Mac OS X Tiger
Mac OS X Tiger, the next major upgrade to Mac OS X comes out in a couple of weeks and it looks awesome! It makes me feel a little sympathetic to all of those people in the world that have to use Microsoft Windows XP, every day.
The next version of Windows (Longhorn) is a couple of years overdue. It’s now scheduled to be released in 2006. Enough Windows users have switched fro Internet Explorer to the Firefox web browser (because of security threats and spyware) that Microsoft has begun to panic. They are finally releasing an upgrade to Internet Explorer this summer. Yawn.
Meanwhile, that little company in Cupertino is launching another major release of its operating system that makes Windows XP look like 1989, all over again.
It’s at the point where Mac OS X now looks like those futurisitc operating systems we’ve been seeing in Hollywood films for years. You know, the ones where windows flip over and animate impossibly. Watch the Dashboard demo and your mouth will drop.
The Dashboard widgets called Dictionary, Translator and Unit Converter will be used often on my desktop. I often use Google to find sites that convert imperial to metric.
On-the-fly translation of text also looks very cool. Sure you can get most of these tools from third party software developers but now they are available as part of the basic operating system. This is a huge savings and extremely convenient.
Automator is another great feature that I will get a lot of use from. I often use a third party piece of software to rename files. This capability is now built-in to the operating system and will save me time and money. No more third-party software costs.
The next version of QuickTime looks incredible. Expect much larger movie trailers at lower data rates/file sizes and HD support for HD-DVD and Bluray.
Did I mention RAW camera files can be viewed in the Preview application?
How about the ability to read RSS feeds in Safari or the new search tool called Spotlight. There are plenty of new features and upgrades that make the upgrade to OS X Tiger a no-brainer.
Still using Windows? Don’t worry. Longhorn is on the way. It will probably look like another version of Windows 98 with a new “skin”. There might even be some upgraded applications and a handful of new networking features.
Posted in OS X Software at 12:39 AM
