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| Wednesday, June 30, 2004 |
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Apple to set 'Tiger' on Mac users
Jonathan Sreekumaran
At its worldwide developer's conference, Apple previewed the latest Mac OS X 10.4 a.k.a. 'Tiger'. Like its predecessor, the 'Panther', the new OS boasts of a reported '150' new features. Some of these features notably include a system-wide search tool called Spotlight, which mimics the way iTunes searches your music library. The tool, reportedly scours through more than 100,000 files in less than a second and allows you to find any file - including email, hidden files or even application data - anywhere on your Mac.
Besides casting the spotlight on 'Spotlight', Tiger would include the ability to fully support 64-bit processes, and will finally make use of some of the core architectural improvements introduced last year with the PowerPC 970 CPU that serves as the heart of the Power Mac G5 system.
Also included is a new version of Apple's Safari browser with a built-in RSS newsreader. As well as detecting website news feeds, it features a "personal clipping service," which saves RSS keyword searches as bookmarks - allowing frequent updates of news on topics like "Apple" or "iPod."
Apple also previewed a new visual scripting tool for Tiger, called Automator. The script builder, which currently has a library of more than 100 configurable "actions" it can automate within the Tiger OS and current Mac OS X applications, can also be used to build workflows and tie together application events with custom AppleScript and Unix shell-script macros. Automator can also drive Spotlight searches and act on their results, automating tasks such as sizing and uploading images found with a user-entered search string.
If reports are to be believed, Apple's CEO, Steve Jobs has claimed that Tiger would catapult Apple ahead of Microsoft's Longhorn and that Apple's OS would be years ahead of Microsoft's OS. It was also reported that Apple hung promotional banners at the conference venue stating "Redmond, start your photocopiers" and "Introducing Longhorn".
The new version (Mac OS X 10.4) is to be available in the first half of 2005 at a suggested retail price of $129.
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| posted by Perimbean @ 8:51 PM |
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