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Tiger Update
I upgraded to Tiger yesterday. I knew I was going to be traveling and its always more thrilling to update right before a big trip. I did the smae thing with Panther. Go figure. I used Synchronize Pro to make a bootable copy on my firewire drive (Carbon Copy Cloner would work as well) and then did a straight upgrade. I heard about an alternative after I was done: do a wipe and install and then use the OS X feature that transfers your data and applications from an old machine to get them from the bootable copy. That’s a good alternative if you’re someone who likes to start fresh.
The update went flawless and I haven’t noticed any big show stoppers. As usual a few applications needed updating (like Quicksilver). If you’re having problems, this list of incompatibilities and workarounds might help. Also, you can take some comfort in the knowledge that Apple has said their freezing much of the API aftger Tiger. Until now, every major update changed the API in significant ways and that’s not a recipe for application reliability.
One thing that annoyed me: Tiger came with a trial version of Office 2004 and whenever I opened a Word doc, it used the trial version instead of the copy I own. I blew away the trial version and reassociated the Word documents with the application and now everything is cool.
So far, I’m most excited about Spotlight. I’ve been trying to use it as a replacement for Finder and it does a pretty good job. I also found this article on using smart folders to be helpful as well. Smart folders are enabled by the same index that runs Spotlight.
At this point, Dashboard is largely underwhelming. Maybe I’ll get into it, but its not nearly as useful as, say, Expose has turned out to be.
Some people have complained about the new look for Mail, but I like it. I think its an improvement. I did take the time to customize the buttons. I like the delete and junk buttons to be separate and separated by some space so that I don’t hit the wrong one by accident.
Also, finally, you can swap the control and caps-lock keys without installing some patch that breaks everytime Apple updates the OS. Just go to the keyboard preferences and voila!
Posted by windley on May 4, 2005 6:53 PM
Comment from Cid Dennis at May 5, 2005 7:48 AM
I love the new OS. The main thing I use dashboard for is the clocks and weather. I work with groups all over the world so I can just set a new clock for their time zone and then with a push a a button I know what time it is for the people I am talking to.
Comment from Dan Olsen
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May 5, 2005 8:30 AM
I have enjoyed checking out some of the new features in Tiger. One of my biggest problems was that emacs quit working. I'm not talking about the version you can pull up in the terminal but the one you can get specially for the Mac at http://www.webweavertech.com/ovidiu/emacs.html. I am taking a class where we are using Mozart and it runs in emacs. Now I have to use the lab machines the school provides or my Linux box at home. So much for my portibility for homework.
Also, the dashboard isn't what I would call a show stopper. I have enjoyed playing around with it. I use it for the weather widget and the Daisy Tracker which gives you the word of the day, the quote of the day and the joke of the day. Oh, and I like the Day in History widget.