger on release night (yes, I am THAT much of a geek) and I don't regret it. Admitadly, the first install was a little pear-shaped, but after a reinstall a few days later, things were all good.

I've been using the same install since then, without a problem. Spotlight and Dashboard are awesome features and I cannot live without them now. I also like the new Mail.app.I find myself lost when I go back to using 10.3.9 on the G5's at uni.

My PowerBook is my only computer and it gets an absolute work out every day from me and is still running solid. A lot of bugs were fixed with 10.4.2 and 10.4.3 is said to be around the corner.

My advice, just go for it. I agree with Disko, its totally worth the cash.

[Rayd]

i have done a upgrade from 10.3.9 and tiger is MUCH quicker, and much more stable, on 10.3.9 i would get KP's alot, but in tiger... HAVNT EVEN SEEN ONE YET! (touch wood) i have had weeks of uptime! chhheeeering!

[Raskita]

DON'T DO IT!

Seriously, all these peopple, ALL OF THEM, are jive sukkas out to fool you. 10.3.9 is the best OSX there is at the moment in terms of performance, stability etc. Get konfabulator if you want widgets.

I know you won't listen to me. I too was once young and foolish and wanting tiger. But look at me now, OLD AND HARROWED!

LOL...Thanks for the advice, it makes me thinking for twice

btw, thanks for the konfabulator link...it kicks ass!

[marc]

No stability issues here since 10.2.

All Tiger did for me is add features. Some of those I couldn't live without now (Automator, Dashboard, Spotlight etc).

[Squozen]

I agree that Tiger's real value is for developers. The longer you stick with Panther (and if you're having problems, something is wrong with your install), the longer you prevent developers using all the nice wibblets under the hood in XCode. There have been none, zero, zip, nada problems with Tiger for me on 3 different machines (clean installs on all three). I had niggles, certainly, but they've all been fixed by now.

e.g., from Wil Shipley's (writer of Delicious Library) blog:

The good news is, with the new 10.4 image reading framework (CGImageSource...), I can read JPEGs and make beautiful, anti-aliased smaller versions of them EXTREMELY quickly compared to 10.3. Under 10.3, I had to read in the whole JPEG, decompress the whole thing into a full-size buffer, create a small thumbnail buffer, and downsample the whole thing. Obviously, there are a lot of slow parts in that. 10.4's CGImageSourceCreateThumbnailAtIndex() is a godsend in this case -- I can store one large JPEG per book/DVD/whatever and use only the bit of the JPEG that I need for a given size.

This is not an optimisation in the operating system, it's an entirely new framework which cannot run full-stop under Panther. There are heaps of these in Tiger. Won't somebody think of the developers! :P

[the_OM]

Originally posted by conditionals@Sep 22 2005, 04:53 PM
DON'T DO IT!

Seriously, all these peopple, ALL OF THEM, are jive sukkas out to fool you. 10.3.9 is the best OSX there is at the moment in terms of performance, stability etc. Get konfabulator if you want widgets.

I know you won't listen to me. I too was once young and foolish and wanting tiger. But look at me now, OLD AND HARROWED!

What the fuck man,
Don't listen to someone who has Seth from the O.C. as their avatar.

Be risky, Be bold and for christs sake be Brave...... Take the plunge and upgrade to 10.4
Don't be left in the dark, all the cool kids are on 10.4, and you want to be cool don't you?

But seriously, 10.3.9 was stable as anything, but I haven't encountered any issues with 10.4 yet, so I say upgrade, but if others have problems with their machines, maybe you should think twice.

[designers_hub]

speed thats the main reason

the extra features are not so "revolutionary" or essential. But there is a great speed increase from panther to tiger. I really really notice it on my G5.

also widgets are very handy when you want to check up things quick and easy.

[yitzyf]

Originally posted by Squozen@Sep 22 2005, 07:11 PM
all the nice wibblets under the hood in XCode.

And what would a "Wibblet" be? A technical term I presume... Even Wikipedia has nothing!

[Squozen]

Well, it's a wibbly giblet. I'd explain but, you know... it's technical.

[fuchingsiang]

I have not encounter any major stability problem with Tiger so far... and here's some basic experiences to share as a student:

[Spotlight]
As lazy as I am, spotlight saves my trouble of browsing through all my lecture notes and even PDF notes for the topic that I need for my assignments

With multiple practical work saved as the same filename under different lab folder, placing my mouse cursor on the search result (which will show more than one relevance) shows the source of each file, no more trial and error.

I like to keep my desktop neat, with spotlight I can keep my dock icons to 10 including the trash can while launching the rest, less used, applications thru spotlight. Think of it as a much better solution to Windows XP's top5/top10 recently opened programs at start button :P LOL

[Dashboard]
Weather is there for me before I leave home, it's crucial since I walk to Uni.
Online resources in a few clicks, Wikipedia & Dictionary is ever ready.
iCal Events to keep my informed on my assignment due dates and timetables.
Gmail checker constantly updates me with my inbox status.
*Haven't got time to explore the other 1000 widgets out there, but as I've said, it's basic and it serves me well already!*

[Safari RSS]
Bookmarking RSS enabled news/forum sites allows me to glance thru the headlines fast enough before my girlfriend starts yelling at me for reading too much news :P

That's all I can think of with Tiger on my Mac, it's nothing much but imagine without these features...