Thoughts on 10.4 Tiger

I got Mac OS 10.4 yesterday and have been playing around with it. I like it generally, although I don’t think it’s a huge upgrade. Some people think it is, and certainly apple, touting their 2.7 million improvements thinks so.

Spotlight is really nice. I have heard some people say this will be the new way we interact with the computer taking the place of the finder. I can see that occurring for many people. For some users though that are used to the finder and unwilling to make such a drastic change though I don’t think they will even really realize this is an option. I think they will use Spotlight exactly like they did for the previous search and miss most of it’s better features. Oh well. I’m sure apple won’t get rid of the finder anyway.

I had used Lanchbar before, and if there is one thing I don’t like about spotlight is its lack of customizability. I would like to include google searches in there for example, and wikipedia searches etc. I know plugins exist so it’s probably only a matter of time.

I’m more ambivalent about dashboard. I don’t really know how much i will use it. I already altered a widget to do something differently in about 5 minutes, so I am actually excited about how easy they are to make. I could definitely make one myself and I am certainly no programmer. So, I’m excited about the technology and look forward to people’s creativity.

The best two things I’ve found so far?

1. screenshots are now saves in png format instead of crazy pdf

2. the keychain access program got “ituneized” with search, finally!