[jmincey]

I'm finding Tiger to be a great disappointment so far. From where I sit, it's not really a substantial upgrade over Panther and it's ridiculous to promote and charge for it as a "major" new release. Spotlight and Dashboard are nice new features, but for the most part Spotlight only integrates what Launchbar has offered and Dashboard has likewise had alternatives -- not only from Konfabulator but even from Sherlock itself (to some degree). Yes, it's essentially a widget API, but why must it depart from the main Finder desktop in an environment of its own? Why can it not be truly integrated seamlessly with all other OS X applications?
I think Spotlight and its smart folder implementation has the potential to influence how people think about where they store their files, (or in fact whether to bother with file organization at all), and this is a good thing. The smart folder function alone (and its use of meta data) -- a feature which Launchbar lacks -- is groundbreaking (and it has been a logical extension from iTunes). But Spotlight and Dashboard are just TWO features and for this I am to pay $129?
Sure, Tiger will no doubt bundle new versions of Apache, sendmail, Postfix, MySQL, the kernel itself, etc. But except for the kernel I can download new versions of all these UNIX/GNU applications -- and, moroever, they are just that -- applications which are bundled. Not to mention that they are FREE. So, again, it's great for Apple periodically to test and bundle an updated suite of these tools and to package them on a set of CDs, but for this I am to pay $129?
Updated developer tools and XCode is welcome as well, but these are available to all members of the Apple development community (who have paid for their membership).
Yes, the new Safari will include RSS capability and the changes in Apple's Mail and iChat are welcome, (but then those are upgrades to applications and not to the OS). And at some point I think the Mac community will tire of having always to move to a new OS every time it wants to get a new version of what should be a stand-alone application.
Add to this the fact that those who purchase Tiger do NOT get an update to the iLife suite and Appleworks is NOT included and iWorks is likewise not included, then just what exactly do we get for our $129? Tweaks to the Finder? Yet another new GUI (in Apple's mail) which we can add to the jumble of Aqua's pinstripes and the brushed steel look? A new bundled version of PERL? A new version of iSync which is next to useless without a .Mac subscription?
And on top of this it appears that Tiger will STILL not be fully 64 bit from top to bottom. (Xgrid is great but then I think most of us are not planning on doing clustering in our use of MS Office, Adobe apps, Filemaker, etc.)
Don't get me wrong -- I'm not saying the features of Tiger are not worthy or useful. But the Apple marketing machine spins this as the most significant release of OS X ever, and I just don't see it. The emperor has no clothes; and I fail to see how this qualifies as a major leap forward. It seems to me that the version of OS X which was first to include X11 was more significant on that account alone than anything which Tiger offers.

[pdrayton]

Are you reviewing the OS, or simply reviewing the marketing material?
At this point, if you're underwhelmed by what Apple says Tiger will offer for $129 and don't think it offers anything significant, then you shouldn't have a problem sticking with Panther.
Obviously a lot of people are impressed with what Apple is offering with Tiger... otherwise it wouldn't already by a top seller.
I'm not quite sure what the point of your "review" is, since Tiger isn't "unleashed" yet and spending $129 for it is purely optional for consumers.

[jmincey]

My post above is not a "review." Instead I'm speaking of what Tiger includes for the price and (1) whether this represents a good value over Panther and (2) whether the new features are significant enough to qualify as a major new release of an OS -- apart from the question of price. At this point, pending a correction from others, I think the answer to both of these points is a resounding no.
It's too early to tell how many people will adopt Tiger. Right now we are still in the marketing honeymoon period. Apple is very good at making a big splash with its product announcements and people are influenced by this. Merely because good marketing can be effective is not then to say that the product being marketed is itself equal to its own hype. But if you feel in this instance Tiger does indeed measure up, make your case. Believe me, I would love to be talked out of my current attitude on this. I would love for someone to tell me where I'm wrong and what I'm missing here.

[grey_lightning]

Well, as always, each user has to decide if the upgrade is worth it for her individual needs. That being said, it was kind of strange, as I was reading all the reasons you think Tiger is not worth $129, I began to think it wasn't such a bad deal. You consider each improvement in isolation, and then ask, "I am to pay $129 for that." But that's just the point--you're not paying $129 for each thing individually, you're paying for all the things you listed, plus many, many more. Think of a potential cost breakdown...I think the following estimates are reasonable for what people would pay for each individual item if they were standalone upgrades:
$20 - Mail
$20 - iChat
$50 - Spotlight (if not more, this could be totally groundbreaking, as you say)
$20 - Dashboard
$50 - Automator (if not more, another potentially huge one for some people)
Plus the all the free stuff isn't really free. If it takes you a couple of hours to gather and download all the stuff individually, that's probably $50 - $100 worth of your time. And there's loads more small stuff.
So if your issue is just with the marketing, I can see that, but any company is going to hype up its products as much as it can. That's how they sell things. But if you're taking issue with the high cost of Tiger relative to its new features, which it seems you are, I'd have to disagree. It seems a pretty good deal, and bundling everything together probably results in a lower cost for all of us. Although power users amongst us might like standalone apps to be an option, that's obviously not appealing to most consumers, and if Apple is going to stay competitve it has to retain all the value-added niceties of bundling everything together.

[DPG4450Guy]

Well, you were in the wrong over Apple quashing the rumor sites, and I think you'll be found to be in the wrong here, also.
Better wait until the commercial product is out and see if there is a general speed optimization - if Tiger is as much of a speed increase as Panther was to Jaguar, then that is going to be alot of value, setting aside the new features.
Constant pessimism is going to make your hair fall out one day. /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smirk.gif

[jmincey]

"Constant pessimism is going to make your hair fall out one day."
I'm generally very positive about Apple and its products. I simply disagree with it in regard to its discovery lawsuits (vis-a-vis EFF), and in this I have a lot of esteemed company. And while I don't think Puma, Jaguar, and Panther were overhyped, I can't say the same for Tiger. But I'm eager to test whether Tiger will be greatly optimized and carry performance enhancements. I agree that this would be most welcome.
To grey_lightning: Thanks for reminding me about Automator; I had forgotten about that feature. It doesn't so far change my overall view of Tiger, but it's still an omission on my part. Thanks.

[Dr-NiKoN]

In reply to:

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Instead I'm speaking of what Tiger includes for the price

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http://www.apple.com...ewfeatures.html
Answer this:
Exactly what do you want to Apple to do for the upgrade to be worth your money?

[Eideard]

As an aside, there are any number of folks, like me, who support EFF and still do not disagree with Apple's lawsuits over NDA violations.
I belong to a completely unrelated forum and, recently, was involved in hardware form-factor surveying for which I had to sign an NDA. It was pretty bloody specific about what I could reveal -- NOTHING! It's been a reasonably demanding constraint that has kept me from discussing where I think a couple of products are going -- with a lot of folks who I respect as peers on this other forum.
But, then, that's why NDA's.

[Steve_S]

In reply to:

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"I'm finding Tiger to be a great disappointment so far. From where I sit, it's not really a substantial upgrade over Panther and it's ridiculous to promote and charge for it as a "major" new release.

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Jeff, I don't know if you're trying to play devil's advocate, or perhaps just trying to stimulate the level of conversation on these boards, but either way, I don't see the logic in your post. As a point of reference, perhaps you can site OS updates from other vendors that provide a substantially better value.
For starters, numerous sources comment on many changes at the kernel level, but few provide specific information on this. You seem to acknowledge that kernel enhancements are something worthy of an OS upgrade. However, Apple can't sell a new OS based on changes under the hood. Apple has to market the flash stuff that every consumer will instantly see. So, your position on Tiger's value seems to be based on Apple's marketing of flash images like Dashboard, etc. rather than technical improvements like an updated kernel that supports more fine grained locking, better SMP support, 64bit (at least at the darwin level), support for ACLs, improved CLI compatibility with HFS+, more secure networking such as https webdav connections, etc. What about Core Image, Core Video, Core Data, etc.?? This type of thing isn't the glamorous stuff that sells a product, but it all contributes to make a significant enhancement at the OS level.
Now, as a technical purist, I tend to consider the applications such as the web browser, e-mail, etc. different from the OS, even if they are part of the same distribution. However, if we're discussing the value or merits of an OS upgrade purchase, then these applications should be part of the discussion. Nothing against products like Launchbar, and Konfabulator, etc. but these are hacks compared to technologies like Spotlight and Dashboard. It's not just what Spotlight offers in the finder, the fact that any program can and will use this technology where appropriate is beyond what Panther delivers.
In the end, you can list each change with Tiger individually and try to put a price tag on it. No doubt you would be able to easily justify the cost of the upgrade. Even so, having all of that technology work together, not just hacked on, is priceless. Every so often, you need to move the entire platform forward, not just a few individual components at a time. Apple does this well with it's major OS releases.

In reply to:

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Yes, the new Safari will include RSS capability and the changes in Apple's Mail and iChat are welcome, (but then those are upgrades to applications and not to the OS). And at some point I think the Mac community will tire of having always to move to a new OS every time it wants to get a new version of what should be a stand-alone application.

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Not always, but in many cases, I tend to find Apple's version of software products to be better than the competition. Why do you think that is? From my perspective, I often see Apple's applications as more of a showcase for some of the core technologies in the operating system. It's more of a showcase for other developers to emulate. Look at iChat using the latest H.264 codec in Quicktime 7. Look at what Apple is doing with it's web technology with Safari and Dashboard. I'm expecting new professional products to be introduced at NABB that will take advantage of Tiger's new Core image/video/data technologies, etc. This of course is just the tip of the iceberg, but you get the point. Third parties are often slow to support such new technologies. That serves the people like you that don't want to upgrade to the latest OS. But, for those of us that do appreciate the latest and greatest advances, it often puts Apple's products above the rest.
In terms of fequency of OS updates, you have to consider that natural order of a product life cycle. Surely when OS X was new, the updates needed to come fast and furious in order for things to mature. As the OS matures a bit, which is where OS X is just now starting to do, the releases come less frequently. Apple has already commented that they cannot keep the current pace with OS releases.
In the end, Tiger raises the bar for what consumers should come to expect from an operating system. I see some interesting things coming from Windows and Linux, but it's largely catchup to what Apple has already done. There's a price to pay for innovation. I'll be happy to pay my money for Tiger. /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif
Steve

[Duke_Thomas]

In reply to:

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for the most part Spotlight only integrates what Launchbar has offered

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Does LaunchBar have the ability to search the content of PDFs? (That's not a rhetorical question, incidentally. I really don't know and would love to hear if it can.) I didn't think that it did, and what really has me excited about SL is the ability to search in documents like these. I have about 600 papers in PDF cached on my machine from journals and other sources that require one to pay to download from their archives, and that's a real pain to find anything in this scheme with names like P102329.pdf and what have you.

[pdrayton]

In reply to:

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My post above is not a "review" (and I should think this obvious enough). Instead I'm speaking of what Tiger includes for the price and (1) whether this represents a good value over Panther and (2) whether the new features are significant enough to qualify as a major new release of an OS -- apart from the question of price. At this point, pending a correction from others, I think the answer to both of these points is a resounding no.

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Ummm... that's what's called a review.

In reply to:

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Merely because good marketing can be effective is not then to say that the product being marketed is itself equal to its own hype.

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No one claimed that.

In reply to:

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But if you feel in this instance Tiger does indeed measure up, make your case.

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Since when do we need to justify to you our decision to upgrade to Tiger?!?! If I was the type of person who wanted to be bossed around I'd move across the river to the Peoples Republic of Cambridge!

[jmincey]

Steve, thanks for your (as always) thoughtful post. No, I'm afraid I'm not playing devil's advocate here. You ask what other OS upgrades are more substantial than that of Tiger, and I give you Jaguar and Panther as two. I give you OS 6, OS 7, and OS 9. I give you Windows NT (and, for that matter, Windows 95) over Windows 3.11 and DOS. And finally there is Windows XP Home Edition (over the previous consumer offering of Windows 98 SE).
I appreciate your distinction among (1) bona fide upgrades of an OS at the kernel level, (2) upgrades or new technologies at the subsystem or API level, (3) upgrades to the GUI, and (4) upgrades of bundled applications. I'm not unmindful of this. But I suppose it comes down to how one defines a major new release. Since "Mac OS X" defines not only a technology but a product, and since the word, release, governs more the latter than the former, I'm willing then to factor in all four of the items above into my definition of a "major upgrade" or "major release." Given this premise, do I take it then that you regard Tiger as meeting this threshold (of major)?
Apple customarily releases upgrades of Quicktime at no extra charge. The fact that a new version comes with Tiger is neither here nor there, (except to the extent that it may rely on new technology supplied in Tiger). And I appreciate that much the same can be said of Safari -- that it leverages low-level code in the OS -- but, Steve, there is a limit to this.
When I get an office productivity suite, such as MS-Office or OpenOffice, I expect it to be compatible with certain platforms without tying major upgrades to that "compatibility." Now I realize office productivity tools don't generally make use of such core OS technologies as audio and video -- at least not YET. But merely because an application cannot make USE of something a new OS release offers should not mean it can therefore not run at all on that version of the OS.
Making use of new capabilities is one thing; compatibility is another. And Apple is (I believe) artificially requiring people to leap from one OS version to the next simply in order to have a new version of Safari or iChat or Mail -- and that's ridiculous. (Having said that, I realize that Apple makes no separate charge for these apps, so I should make some allowance in my thinking for this.)
By the way, contrary to what you say (or assume) in your post above, I happen to be an early adopter myself -- at least for my own personal machines. I generally take more care for testing and I'm more prudent in my IT roles however.

[jmincey]

"Ummm... that's what's called a review."
Sorry, but a review is (1) citing the features of a product, (2) reporting (2a) how well they are implemented, (2b) how well they perform, and (2c) the impact on one's productivity and the general experience of using the features, (3) how the features of a product compare with similar or competing products, etc. THAT is what a product review consists of.

In reply to:

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I said earlier, "Merely because good marketing can be effective is not then to say that the product being marketed is itself equal to its own hype."
And you reply: "No one claimed that."

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To the contrary, you cited the fact that many people were buying Tiger as evidence of how they differ from me in regard to whether Tiger's new features and capabilities justified the price and my answer to this was that many people are influenced by marketing and that you can't conclude from their buying habits that it's the result of a thoughtful assessment on their part about the value of a product.

In reply to:

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I said earlier, "But if you feel in this instance Tiger does indeed measure up, make your case."
You reply: "Since when do we need to justify to you our decision to upgrade to Tiger?"

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Hey, lighten up. Who said anything about justifying yourself? This is a discussion forum. I simply invite you to educate me as to where I'm missing the boat (if indeed you do feel that way). Of course, if you would rather not do so, that's fine too.

[car1son]

In reply to:

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for the most part Spotlight only integrates what Launchbar has offered...
Does LaunchBar have the ability to search the content of PDFs?

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At one point, I thought Spotlight was going to be the big reason to move to Tiger. I really need to be able to find things more quickly.
The more people compare it to LaunchBar, the less sure I am it has much new to offer.
Then Microsoft announced planned upgrades to Office for Tiger, which would allow Spotlight to search Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. That got me thinking that it was going to need proprietary plug-ins from software publishers to understand document formats, and wondering whether I need to upgrade office to 2004 to take advantage of Spotlight. And Entourage was conspicuously absent from that list, making me think Spotlight's not going to be able to search my mail, contacts and calendar. Suddenly, I'm disappointed. And I don't even have a copy of Tiger, yet.
( I wish I had a better concept of what Spotlight would do for me. )