Apple chief executive Steve Jobs is not considered one of the more bashful representatives of the computer industry. True to form, he’s been anything but reserved when it comes to singing the praises of his company’s new operating system, Tiger.
”It’s our biggest leap forward since the original Macintosh,” said Jobs upon the sales launch of the new software. First outside tests confirm that Apple’s fifth version of the Mac OS X operating system is once again a terrific product.
The most important innovation offered by Tiger is its Spotlight search function. It makes Apple the first PC operating system in the world to house a universal search system that can also be used in many applications, a bit like Google for the hard drive.
Spotlight searches through not just file names, but e-mail content, office documents, photographs, songs, calendar and address-book entries, as well as other files on the computer, all at breakneck speed.
”With Spotlight, Apple is putting a tool into the user’s hands that helps enormously in keeping a handle on the data flood,” writes the Hanover-based c’t computer magazine. ”Over the course of time, more and more programs will register their formats with Spotlight, which will increase its usefulness.”
Gene Muster, an analyst with the United States-based market-research group Piper Jaffray & Co, is also smitten.
”Spotlight is truly the first search tool within an operating system that actually works,” said Muster. Microsoft is widely expected to have a competing system-wide search function built into its upcoming Windows operating system, code-named Longhorn.
Apple has also won much attention for its virtual Dashboard. One click on any button on the instrument panel opens small programs that perform simple tasks, among them pulling specific information from the internet, such as current weather or stock reports. Tiger offers 14 of these so-called widgets. Third-party programmers have already stepped in to provide dozens more, with additions appearing every day to handle any small task imaginable.
Tiger has a few other tricks in store beyond Spotlight and Dashboard. These include a comprehensive child-protection function that allows parents to take precise control over their children’s internet usage.
Parents can establish, for example, exactly which people may send or receive e-mail messages from their children, or with whom they may chat. This so-called ”white list” approach also allows parents to define permitted websites and programs.
Apple has also improved on its already solid security system. Many experts believe that Apple rarely mentions this aspect of its new operating system because its software enjoys a sterling reputation compared with Windows, and that Apple has no desire to antagonise hackers into proving otherwise.
Is there a negative side to Tiger? Walt Mossberg from New York’s Wall Street Journal noted that Mac OS X Tiger can run somewhat sluggishly on older Macs. Apple will need to fix this problem through online updates.
Mossberg’s final comments were quite effusive, though.
”Tiger is a wonderful and powerful operating system that advances personal computing. It represents a big win for Mac users,” Mossberg said.
Richard Joerges, chief editor at Bavaria’s MACup magazine, complains that Apple is using Tiger to force its customers to update their supplementary programs such as QuickTime Professional. Similarly, recent Macintosh purchasers, including early buyers of the new Mac mini, will be forced to pay a service fee to get the new OS.
Yet the overall evaluation is positive from all sides.
”It’s the sum of improvements that lifts Tiger above its predecessors,” Joerges says.
Tiger runs on all Macintosh computers with a G3, G4 or G5 processor and a built-in Firewire port. Other system requirements are 256 megabyte RAM, three gigabytes available hard-drive space, and four gigabytes for the additional installation of developer tools. — Sapa-DPA