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news of 2005-04-25
iTunes Music Store Switzerland (et al.)?
It seems like a running gag to me. Everytime there's a rumoured new country for iTMS, someone claims that Switzerland will be among the countries to be included. This time, music.ch rumours a Swiss iTMS. I believe it when I've downloaded my first song from iTMS Switzerland. ;)
[ written by fryke™ on 2005-04-25 at 16:44 CET ]
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Sophos found first Trojan for Mac OS X?
We're cautious sending out info on this, since previously, any kind of virus or trojan horse for Mac OS X has proven either being only a concept (not in the wild) or wrong altogether. For now: This looks like the real deal, though. Still: Mac Trojans don't auto-propagate through E-Mail like in Windows.
[ written by fryke™ on 2005-04-25 at 15:46 CET ]
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Mac OS X 10.4 "Tiger" Review
The public beta of Mac OS X invited us to "see the future of computing", Cheetah (10.0) was, well, a "cheater", really, since it brought us half of the functionality we wanted at about 25 percent of the speed we wanted. Puma (10.1) brought the features and some speed, Jaguar (10.2) was the first version of Mac OS X considered 'final' among critics, October 2003 brought Panther (10.3), which expanded on Jaguar's success and now, finally, we're at Tiger (10.4). What will Tiger bring its users? 200 new features, claims Apple. Well, they always say something like that (although it was 150 new features ever since System 7.5, I believe) - and we end up using/noticing maybe about five of the new features. The question rather is how basic (and important) said features are. Most of us could've gladly used Panther without a Brushed Metal Finder, for example. But Exposé certainly changed the way of handling windows. What's in Tiger, then?
There are the big things, of course. - Like Spotlight (you'll use it) and Dashboard (you might use it) or iChat AV 2.0's multi-video conferencing (you probably won't use it). But there are also a lot of little improvements. For example, if on a PowerBook or iBook, you get a much better "automatic" energy saving setting that really checks out what you're doing before throttling the processor speed - maximising both your computer's performance as well as its battery power. Others are rather bugfixes. For example: You can now select more than one files in the Finder, hit Cmd-C, switch to Mail.app and paste the files (instead of the files' names) into a message. With Panther and earlier, this only worked right for _one_ file at a time. Strange enough: Mail.app's Service (Services menu) still can only do that for one file in Tiger. I guess that'll be corrected in a Tiger update or with Lion (king of the cats, probably 10.5 in 2007).
So how's Spotlight, really? - Well: It sucks. (I can hear you. What?! You're screaming. But hear me out...) It all depends on how you're used to using your computer. Spotlight is one of those features that overtakes certain aspects of how you're using the computer. It takes over file search. But it also takes over E-Mail search and picture search and contact search. So if you're looking for a file you know is named "script.pl" or "script.cgi" and therefore look for 'script' with Spotlight, you'll end up with a lot of pictures, a lot of PDFs and quite some Word or RTF documents. You might find your script.cgi at the very end of the list under the "others" tab. But only if you're lucky.
Now, is Spotlight really that bad? Of course not. It's good for a thousand things. It only sucks for finding files by its name. You simply can't. You can refine your search by a file's name, but you can't simply look for stuff with the file's name. That's just gone. I hate it. But that's because I'm not as stupid as Steve Jobs thinks we all are. I _do_ remember my files' names, for example. I usually name them intelligently. I mostly also remember where I've put them. But when I don't, I think Jaguar and Panther were better for quickly finding them. In Mail.app, it's a completely different story. I LOVE Spotlight in Mail.app. I just loathe it in the Finder.
And Dashboard? Does it suck, too? - Nope, it doesn't. It's quite nice, actually. But then again, it's all about how you're putting it to good use. I personally use it for a couple of stickies, the weather and quick translation. I've also got the calculator and a clock up, but I actually haven't looked at those since installing the final version of Tiger. I've got a menubar clock, thank you, and I mostly forget about Dashboard's calculator and end up LaunchBar-ing Calculator.app, which is still there in Tiger. Summing up: Dashboard's just fine, and if you find the widgets that are really useful to you, it rocks.
Safari RSS 2.0. It rocks, right? - Not really. Well: If you're not into RSS, its RSS feature is a great introduction. If you, like me, depend on RSS feeds, then you want the full version of NetNewsWire 2.0 and nothing less. Safari 2, besides RSS, doesn't really have that many new features. It comes with what Safari 1.3 has, and this means more stability, better speed (even more so in Tiger) but not really new features besides moving around stuff in the contextual menu again.
So, is Tiger worth 129 dollars? - Yes and no. As with every OS X upgrade since 10.1 (which you got for 20 bucks as an update if you had 10.0, because Apple themselves thought that Cheetah was a cheater), the update brings a lot of new stuff. But as with every OS X upgrade since 10.1, the "old one" is okay, too. Jaguar was okay. Panther is okay. And Tiger's okay as well. It's not like you can't live with Panther for a while, still. It's a good operating system. But then again: Tiger comes with so many new things (little and big) that it's very likely you'll find things you think you couldn't live without after using Tiger for a couple of days. It's like that for me. Addictive, really. Although I hate how Spotlight doesn't really let me find things by name easily, I'm so used to having smart mailboxes in Mail.app and I just LOVE Spotlight in Mail.app that I can't go back. There's also a nice speed-up. The interface is faster. Really. But we're used to that now. Every OS X upgrade brought UI speed improvements. Maybe by the time the king of cats ships in 2007, we'll have reached Sonata's UI speed. (Sonata was the code name of Mac OS 9.)
[ written by fryke™ on 2005-04-25 at 12:05 CET ]
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