By Chris Biagini, Thomas Davie, and Nick Mediati

Apple sure has hyped Tiger as something that will change the way we will use our Macs. And on the surface, Tiger certainly looks good. After all, Spotlight itself will change the way we find our files. Dashboard will make information and certain tools a click away. Automator will bring AppleScript workflow scripting to those who are leary of writing scripts. Safari RSS will help bring RSS into the mainstream. CoreImage, CoreVideo, and all the under-the-hood changes promise to make Macintosh software even more insanely great. But we don’t just want hype. We want an operating system that delivers. Is Tiger all that Apple says it is?

Since Tiger is such a large update, and since there are parts that’ll cause average consumers’ eyes to glaze over, we are splitting this review into two parts. This first part will primarily examine the parts of Tiger that matter most to the end-user (Spotlight, Dashboard, etc...). The second part will go into detail over the geekier side of Tiger (developer tools, under-the-hood changes, etc...). Also note that the review will break down into two scores. The part one score will rate the features visible to end users. The part two score will rate the under-the-hood features. So grab a cup of coffee, pull up a comfortable chair, and join us as we explore this magnificent animal.

Spotlight and the Finder

So this is where the nitty gritty is, isn’t it? Apple has spent the past several months touting Spotlight as the next big thing in computing, so lets see if it really lives up to the hype.

Once you’ve installed the new OS, one of the first things you notice is that the Apple menu has a new friend; sitting at the opposite side of the screen is the little Spotlight icon, calmly pulsating away. Thinking “wow, that’s really going to annoy me if it keeps doing that,” you click on it to find a way to stop its constant heartbeat. It is at this point that you discover that Spotlight is telling you that it is currently indexing your entire hard drive(s). During this time you can’t carry out any searches, so you will find yourself a little frustrated that you can’t try Tiger’s most highly publicized feature for a few hours yet. The entire indexing process takes about 4 hours, and once finished will never have to run again; after this point, all your files are indexed “on the fly”. This is one of the areas that Spotlight really shines in comparison to other search technologies. Because of Spotlight’s low level integration with the OS, it knows exactly when and where files are changed, so it can index them the very moment that you make a change. This feature means that search results update instantaneously — you save a file and any searches you have done will automatically accommodate it along with the command line tools and folders in the Finder (yay, no more closing and re-opening folders to see changes). But “why does this matter?” I hear you all scream, “it’s not like we have searches open that often!” And the answer is quite simply, Tiger changes you. You remember when iTunes introduced smart playlists, you didn’t use them for a while? And then one snuck in? And then a few more? And now you rely on them! The same thing happens with Tiger; you slowly realize that search is a really powerful tool, and you start to use it. You begin to realize that Spotlight search is so fast and accurate, that even if you know where a file is, it’s often faster just to type something about it than to go digging through the file hierarchy.

Smart Playlists in iTunes brings me neatly on to what I consider to be the biggest advantage of Spotlight—Smart Folders. Smart folders are exactly what you’d expect them to be if you’ve ever played with a smart playlist. You specify a set of criteria and you get an automatically updated set of files that match those criteria. All of a sudden various features of the OS that have been hanging around for a long time take on a new and useful meaning. I started to use labels to identify files that I used commonly. Now I have searches set up to identify “Common abc Files"—merely a smart folder set to search a specific folder for files labeled a specific colour. But smart folders are more powerful than just searching for labels; a long list of criteria on which you can search (so long in fact that Apple provided a method of searching the list itself) ranges from simple attributes like “Size” to the application used to encode the music in the file, or the focal length of the camera used to take the photo. But amongst this list of options is a very special one, “Raw Query”. The raw query allows you to specify much more complex searches than the GUI could let you. Instead of just having files that match all the properties you specified, you can ask for any boolean conjunction of properties (for example, files of type mp3, recorded over 196kps, and files of type AAC recorded at over 128kps, that were encoded using iTunes, and all .mpg files from the address http://www.dtgeeks.com).

So now that you’ve found your files, how do you get to view your results? A search in Spotlight appears as a menu of files initially, but you can ask to view it in a window. The results appear grouped into neat categories, with a side bar allowing you to select how to group files and how to sort files within their groups. Unfortunately you are limited by Apple’s choices of what you would want to group or sort by, and this can seriously limit what you can do. The interface is however reasonably easy to navigate and usually the results good enough that you can just pick the one you wanted off as the top result. This groups view carries over to the Finder too, where smart folders may use it. It does however obscure the columns view, which is slightly annoying at times. And further more, in a normal folder (not a smart one), you can’t use groups view (very irritating). It’s also irritating to see that Apple haven’t updated any of the views to allow you to sort based on any of the new meta-data functionality, you’re still limited to the same old 8 options in list and icons view. Of final note about meta-data is that the get info panel has been updated. It now sports a “more info” view showing you all the meta data attributes, allowing you to see how you can identify the file if you were to want to search for it.

Meta-data is not all that is new in the Mac OS X Finder. Several other tools have also been updated, most notably disk burning. Previously when you inserted a writable disk it mounted as a disk image allowing you to copy files. Well, gone is the slow copying process, and so too the disk image. You may now specify a “Burnable Folder” to write to the disk. Insert a disk and a new burnable folder is created. Dragging files into the folder does not copy anything; instead it merely creates an alias (saving a great deal of time copying items to the disk). Eject the disk, and the burnable folder is written to it, with a new option: to save the folder. This feature allows you to keep a backup folder ready to burn at any time; and because you’ve only been putting aliases in it (rather than copying as before), the contents automatically update. I can now insert a disk, and burn a backup without having to root around for any of the files I need to put on it, all I need to is click the burn button on my backup burnable folder.

Dashboard

Dashboard is probably the most controversial addition to Tiger, considering the similarities to Konfabulator. Many will remember the “Cupertino, start your photocopies!” slogan on Konfabulator’s website. And at first glance, Dashboard does look an awful lot like Konfabulator. However, there are some differences. Konfabulator uses Javascript and XML, Dashboard widgets are basically nothing but web pages with a few special goodies. Dashboard can also utilize geekier stuff like Cocoa and Terminal scripts. But enough about the innards; Dashboard will make life easier for many. Have you ever had to translate something but had to go and open Sherlock or go to another web page? Have you ever wanted to check the weather but had to go to a web site like AccuWeather to do so? There is an easier way: your F12 key.

Tiger includes a weather widget, translation widget, calculator, unit converter (temperature, currency, weight, and so on), flight tracker, and quite a few more. These widgets are generally useful, and it doesn’t hurt that they look cool! The default suite of widgets is nice, but since it’s relatively easy to make Dashboard widgets, you will be seeing a lot as time goes by. Some examples include RSS newsreaders, mini web browsers, shipment trackers, games, and search widgets. Deep Thought will even provide a wIDget in the not-too-distant future.

Dashboard is simple to use; you press F12 or the Dashboard dock icon to invoke it. Widgets fly in onto a grayed-out desktop, much like Exposé. To get rid of it, press F12 or the Dock icon again. Widgets can be moved around anywhere on screen when Exposé is invoked, simply by dragging them. To add a widget, click the + symbol in the lower-left corner of the screen (the entire desktop slides up!). Drag icons out of the tray (the widget icon morphs into the widget itself in a very slick effect) and onto the desktop to open widgets (people with more powerful graphics cards will notice a ripple effect when you open a widget—very cool). Accessing preferences for a given widget is as easy as clicking a button. But instead of displaying a dialog for the widget prefs (like what Konfabulator does), the widget actually flips over! It’s a cleaver method and something that just makes sense. Dashboard’s concept is pretty simple, and builds off of preexisting concepts at use in OS X (like Exposé). Most users, therefore, will be able to grasp it easily.

There are some drawbacks to Dashboard. The calculator widget does not accept keyboard entry, which neuters some of its functionality. [UPDATE: Calculator does accept keyboard input, but you must click on the widget first.] Also, if you’re looking for something that always displays widgets (without hacking) and provides more customizability, you’d be better off sticking with Konfabulator. Also, Konfabulator generally seems to allow for more customization than Dashboard. Overall, this is one part of Tiger which users will generally appreciate.

Internet Tools

Safari

Safari has been given a major upgrade in Tiger, the engine is getting continuously faster, and Tiger’s new beast is no exception. Panther users got a taste of this when the engine was back ported to go into 10.3.9. But a faster engine is not all there is new in Safari. Safari’s built in RSS reader now lets you quickly and easily view news from multiple sources. Spotlight comes into effect again with Safari able to search the articles blisteringly fast. This isn’t the only place that Spotlight has been applied in Safari though, you can now search your history (a much wanted feature in previous versions). So, new engine, RSS, searching, what more could you want? Well, Safari 2.0 adds one more new feature that none of you teens out there will be able to resist. Porn Private browsing mode. In private browsing mode, Safari will not record anything you do. No caches are kept, no downloads are recorded, no history is recorded, nothing you enter in forms is recorded. It’s totally silent.

Mail

The first thing you notice when you launch the new Mail application is that the interface has changed vastly. A lot of people’s reaction seems to be “Oh my god, get it away, I can’t stand it!” But after a little time to get used to it and a realization of what is new, most people seem to be more than happy with it. The biggest change, other than the look and feel, is speed; previous versions of mail would get sluggish when handling thousands (in Jaguar) or tens of thousands (in Panther) of emails. We’ve been unable to slow Tiger’s Mail down.

The speed is largely down to the new back-end, which now uses core data (to be discussed in Part 2), and this brings other advantages. The mail database can be searched incredibly fast using Spotlight and again we see smart containers (in this case smart mailboxes). Mail can generate mailboxes containing exactly the emails you want and are continuously updated. Default smart mailboxes include unread mail (particularly useful as it keeps the interface very clean), flagged email (you no longer have to manually drag important emails into another mailbox), mail from today (great for quick searches), and a couple of others. Overall, this is a strong update to Mail.

iChat

So you thought iChat improved in Panther? You thought video and audio chat was great? Well, Tiger is, if anything, a bigger leap forward by comparison. The three way video chat appears clear and crisp (thanks to Quicktime 7 providing the new H.264 video codec)—images come over beautifully and the audio quality is flawless, although we have to admit, we did test it on a very high speed internet connection. Not only can you video chat with up to 3 people, but you can also audio chat with up to 9 other people. Hopefully that’s enough for all the corporate meetings the Mac hating executives will be having.

Speaking of using iChat in a corporate environment, iChat now has the ability to join Jabber servers. “That’s got nothing to do with big companies,” we hear you yelling. Well, we think it does—what better way for a company to be able to set up a corporate chat network than to host its own Jabber server (provided in Tiger Server under the name iChat server) and get a seamless secure chat network? Of course, being able to join Jabber servers has other huge advantages; many Jabber servers out there provide bridges to other services, so you can now chat to all your buddies on MSN or Yahoo! using iChat!

Network Diagnostics Utility

Having trouble setting up your internet connection? Something gone awry with the settings? In Panther, you were essentially dumped in it, left to fiddle all by yourself. In Tiger this has all changed. If an internet application can’t get onto the network, it now fires up the Network Diagnostics Utility, which gently steps you through the process of debugging your connection. So far, every time we’ve tried it, it’s identified the problem quickly and accurately. This’ll be a lifesaver for your granny when she tries to get on the internet.

iSync

Unfortunately none of the Deep Thought staff who have received their copies of Tiger early have a .Mac account, so we couldn’t test a lot of the features here iSync its self now supports a much greater range of devices and works as well as ever. How good the .Mac tools work, we don’t know, Sorry. We’ll post a separate, mini-review when one of our other staff members gets their copy.

Cool Tools

Dictionary

Dictionary is a decent little utility, providing definitions and synonyms as fast as you can type. Many applications also get a new contextual menu item to look up the selected word. Dictionary’s preferences configure the menu item to open either Dictionary itself, or a small “Dictionary panel” underneath the word:

This new menu item appears in most Cocoa applications, and we wouldn’t be surprised if BBEdit and TextWrangler added support in a future release.

It’s also worth noting that Dictionary is yet another example of Apple showing off WebKit’s newest capabilities. Poking around Dictionary’s package shows a number of XSL files, which are likely being used to transform dictionary data from a raw XML format into XHTML, which is then displayed by a WebKit view.

Dictionary is also AppleScriptable—sort of. It has a scripting dictionary, but it’s the smallest we’ve ever seen.

Grapher

Simultaneously faster, prettier, and cheaper than a shiny new graphing calculator, Grapher is something that a lot of mathematicians or physicists are going to find very useful. Although the spinning beachball is common with more complicated graphs at the moment, Grapher is a competent tool with an incredible amount of functionality and configurability.

One of my favorite features is that Grapher automatically pretty-prints equations as you type them. For example, typing x^2 yields x². It takes a little getting used to, but Grapher’s “syntax” seems to be a nice balance between the efficiency of LaTeX and the brain-dead simplicity of Microsoft’s wretched Equation Editor.

Automator

At first, Automator seems to be aimed primarily at a specific market—people who are advanced enough to want to automate their computer, but not so advanced as to learn AppleScript. Upon closer inspection, however, Automator seems to be a complement to AppleScript, rather than a competitor. Even advanced AppleScripters may find Automator to be a convenient shortcut in many situations.

Aside from the ability to understand the basics of passing parameters between actions, workflows require no programming knowledge. (Consequently, workflows do not allow programming staples like control statements or conditionals.) Actions have simple names like “Find People With Birthdays,” and inputs and outputs are clearly defined in a preview pane at the bottom of the window. The drag-and-drop process by which workflows are created is very intuitive, and Automator even rearranges items in the Actions pane based on relevance to the last action in your workflow. Very nice touch. Also, Automator seems pretty forgiving at converting between items that don’t quite match. For example, the “Speak Text” action requests text as an input, but will gladly speak URLs generated by a Safari action.

Tiger ships with 180 actions for various Apple applications, and more will certainly follow from third-party developers. Indeed, some applications, like Safari, have more support for Automator than they do for AppleScript. The situation isn’t too bleak for AppleScripters, however, as Automator features an embedded script editor, and data can be passed from Actions to AppleScripts and vice versa with ease. Automator can even pass data to a shell script via stdin, a feature sorely lacking in AppleScript’s do shell script.

Automator certainly has a lot of potential, especially with its ability to save workflows as plugins for the Finder, as iCal Alarms, as Folder Actions, and a number of other things. AppleScript was a revolutionary addition to the Mac OS when it debuted with System 7, and with a little luck, Automator may prove to be just as impressive.

Conclusions

Tiger contains features that will make just about every Mac user happy, although there are some shortcomings. The Finder still hasn’t received a true overhaul. If you’re not a fan of Panther’s Finder, odds are you won’t be entirely happy with Tiger’s Finder either. And be warned that, like most new software releases, you will likely run into some bugs or glitches that may be annoying. However, the good far outweighs the bad. Tiger is slick, faster than its predecessors, and contains some features that you won’t be able to live without once you use them on a regular basis. On the surface, we think Tiger is hot, and hopefully, you non-nerds reading this can now decide if it’s worth the $129. If you are a nerd (and proud of it), tune in next time and see what’s hot under the covers.

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Chris Biagini is writer of the blog Assorted Geekery. Thomas Davie is a Deep Thought staff member. Nick Mediati is Deep Thought’s Mac Editor.