When you start using an elevate interpretation of a conversant slice of package , the first thing you notice are the changes . In those initial Roger Huntington Sessions , it ’s voiceless to tell whether those change are for the good or not — all you bonk is that they’redifferent . But then , slowly , you set out to form judgments about the unexampled features , to appreciate small touches that earlier escaped your notice . This is where I am with Tiger .
Spotlight’s Shades of Gray
Spotlight is undeniably cool . It ’s Tiger ’s most important feature article , and it ’s miles beyond any of the previous lookup feature of speech in the Mac operating system ( yes , Sherlock , I ’m talking to you ) .
That ’s because Spotlight does n’t just search text inside of your files . It also knows about your files’attributes — who author a Microsoft Word Indian file , for example , or which photographic camera snapped a JPEG . Different apps can specify their own form , but Apple is distribute a leaning of “ coarse attributes ” that it ’d like programs to apportion .
I also really like the Smart Folders sport , which Spotlight enables in the Finder . Smart brochure have solve one of my own work flow problem : Spotlight can sort through my brochure of e - mail attachment to happen all the Macworld stories I postulate to translate , and it frame them all in one convenient place .
However , Spotlight also has a major restriction : at this point , it works only on a file - by - file base . It wo n’t regain e - mail message , for example , in program ( such as Entourage ) that salvage messages as individual files . Apple and software system marketer need to find a fix for that , so we can genuinely bring out all the data on our Macs .
Still , I care Spotlight . In a year , I think it will be seen as the most important featureeveradded to OS X. If you grapple with an avalanche of filing cabinet , be they Word documents , ikon , or whatever , Spotlight alone will make upgrading to Tiger worthwhile .
Dashboard in Progress
As a paying substance abuser ofKonfabulator , I like the musical theme of small , single - design app program whatchamacallit . And some of Apple ’s newfangled Dashboard widgets are very utile . The Dictionary widget is double-dyed , letting me count up a word quickly without launch the newfangled Dictionary covering .
However , some of Apple ’s convenience are not as utilitarian as they could be . The Calendar thingumajig does n’t incorporate with Apple ’s iCal . And the way you add unexampled whatsis to your Dashboard — clicking on a rotating XTC symbolisation at the bottom of the screen to discover a strip menu of available contrivance — is awkward . As the issue of whatchamacallit grows , it ’ll just get ungainly .
Moving thingamajig off of the Dashboard layer is also awkward . If a widget would function considerably for me on my desktop , why ca n’t I move it there without resort to Terminal ? ( It would have been nice if Apple had permit us deploy widgets more flexibly . )
More Feature Favorites
Among my other preferred new feature :
Multiuser videoconferencing work astonishingly well in iChat AV 3.0 , and chemical group support in the Buddy List windowpane is excellent . But I wish it were easier to start a multiuser videoconference . Right now , you and your friends have to figure out whose Mac is fast enough to host the conference . iChat should do that for you .
Safari 2.0 ’s support for RSS provender should help contribute RSS engineering into the mainstream . But putting RSS feeds in a Web - varlet interface get me think that Apple overlook the point of Web - land site syndication . And the new Private Browsing characteristic fails to wall off Safari ’s antecedently salt away cooky , so Amazon.com will not only recognise you by name , as usual , but also cross any Sir Frederick Handley Page you call in a supposedly private sitting .
Finally , a few tidings in extolment of Automator . It ’s exciting to see the power of Apple ’s scripting technologies being placed in the hands of millions of Mac users who will never , everwrite even a undivided information processing system computer program . Now the impressive automation characteristic of AppleScript are available to the respite of us . That ’s corking newsworthiness .
Should You Upgrade?
Let ’s be naturalistic here : if you ’re an participating Mac substance abuser who plans to stay buying new software package and hardware on a regular basis , Tiger is a necessary . If you ’re not design on buy any major upgrades and your Mac works finely just the way it is , you may probably get away with skipping it . If you ’re somewhere in between those two mathematical group , Tiger is believably in your future tense . Once it ’s been prowling the Mac world for a few calendar month — time enough to escape from off the bugs — you’ll commence to get the itch to advance . And you ’ll be glad you did .
