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Mac OS X Tiger Goes Gold
Posted by
CowboyNeal
on Thu Mar 31, 2005 10:11 PM
from the on-the-prowl dept.
from the on-the-prowl dept.
bonch writes "Following up yesterday's story, AppleInsider now reports that Tiger build 8A428 has been deemed the Gold Master for shipping. Sources expect an announcement of Tiger's completion sometime tomorrow." There are far better days to make a product announcement, should a company wish to be taken seriously, but it worked for Gmail!
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Let's not forget (Score:5, Interesting)
expect... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:expect... (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:expect... (Score:5, Insightful)
I
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Re:expect... (Score:5, Informative)
As soon as Mac mini's are shipping with OS X 10.4, I'm ordering one. And if they're shipping with a coupon, or OS X 10.3 on the HD with a 10.4 updater, even better! It will make it easier to install 10.4 on my other Macs.
I managed to pull that one off a few years ago when I bought my iMac G4 17". It had 10.1 on the HD with a 10.2 updater disc in the box.
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Re:expect... (Score:5, Informative)
Even with the "free" ($20) upgrades some have gotten in the past, Apple has shipped the entire OS on the CD(s). Its just that the installer checked to make sure you have the previous version before starting the installation process (you could still do a full archive and install). In fact, it didn't take long for people to figure out the trick and image the upgrade CD to disk, remove the bit that checked for the previous system, then burn the "fixed" image to another CD.
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Re:expect... (Score:5, Interesting)
OTOH, I've had 'wait until Tiger' in the back of my head when thinking about getting a Mac.
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Re:expect... No, they DO ask it all the time (Score:5, Insightful)
The number one question asked by 'the archetypical mini-buyer' - and of course the tons of other people that ask for a mini who sometimes have some similarity with this mythical person - is 'Will I get Tiger for free when I but my mini now?'
The archetypical mac-mini switcher (subset of a-mm-buyer) is not the complete computer-n00b we would all love to go out and buy a mac, only because then we might actually get to benchmarks the actual stand-by time of our mobile phones, that type of user still uses the windows pc they've had for years because they don't care about computers, don't read the articles about them in the press, skip conversations about computers in social events because they're biased to think they won't understand any of it anyway and are thereby still highly unaware of the other options out there besides using their windows 95 OSR 2 box with 16 megs of ram till death.
The typical switcher we get - I work in a big Apple Centre in the Netherlands - is the slightly geeky guy on a budget. The type that cares a bit above average about computers, never used Linux because they couldn't figure out how to install it in the amount of time they wanted to commit themselves to it and besides that just mature enough to be tempted by the idea that *it* might JustWork(TM)
-- above passage not intended as linux-is-too-difficult-for-'normal'-people-flame-
The second most important typical mini-buyer is the user that already has -at least one- mac, looking for an extra machine to fulfill some specific task(s) , or unable to resist the mac mini coolness factor and getting one while not having the faintest clue why they would need it, or to replace for instance a dying iMac they've been using as a file- and print-server on a budget or likewise
Besides that, all the linux-geeks I know either want one, already have one or don't need one since they've gotten themselves an iBook. but that's not such a large part of the people we get in our store.
All of those categories of customers actually care *a lot* about whether or not Tiger will be included with their minimac.
PS: I'm not in sales but in tech support, so I might miss a few of those potential customers..
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Re:expect... No, they DO ask it all the time (Score:5, Insightful)
You have a good view, but let me give you a data point. I'm a Linux sysadmin by day. My "server" at home runs Linux. My desktops at home run sort of Windows by necessity: one is for my wife, the other is my laptop that I need to use with a Centrino wireless card, and VPN for work. I know that I could "train" my wife to use Linux. I also know that I could get my finicky laptop to work. Point is, I don't want to. By the time I get home, I don't feel like it.
From reading (mostly on
I mess around with things enough at work and home. When I want to play, I have plenty of things to play with. But I want something that I don't have to think about unless I want to. I don't want to have to edit a single god damn configuration file to accomplish the above tasks. Is the Mac the right answer? I think it might be. But if it's not, that's okay. I can go back to the old way, and when I do, I'll sell the Mac for damn near what I paid for it.
I never thought I would be this way. But I've reached a time in my life where I have less patience and willingness to sacrifice free time. I also have lots more money. That's why I'm giving it a shot.
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Re:expect... No, they DO ask it all the time (Score:5, Insightful)
I was in a vaguely similar boat, though I can't ever claim to have been a Linux sysadmin - certainly not outside the home anyway. All our machines at home were Windows XP, mostly self-built, and we had Linux for NAT, etc. But all the machines were a constant hassle. The only thing I can be thankful for is that this was before spyware and its ilk got really big, so I never had to deal with much of that.
Anyway, I got an iBook in 2002, after playing around on a very sexy PowerMac G4 server (it had 1.25GB RAM, which was not unimpressive at the time). Looking back now, it was quite crude - Internet Explorer for the web browser, no X11, no Quartz Extreme - but I still switched, and haven't looked back.
Granted, it's a little weird if you're coming from a Linux-centric background - each UNIX has its own ways of doing things and Darwin is no different in this respect - but you can still get down to the nitty-gritty and write your own ipfw configuration if it floats your boat. And, though Fink [sf.net] seems slightly stagnated of late, running KDE on your Mac is just plain cool (from a "because you can" point of view, anyway).
Keep an open mind - I know a friend of mine was a little upset at first because he couldn't start Apache with apachectl start. I was a little terse with him in reply, pointing out that Apple, champion of the GUI, could hardly expect a horde of headstrong OS9 GUI diehards to open up a Terminal to start a web server. Once I pointed him towards the Sharing tab, all was fine.
The wireless implementation is unparalleled. Having taken my first steps in the WiFi world on a Mac, it pains me to use Windows' or Linux efforts (the latter I am having particular trouble with at home). Bluetooth is beautiful - you will, I am sure, find BluePhoneElite [reelintelligence.com] and Salling Clicker [mac.com] amusing if not essential toys. iPhoto is really, really nice; iMovie HD is just totally cool...
You almost take it for granted in fact. I installed iTunes on a friend's Windows XP machine the other day, and she was almost bowled over (she has rather poor balance) by the simplicity of iTunes. I now think of it as nothing special, but to someone who has suffered under WiMP for so long, it is truly refreshing.
In the end, all the machines at home now are Macs, save for one Linux server which still does NAT, mostly for my amusement so that I can continue to hack when I want. But I really think you hit the nail on the head with this...
I mess around with things enough at work and home. When I want to play, I have plenty of things to play with. But I want something that I don't have to think about unless I want to. I don't want to have to edit a single god damn configuration file to accomplish the above tasks.
I think I can sum it up succinctly with a line that is sure to appeal to at least the more mature and competent (i.e. less l33t t33n h4x0r) type that reads
iqu
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Re:expect... (Score:5, Informative)
While this list may answer your questions, I seriously reccomend viewing the '05 Keynote from San Fransico
http://www.apple.com/quicktime/qtv/mwsf05/ [apple.com]
1. Spotlight: I'm sure you probably know about it by now. Super-quick searching of everything evar!
2. Dashboard: Quick lookup-info and go thing. Try something remarkably similar at http://www.konfabulator.com/ [konfabulator.com] but think of Dashboard as faster.
3. Automator: Like writing small shell scripts to replace you, but way better/gui'fied. Application developers can use AppleScripts to create more robust workflows. (Save your pr0n images faster than ever before!)
4. More optimization: Like most
Visit http://www.apple.com/macosx/ [apple.com] for more info
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Fast! (Score:5, Funny)
Apple will sometimes seed several final candidate builds before one is declared gold master...'"
Today:
Tiger build 8A428 has been deemed the Gold Master for shipping
Damn that was fast! I can't believe I miss those builds!
Re:Fast! (Score:4, Funny)
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April 1st announcement (Score:4, Informative)
It's good to see that Apple is delivering Tiger on time. Some might even say it's early.
Re:April 1st announcement (Score:5, Funny)
Tomorrow will be Apple's 30th birthday (since birthday counting is zero based)
though it is only the 29th anniversary of Apple's birthday (which is what most people who haven't had to debug overflow and off-by-one errors celebrate.
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Re:April 1st announcement (Score:5, Funny)
I was born in '76, and my 30th birthday isn't for another year damnit. Don't steal what little youth I have left.
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Cheap updates? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Cheap updates? (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Cheap updates? (Score:5, Interesting)
One: You're not thinking of Core Video. You're thinking of Core Image.
Two: Core Image has no requirements at all. Any computer that can run Tiger can run Core Image code.
Three: Core Image will take advantage of hardware acceleration if it's available. But it's also smart enough not to take advantage of hardware acceleration if the CPU is faster. For instance if you run a Core image application on a 2 x 2.5 GHz G5 with a GeForce 5200 card, nearly all Core Image functions will be executed in the CPU. Because it's faster.
Four: Motion does not use Core Image. Rather, Core Image is derived from some of the work that was done for Motion, with significant portability enhancements. Whether or not you can run Motion has nothing to do with Core Image.
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pearpc (Score:4, Funny)
Re:pearpc (Score:5, Funny)
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They can't go on like this, can they? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:They can't go on like this, can they? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:They can't go on like this, can they? (Score:5, Funny)
only time Garfield has *ever* been funny.
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Re:They can't go on like this, can they? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:They can't go on like this, can they? (Score:5, Funny)
How do you titillate an ocelot?
You oscillate it's tit a lot.
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Re:They can't go on like this, can they? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:They can't go on like this, can they? (Score:5, Informative)
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Yeeeaaaaaaaaahhhhhh!!!!!!! (Score:5, Interesting)
I knew the features were cool but there were a few extra surprises, like in Dashboard there's a language translator that translates your words as you're typing. it looked really cool - he was typing "French fries" which was dynamically translated frenc->francais->pommes frites as more letters were typed. I didn't notice a USA ("Freedom fries") option in the language list though.
Automator looked far cooler than I'd imagined too.
I must say I don't like the new look of the email app though. I love the current skin.
Re:Yeeeaaaaaaaaahhhhhh!!!!!!! (Score:5, Funny)
Skin? SKIN?!!! OK, you gnome/KDE hippie. Apple doesn't make "skins". They produce "human interface guidelines" and bond the UI onto an app so tight it'll make your anus pucker.
Unless you're talking about human skin from any "trade dress" lawsuit. In which case, they make lovely lampshades.
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OSX is grrrrrreat! (Score:5, Insightful)
And Tiger is going to be a beautiful release. There are features in it, especially the searching and process automation, that I've been dreaming about for years. The searching technology first appeared in BeOS with its attribute-based filesystem, but the process automation is actually something that a company I worked for ten years ago tried to invent and couldn't get it working properly. When I saw it on Apple's demo page for Tiger, I basically saw exactly the same thing that we tried to do...
All I'm trying to say is that I thoroughly understand the depth of Apple's success with this software, and the technical achievement they made. This is a UNIX that can do so darn much.
Re:OSX is grrrrrreat! (Score:4, Funny)
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A cunning strategm (Score:5, Funny)
and it's already a bestseller... (Score:5, Interesting)
...acccording to Amazon [amazon.com]. It's the top Amazon software and electronics item, which is pretty amazing considering it's outselling TurboTax and the iPod.
I ordered mine already, of course...
Re:and it's already a bestseller... (Score:4, Insightful)
That number is incredibly misleading. It underestimates real users since, lumped into the Microsoft share, are the majority of the Intel PCs used as Point of Sale terminals, ATMs, informatioin kiosks, etc.
It also fails to account for the fact that Mac owners tend to keep their systems for several years longer than PC users. Thus the percentage of home users of Macs is probably somewhere between %8-%12, not the oft quoted 3%.
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Beware this 'Tiger' release! (Score:5, Funny)
T I G E R
84 73 71 69 82 - as ASCII values
3 1 8 6 1 - digits added
\_/ \_/ \_/ \_/ \_/
3 1 8 6 1 - digits added
Thus, "TIGER" is 31861.
Subtract 97 from the number - this is the year Vesuvius erupted, written backwards. It gives 31764.
Add 0791 to it - this is the year IBM announced S/370, written backwards - you will get 32555.
Subtract 38, the symbol of slavery. The result will be 32517.
Add 1983, the year Microsoft introduced Windows 1.0 - the result is 34500.
Turn the number backwards, and add 1778 - the year Oliver Pollock invented '$', the symbol of exploitation, suffering and injustice. The number is now 2321.
This, when read backwards, gives 1232. This is 666 in octal, the number of the Beast...
Evil, QED.
( http://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/evilfinder/ef.shtml )
Automator (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.apple.com/macosx/tiger/automator.html [apple.com]
It looks like Apple has finally found an elegant way to make a GUI accomplish tasks like these faster than I could at a bash prompt.
Re:Automator (Score:5, Insightful)
For my wife it would be. She would be infinitely more productive with Automator than with Bash-programming
I beg to differ. With tools like Automator they would get instant visual cues as to what the system does. The system would just make sense. They just set each step accordingly, by choosing from drop-down boxes (with descripitve names of apps and actions) and the like, and it does the rest. It even has nice arrows point that "when this is done, I will move on to this step here". But let's look at your example:
wget -nd -r -l 1 -A jpg http://somehost.com/ [somehost.com] [somehost.com] zip out.zip *.jpg
Huh? What is "wget"? What the hell are -nd -r -l 1 -A? How do those tell the user what it's doing? The user would have to spend time going through obscure manuals. With Automator, they could simply tell the system "fetch images from this website, and make an archive out of them".
Of course, if you have the commands memorized, then typing that command is propably faster than doing the same with Automator. But ask regural user who does NOT have that knowledge to do the same with Bash and with Automator. Which will be faster? Which of them will he rather use? If you answer "Bash", you are deluding yourself.
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Build numbers (Score:5, Funny)
Think about this: if the build number is in hex (i.e. 0x8A428), this is the 566,312nd build of Tiger.
Now, about 18 months passed since the release of OSX 10.3. This means that Apple built OSX Tiger about 42 times per hour, without stop since Oct. 2003 (OSX 10.3 release time)!
Re:Build numbers (Score:5, Informative)
MacOS X version Darwin kernel version Build
10.2.0 6.0.0 6Annn
10.2.1 6.1.0
10.3.0 7.0.0 7Annn
10.3.8 7.8.0 7U16 (what I'm running right now)
10.4.0 8.0.0 8A428
The first digit of the build number is always equal to the Darwin kernel's major version number. The next position is a single alpha character which Apple uses to distinguish different lines of development on that major revision of the OS. The first release will always be an 'A'. If the first branch they make is to add drivers for a new computer, that build series will get 'B', the next branch gets 'C' and so forth. The two major kinds of branch that I know about are for updates (10.3.0 -> 10.3.1 etc.) and for new hardware support.
Finally you get to the actual build number, which is simply a boring old decimal number.
So 8A428 actually means it's the first (and probably currently only) branch of 10.4 with 8.x.x series Darwin kernels, and it's at its 428th build.
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Re:Aprilfools! (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Great! (Score:5, Interesting)
my G4-450 tower is over 6 years old, and works great with the latest version of OS X Panther -- everything is just as snappy as it is on my fairly new powerbook (as far as the os is concerned...). I've been using the latest release of final cut pro on it without a problem for the past few weeks.
can you say that you can use a 6-year old PC without any siginificant upgrades and still run the latest OS and software and be productive with it? Paying $2000 for a machine that will last 6 years is definitely justifiable compared to paying $1000 for a mediocre machine that lasts 2.5 years.
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One significant upgrade... (Score:5, Informative)
Well, and that 20GB hard drive I splurged on. My root partition is still on the original 2GB, though.
I'd like to have a few new things, like USB 2.0 (though I could just get a card for that) or Serial ATA so I never have to see a fucking ribbon cable again. I may not play World of Warcraft on it, but it does the same thing it did years ago---runs Opera, runs my little perl programs, and runs gaim. Old gaim.
Though, because PCs are so modular, you get into a "best axe I ever had, three new handles, five new blades" thing. If you upgrade the RAM, the video card, the CPU and the disks, it's not really the same machine that it was. I doubt I'll buy an entirely new machine in the foreseeable future. So you could consider $2000 in parts spent over six years to be the cost of keeping the machine stocked with quality upgrades. I think it all works out evenly.
--grendel drago
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Re:Great! (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure. As long as you're not married to Windows.
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Re:Great! (Score:5, Insightful)
The one thing you'll want is a decent amount of memory. 128 mb hasn't been enough for any previous version, and it's doubtful it'll be enough for 10.4.
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Re:Great! (Score:5, Informative)
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Apple's OS upgrade past performance (Score:5, Informative)
(1) customers who purchased a new Mac 30 days (the exchange peroid) before the announcement get a free upgrade CD in the mail (or at an Apple Store perhaps?)
(2) new Macs being built come with the new OS on the hard drive image from the factory.
(3) computers in inventory get their boxes sliced open and a new OS upgrade CD (DVD?) dropped in. This disk requires the install drive to have an OS on it already, so it is not the same as what comes on the boxed OS CD.
I have also read other reports from people who got a free iLife upgrade because of (1) having that CD dropped in their Macs as a separate disk, not the OS and iLife on a single disk.
This may usher in the era of Mac OS missing iTunes/iPhoto/iMovie/iDVD/Garageband on the same CD - thus reinforcing the concept of iLife as an application suite and the OS as a standalone product. Don't look for these new iLife apps on the Tiger install CDs purchased from the store. (But as always, new Macs come with Mac OS and iLife as well as Quicken.)
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Re:Apple... (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:OS XI (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:What version of GCC? (Score:5, Informative)
The pre-release builds are including both gcc 3.3 and gcc 4.0 with 4.0 being the default.
You can switch between them using the
command.Parent