(Duplicate of B000C7259K) Mac OS X v10.4 Tiger

Now I'm one of them.

Nothing could have prepared me for just how much better the operating system is and I know that as a novice user I'm only just scratching the surface of it at the moment. I have to admit that I don't find Windows that bad and as an advanced user I was able to set it up in such a way that it was reliable, it was robust, it was stable - mostly.

The thing is with Tiger you just don't have to do anything. Out of the box it is a piece of cake to use and try as I might I can't make it crash!

Some of the features are a joy to behold and the one that stands out the most is Spotlight. I wasn't expecting it to be all that great, 'I've got Google Desktop Search on my PC', I said so was amazed to be blown away by how well it works. Google Desktop is good, but with not being fully integrated into the OS it is nowhere near as slick or as fast. Spotlight is so good I've even abandoned using the on-line help as typing something relevant in Spotlight always seems to bring something relevant forwards. You don't realise how much time you spend searching through directories for files until you no longer have to. This is a real productivity gain.

Safari (web browser) is excellent and very quick, though I've found banking websites don't accept it, so I still have to have a copy of Firefox available.

Dashboard is fun (a 'hidden' screen with small widgets (applets)which you bring forwards at the press of a function key) and it allows quick access to several useful things.

Expose is a neat trick which at the press of a function key causes the user interface to re-scale all of the current open applications to fit onto one screen allowing you to click the one you are interested in and bringing it to the front. Windows users will be surprised how useful this is, as I've found the Mac will handle having way more applications open at the same time so this is a handy way to keep track of things.

Multiple users is great and very easy to setup with the system allocating disc space and such like automatically and you can have the appearance completely different between each user. Fast User Swicthing is clever as well, allowing multiple users to be effectively logged in at once and you switch between the two with applications in both staying active at the same time.

The only thing I don't like that much is the Mail client. It's not that it's bad, it just seems to be overly simple and lacking in features a little and I prefer the one that comes with Microsoft Office.

I really could go on and on and on. Obviously as a new user I can't comment on whether it is worth upgrading from previous versions, but I am absolutely thrilled to bits with it. I still have to use Windows PC's at work and I still say they are not that bad, it's just Mac OS is fantastic.

'Exposé' in Panther changed my life and the way I use my Mac. Spotlight, Automator and Dashboard did the same. At first I didn't think it was worth the upgrade, but now I have no doubt that I could never manage going back to Panther, let alone Windows.

Like with so many previous versions of this beast of an OS, it's the little things, too that make a huge difference and Tiger has so many of them! Part of the joy of using a Mac is the way your apps are integrated to work together, and Tiger improves on this, with even tighter integration, topped off in Automator, where all your apps come together.

Spotlight: At first you'll wonder why it's so good, but when you stop needing to open loads of folders to get what you're after, you'll wonder how you ever did without it. It's always accessible and you don't even need to know the name of the item you're looking for- just some text that's contained within it will suffice.

Automator: For the more experienced Mac user who has a little more time to get used to it. But once you are- used to it, that is- your saved workflows in the scripts menu or as Finder plug-ins will streamline your work and make life so much easier.

Dashboard: Speaks for itself. Especially good if you're in the middle of writing an essay and you need the dictionary or thesaurus. Or if you're writing a mathematical report or whatever and you quickly need the Calculator.

To sum up, a wonderfully poweful OS and if you love your Mac (which most Mac owners do!), it's probably worth the price of the upgrade.

Spotlight is a far superior version of the search/find utility, and works across a number of ap's. The one possible frustration is that unlike its predecessor, it does not show you where the searched for item is, you just click on it and it opens. I personally quite liked seeing the dircetory at the bottom of the window, but this is a minor quibble.

Automator is a fantastic application that allows you to complete tasks in a much quicker way. For example, you can bring up a whole lot of photo's in iphoto and by clicking on them catalogue them in sequence at pretty much the click of a button.

Dashboard is a really fun application that alows you to bring up widgets so that you can do things like control itunes, do quick calculations or conversions, look at your address book. As with all the other ap's, it is very easy to set up and use.
Synchronising your mac with other mac's and/or devices is a lot easier as apple have made a number of changes to the the programme under the hood that make it a far easier than before.

The safari web browser now includes RSS (really simple syndication), which means that you can now get the news, for example, delivered in a new way, so that whatever you might be looking at on safari, when a new news item comes up, the news bookmark on the bookmarks bar tells you. If you are not technically minded it coould take a little while to set up as this is a new innovation for web browsers (Mozilla's Firefox being the only other web browser that I know of that includes it). It now also includes a parental control function so that you can monitor what your kids (if you have them) look at, as well as the ability to view websites without the deklicate information being disclosed.

If you video conference, iChat is now even better-apart from the fact that the conference chat looks fantastic, it is even easier to send files to the people you are talking to.

Mail is now even better, and you can create smart mail boxes (in much the same way that itunes allows you to create smart playlists), which means that if you subscribe to newsletters, you can get them put staright into the smart mailbox.

All in all I think that this is by far the best upgrade to OS X. The great thing about apple is their ability to create great app's that work well with each other and are easy to use. I woould highly recommend it.

In addition to all of the above it runs much more quickly that other versions of OS X, on my powerbook at least.
One word of caution- unlike other OS X updates, Tiger does not include the iLife suite.