Philosophical Predictions for Tiger

[TigerPRO]

I was quite surprised when I heard Apple was planning a preview of Mac OS 10.4 in June, since Panther only got off the ground this past November. But that's what Apple is always doing to us: "surprising". So I started to wonder to myself, with a huge upgrade like Panther, what more could Apple be ready with in less than a 12 months time to merit another "assumed" $130 upgrade cost? With such short time, I was almost ready to think of the possibility of Tiger becoming one of the least significant of the last 4 revisions. But I'm going to boldly surmise the possibility of Tiger becoming the most important update since Jaguar.

It seems to me that Apple may take this opportunity to finally bolster the core components of the operating system. After taking the last couple releases to play catchup with features (user switching, features from OS 9), I think they are going to be some important revisions to core system technologies. Because as of right now, the system is busting at the seams with features, what we need now is more responsiveness, and a faster workflow. I expect them to tackle the sluggish UI problem head on with Tiger. Maybe even a Cocoa Finder. But naturally, I also presume there will be another boat load of amazing features, but probably not to the extent we saw in Panther.

That's my take on it anyway. Does anyone else feel this way?

 

[MoparShaha]

I agree with you. I too was taken aback at how quickly Tiger seems to be getting off the ground. I remember back when Panther was released, many people concluded it was going to at least a year and a half until 10.4. I wasn't expecting a preview until maybe early 2005. We have to be honest, aside from the coolness of Expose and Fast User Switching, what did Panther bring about? Of course us Macheads are always going to buy the latest and greatest, but the general public needs more convincing. I think Tiger is going to need to be convincing. I'm completely in the dark as to what it's going to feature, but I imagine it has to be big to warrant the price. Can't wait till WWDC!

 

[stoid]

Maybe it won't be a terribly significant upgrade and will be free to all Panther users with only Jaguar and early having to pay for it.

 

[PlaceofDis]

Maybe it won't be a terribly significant upgrade and will be free to all Panther users with only Jaguar and early having to pay for it.

that would be nice, but i just cant see it happening

 

[Koodauw]

I hope your right TigerPRO. I don't know if it is possible, but it would be nice for aps to launch faster than they do now. Also, finder doesn't seem to be slow for me, but an improvement is always welcome. Regardless of any new "features" I think I will upgrade. A new OS make me feel like I have a new computer, and its only a fraction of the cost. I look forward to see tiger at WWDC. Hopefully it will have something to do with a white tiger. They are way cool.

 

[Krizoitz]

Just because they are offering us a peak at some of the features doesn't mean that it will necessarilly be out the door anytime soon. Heck Microsoft is allready demoing Longhorn and it won't see the light of day for years. Plus remember the Copeland demos? Copland didn't even materialize. I'm glad Apple is taking this opportunity to let us know whats coming. Hopefully it will help people who get sick of waiting for Microsofts big promises with little delivery to give the Mac a try.

 

[unfaded]

It will be pay. 10.1 was the only one that wasn't necessarily pay because 10.0 was damn near unusable. Panther, on the other hand, gives a lot of machines a new lease on life.

10.4 will be paid

 

[adamjay]

We have to be honest, aside from the coolness of Expose and Fast User Switching, what did Panther bring about?

Panther brought a MUCH faster GUI. you will hear alot of people talk about how "snappier" their machines are with Panther compared to earlier versions of OSX.

My machine gained a 15% performance increase (by Xbench standards) when upgrading from Jaguar 10.2.8 to Panther 10.3.3

That said, if Tiger gives us yet another 10-20% overall speed increase in MacOS, i will gladly pay $129

 

[Kelvin]

What many people don't realize about Panther is that there were a vast many improvements on the Developer side also. OpenGL is finally up to most standards, Cocoa has lots of new stuff like bindings, WebKit is standard, XCode (gcc 3.3, distributed builds, zero link), etc. A lot of stuff that should've just worked on the development side, finally does in Panther. I know most users don't care, but as a developer it is a lot nicer.

 

[TigerPRO]

Just because they are offering us a peak at some of the features doesn't mean that it will necessarilly be out the door anytime soon. Heck Microsoft is allready demoing Longhorn and it won't see the light of day for years. Plus remember the Copeland demos? Copland didn't even materialize. I'm glad Apple is taking this opportunity to let us know whats coming. Hopefully it will help people who get sick of waiting for Microsofts big promises with little delivery to give the Mac a try.

No we probably won't see it for a while. I think it'll be very similar to the Panther release. It'll probably be out the door by November again (like last time). But the reason M$ needs to start giving developers so long with next windows thing, is because it's such a huge transition.

The nice thing about all these Mac OS X upgrades, is that they only build on the already existing foundation, they aren't restructuring the core of the OS like they always do a little with every windows upgrade. So obviously, this is really special, because we are getting new features and innovations just about every year, with no need for developers to learn an entirely new OS, and without the need to wait until the next generation of the product. So I don't think of Panther or Tiger as being "upgrades", but rather as "optional feature add-on packs". And every true Mac lover at heart will always be eager to have the latest and greatest innovative technology from Apple.

The M$ strategy hasn't been anything like this. Almost every time there's a new release, it means a nightmare of new adjustments for programmers. And M$ really hasn't done any innovating to their OS. Just look at Windows 95 and compare it to XP. What's really there that's different as far features? The features work much nicer, but not much "new" has been added. The basic elements are still there: start menu, taskbar, windows explorer, the desktop. We've seen them change buttons and colors on GUI (usually for the worse), but for the last decade, what has really been innovated?

How about the Quick Launch Bar, drag and drop reordering of the start menu items, or fading away context menus? Is that the extent of over a decade of M$ improving their OS? I was once a windows user, and you have to understand how windows users think about windows upgrades...

A windows user thinks of two main things when an upgrade is coming: Stability and Security. It's unfortunate, but these, while taken for granted by us, are considered "features" to a windows user. I can remember it being the greatest thing in the world when XP was released, because everyone was talking about how stable it was. It's assumed by windows users that all computer technology is inherently buggy; they don't think there's anything better. But they fail to realize that a crashing, buggy OS is not normal or hard to overcome, but a sign of poor workmanship.

Although I have to say that one feature did catch my eye once; "User Switching" was a major score and a huge cool thing. But I can remember eagerly waiting with every windows upgrade for cool new features, but never really getting anything. It was always the same old interface with maybe a few different colors, buttons, and preferences.

 

[TigerPRO]

A Couple Thoughts

I agree with you. I too was taken aback at how quickly Tiger seems to be getting off the ground. I remember back when Panther was released, many people concluded it was going to at least a year and a half until 10.4. I wasn't expecting a preview until maybe early 2005. We have to be honest, aside from the coolness of Expose and Fast User Switching, what did Panther bring about? Of course us Macheads are always going to buy the latest and greatest, but the general public needs more convincing. I think Tiger is going to need to be convincing. I'm completely in the dark as to what it's going to feature, but I imagine it has to be big to warrant the price. Can't wait till WWDC!

I wonder what Apple's strategy is for improving and preparing upgrades. It may not be that they finished Panther, and then suddenly decided to start Tiger; like "oh that projects finished, now lets start the next one". Perhaps they are constantly working on technologies several generations into the future. By "generations" I don't mean time, but OS 10.? cycles. If this is the case, Tiger could be a huge update that's been in the making for several years. Because I doubt they have a "one track mind" strategy. I would suppose they have many departments working on many things independantly: security updates, bug fix updates, futures technologies, next OS X versions, ect... And as various departments finished their projects, they are implemented in the next release.

So I would conclude that what we may see in Tiger may not only be the result of a couple months of programming since Panther was released, but the result of programming projects that might have even been under development since before Panther was even announced. In this case, the time since the last OS X version should not affect the amount of work that will have gone into it. Therefore, the chances of Tiger being a huge release could be a real possibility. Do you think Apple operates like this?