Apple is shipping the long-awaited Mac OS 10.4 “Tiger” (US$94.88 at Amazon.com
Apple is shipping the long-awaited Mac OS 10.4 “Tiger” (US$94.88 at Amazon.com
The Good
Mac OS 10.4 Tiger has 200 new features including:
- Spotlight
- Dashboard
- Safari RSS
- iChat AV
- Automator
- QuickTime 7
- .Mac Sync
For all the specifics on the new features check out Apple’s 10.4 new features page or their press release.
KODAWARISAN has posted photos of Tiger launch at Apple Store, Shinsaibashi.
The Compatible
Some of the important applications that are currently confirmed Tiger compatible include:
- DayLite 1.7.4, my favorite business relationship manager, is now Tiger compatible.
- DayLite Mail Integration Module 1.1 allows users to exploit the sophistication DayLite’s powerful multi-linking capabilities in Apple Mail.
- BBEdit 8.2 adds support for Automator Actions that “facilitate the incorporation of BBEdit’s renowned text processing abilities into any Automator multi-application workflow.”
- Transmit 3.1 Tiger compatibility update
- Audio Hijack Pro 2.5 adds overlap alerts, a “Radio” input option with custom support for the Griffin RadioShark and D-Link DSB-R100 USB radios, as well as a new “System Audio” input to allow recording of all audio being played.
- Delicious Library 1.5 is now integrated with Spotlight and features a new Dashboard widget giving you immediate access to information from your multimedia library.
- DiskWarrior 3.0.2
- MacInTouch is maintaining an excellent 10.4 Compatibility table.
The Bad
Tiger Direct, Inc. is suing Apple over the name “Tiger” claiming Apple violated trademarks. The company is requesting a temporary restraining order and injunction in an attempt to block sales of the news OS.
Tiger Direct says it’s family of Tiger trademarks to sell products for 18 years and that it has trademarked the names Tiger, TigerDirect and TigerSoftware. The direct retailer said Apple?s use of Tiger is “causing confusion, mistake and deception among the general purchasing public,” especially in regards to Internet search results. (Macsimum News)
The No Worky
Some of the applications reported to be incompatible with Tiger:
- Now Contact & Up-To-Date “Early june.”
- Cisco VPN
- Roxio Popcorn I can’t burn Video_TS folders or ISO images without crashing. (IBMKillr)
- 4D has a problem with 10.4 regarding server capabilities. (Howard Lenow)
- Spotlight does not find contact names in Entourage 2004, however it does find text in Word 2004. A major problem for business users.
- My Delkin Compact Flash Cardbus 32 adapter PC card adapter no longer works in my PowerBook 17-inch with Tiger.
- Thursby’s DAVE (5.1) and ADmitMac (2.1) software are not compatible with Tiger. “The target date for shipping ADmitMac v3.0 is August 8, and for DAVE v6.0 is by the end of August.”
- Some 3.5-inch external FireWire hard drives from OWC/MacSales aren’t mounting on desktops (see below)
- The PowerPage RSS 2.0 feed doesn’t seem to work with Safari’s Live Bookmarks feature. Anyone with ideas, please contact us.
- MacInTouch is maintaining an excellent 10.4 Incompatibility table.
A reader writes about issues with external FireWire drives under Tiger
I installed Tiger (OS X 10.4) on my G4 Cube without incident. However, I noticed that my external 250 Gb Firewire drives were not visible on the desktop. Apple’s Disk Utility showed them as mounted but represented the volumes as generic icons. When I selected ‘Unmount’ in Disk Utility, the drives were represented with the correct icon. Weird. After rebooting, I unplugged the Firewire cable leading to the drives. Although the Finder was not recognizing the drives, I received the Device Removal warning. Again, I rebooted. This time, I opened Terminal and was able to see the drives and manipulate files (move, copy, etc.). The System sees the drives, however, the Finder apparently has issues with them. I can see my iPod, iSight, and SONY DSC-T1 camera with no problem.
The external drives in question are OWC Mercury Elite 250GB 7200RPM using an Oxford 911 chipset (latest firmware) purchased from OWC.
Another reader writes about some compatibility issues with Mac OS 10.4:
I’m running a PowerBook 17″/1GHz/1GB/60 and wanted to share some early 10.4 experiences.
Keyspan USB high-speed serial (USA-19QW) needed a driver reinstall.
Palm Desktop needed a reinstall. After those reinstalls, Palm IIIxe syncing worked again. Lots of re-accepting calendar events though. Briefly checking things lead me to believe it works as I expected.
After installing Xcode and all yesterday evening:
This morning coming in at work I had to repair the disk and permissions. It didn’t boot up properly. My harddisk’s volume structures seem to be suddenly corrupt.
No problems whatsoever running previous systems (up to 10.3.9).
The disk utility on the Tiger disk does a different (better?) job in getting things fixed.
Diskwarrior couldn’t repair anything anymore. Beyond repair it reported. Disk Utility from 10.3.5 kept complaining about some leaf nodes. No repair possible.
Disk utility from 10.4 finally got it fixed.
This evening when coming home, same story. No boot-up.
Disk Warrior said it was corrupt beyond repair.
Disk Utility 10.3.5 kept tipping over on a leaf node.
Disk Utility 10.4 got it repaired.
Currently, Drive 10 is running to see if anything is wrong on the disk. Disk Warrior is up next.
If all works again, I guess it’s time to dig into Xcode and CHUD or so, to find out if anything might be altered somehow, making things less suitable for a portable. If I find anything iteresting, I’ll let you know.
What has your Tiger experience been like? Hit us up at the PowerPage tip line to share your experiences with Apple’s new cat.
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Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger
