Dear Paul

I saw your Tiger review a while ago, but today I realised something a bit hypocritical about it.

In January you posted this on your blog:

“Grade: A. Mac OS X Tiger will be the best release of Mac OS X ever, and it will deliver on some Longhorn features about a year before Microsoft gets around to doing so.”

In your review you posted this:

“Apple Mac OS X 10.4 “Tiger” is the strongest OS X release yet and a worthy competitor to Windows XP. Though it is marketed by Apple as a major release, Tiger is in fact a minor upgrade with few major new features for end users”

Now is it offering features about a year before longhorn or is it just a “worthy competitor” for Windows XP. I also find it interesting that you fail to mention something as important as Core Data, yet you manage to splash info of WinFS all over your site. While it is yet to be publicly seen whether Core Data is as powerful as WinFS is meant to be, it is still a HUGE step in that direction.

You also mention that Tiger is a minor upgrade, but that is often a common mistake made by windows users due to the 10.x numbering. Tiger is actually offering just as much over Panther as XP did over 2000, if not more. You cannot dismiss technologies such as Spotlight, Core Data/Image/Video, Automator and QT 7 as minor yet still applaud microsoft for it’s work on Longhorn.

One last thing which isn’t quite as linked with the review, is your criticising of the Mac GUI, or more specifically Apple not “innovating” it as much as Microsoft. Now while some people may prefer a tasked base interface, I actually find it as counter productive and actually a step back in the computing world. Apple has learnt that you aren’t to assume that all users are geeks and not to treat all users as children and guide them through simple tasks such as creating a folder or searching. It instead makes it’s OS work using basic common sense.