• Revolutionary Spotlight technology that lets you search every corner of your Mac instantly: files, emails, contacts, images, movies, calendars and applications. Even save results as Smart Folders that update automatically.
• A set of nifty, beautifully designed mini-applications called widgets for checking stocks and weather, looking up phone numbers, performing calculations, finding dictionary definitions and more — with one click right from your personal Dashboard.
• A personal assistant for automating all of your time-consuming, repetitive manual tasks efficiently and effortlessly. It's simple to create custom Workflows just by dragging items, pointing and clicking.
• Safari RSS technology that delivers the latest news, information and articles from thousands of web sites in one simple-to-read, searchable article list right to your Mac.
• The latest iChat AV delivering multi-way video and audio conferencing with true-to-life picture and sound quality.

Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger will change the way you think about your Mac. It offers more than 200 new features to make controlling your personal information, applications and usage more easily than ever. Find, manage and enjoy the things you care about more effectively -- with the most advanced operating system yet released. Accelerate your research with the powerful new development tools. Work with integrated support for critical audio functions for better music at home. While you're doing both ofthese, you can also do just about everything else, from checking the weather to managing e-mail. Prepare to be amazed at how far operating systems have come. Link up all your Macs and share Safari bookmarks, address book contacts, mail settings and more through. mac Sync VoiceOver gives users with disabilities equal access to the power and simplicity of the Mac 64-bit UNIX based operating system with advanced distributed computing facilities and collaborative tools Also includes broader parental controls for children, better Mail organizing and archiving options, iChat AV and other tools for research, audio/video, design, photography and small business management
Apple's long awaited new operating system brings more than 200 new features to Mac users. Technically speaking, Tiger boasts an open source core, 64-bit system, and support for the High Definition H.264 video codec. But, every user will enjoy the highlights of this new release: a new search tool, cool new mini applications, real-time RSS feeds in the browser, improved email, amped up audio and visual conferencing, parental controls, automation of tedious, repetitive tasks, and the list goes on.

OS-Level Search: Spotlight Handled by Tiger's search technology, Spotlight, users may search across documents, images, movies, music, PDFs, email, calendar events, and system preferences with one keyword. Spotlight reviews text content, filenames, and keywords (metadata) applied by users and automatically stored by files to return search results. Results are fast and smart, providing previews of returned files and the ability to filter them by kind, date, people, and location.

Spotlight Search Return

More Robust Conferencing: iChat AV iChat AV updates the Panther version with various new features. Enjoy three-dimensional, multi-participant video meetings with better resolution and compression. Conduct audio conferences with up to 10 members utilizing a graphical panel with sound meters for each speaker that indicate who is speaking. Purchase and run your own Tiger server and conduct instant messaging behind your firewall.

iChat Audio Conferencing

iChat Video Conferencing

Parental Controls

Set computer profiles for children using the aptly named Parental Controls and limit their access to system controls, documents, printers, burners, applications, email, chat, and the Web. With multiple profiles, parents can set varying levels of access for each child. Even downloaded or emailed applications are subject to parental approval first.

Drop and Drag Tool Panels: Dashboard Pull in mini applications from a menu, named the Dashboard, to complete frequent tasks, like tracking flights and stocks or looking up words in the dictionary. Add and rearrange these panels, called "widgets," on your desktop as you choose, and hide or show them with the click of a button. Some other widgets include a calendar, calculator, weather report, yellow pages, language translator and unit converter.	Desktop with Dashboard Widgets	Language Translator Widget
		Stock Tracking Widget

Automated Repetitive Tasks: Automator Choose pre-programmed "actions" from a library and automate tedious tasks when they have to be done in bulk, like editing images for slideshows and creating birthdays in the address book. There are hundreds in the can and sure to be more as third-party vendors create and make them available.

Automation of Image Editing Task with Automator

Real-time Browser: Safari Quickly view news headlines and article summaries from around the world with Tiger's browser, Safari . Take advantage of RSS protocols to get the latest news updates automatically.

Improved Mail

Tiger's email program, Mail, uses Spotlight to manage your mail. Find messages easily and let Mail automatically organize your messages as they come into the box. New photo resizing, archiving, and slideshow options enhance your ability to share and enjoy pictures via email.

Centralized Computer Sync: .Mac Sync Use .Mac to sync all your Mac computers, wherever they are. .Mac Sync allows you to conveniently sync your Safari bookmarks, iCal appointments, Address Book contacts, passwords, and Mail settings for multiple Mac computers over the Internet.

Automation of Image Editing Task with Automator

VoiceOver

Apple's spoken interface technology, VoiceOver, gives people with visual and learning disabilities equal access to Mac.

Enhanced QuickTime 7

Featuring the new standards-based H.264 video codec, QuickTime 7 brings you incredible video quality with lower data rates and smoother playback.

Customer Rating:
Summary: forced upgrade from 10.3.9
Comment: No problems with 10.3.9 on a powerbook g4 (never a need to reinstall) for nearly 6 years. Finally gave in when websites required the capabilities of Safari 3, dotMac required iWeb, Backup stopped working on 3.9, and some favs required 10.4 in their latest versions.
Quite happy with X.4.11 but Safari 3 is a dud so far, but that may be because old Safari ignored much of the content and hence loaded quicker. Old Mail also was twice as fast getting my new mail. Have to wait another 5 years to see if it's as stable as Panther.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: OS 10.4 Apple's solid Operating System
Comment: When OS 10.4 was released much was expected by the consumer and OS 10.4 delivered. Not that it was the perfect release as it was followed up with upgrades but the first release was solid. Stable and easy to use, after installation I found no problems on my mac. And even more so enjoyed the new features that it offers. 10.4 is the final version that can be run on most G3 macs. It will be in demand as consumers look to upgrade their G3s. Many chose not to upgrade when it was released but for different reasons want to move up now. It's solid, dependable and can be upgraded to 10.4.11 for free from Apple's web site.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Slightly older, but definitely RECOMMENDED!
Comment: I'm not a fan of buying a new OS when it first comes out. I'd rather wait until most, if not many, of the bugs have been fixed. My iBook came with OS X Jaguar (10.3.x) preinstalled, and had been upgraded to 10.3.9. When Apple came out with Leopard (10.5), I took the plunge and bought Tiger (10.4.x), and now my iBook is running on 10.4.11, and I've experienced no problems whatsoever. This laptop (12" screen, 1.2 GHz PowerPC G4, 768 MB DDR SDRAM, upgradable to 1.2 GB) is a couple years old (purchased in 2005), and, obvioiusly, uses the old PowerPC processor, but is quite capable of running Leopard should I choose to install it. However, I'm content to run on a slightly older OS, such as this one, knowing that the majority of the bugs experienced with it have been ironed out. My only real complaint so far is that it took an incredible amount of time to install, but it has worked flawlessly ever since. RECOMMENDED!

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Works, stable - but not worth upgrading
Comment: I bought a used Mac with Panther already on it. I bought Tiger because that was the current O/S release, and since I had no bonafide O/S installer disk, I wanted a safe recovery disk I could use to reboot and rebuild the whole system from if I ever needed it.

This is on a G4 733 MHz, with 768 MB RAM.

Lots of eye candy, zero substance. If you are happy with Panther, don't bother.
After using Tiger for a year, I have yet to see it do anything at all of any use.
The machine does NOT run faster, and
Spotlight? Good God. MAKE IT DIE.

1. Spotlight's drive indexing will either kill your performance (if you let it update often enough to be of any use), or be out of date so it can't find files. TURN IT OFF.

2. Spotlight can't find half the files that are really on your drive. TURN IT OFF.
Even if you get rid of it, and get rid of all its indexes, it STILL will fail to find some files. AMAZING. They took a simple idea like searching through the drive directory for a file name and they broke it.
It took digging around on forums and a lot of screwing around to truly disable it. Now, when I search for a file, it takes longer because it has to actually search the disk, but guess what? It ACTUALLY FINDS THE FILES.

Panther's search dialogs were much simpler, worked faster, and found everything. Spotlight is the single biggest reason to avoid Tiger.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Great upgrade!
Comment: I got Tiger to improve the working of my Powerbook G4 1.5. My Jaguar installation was getting pokey after two years and a clean install with Tiger cleared out the annoying slowdowns in my computer. Before Tiger, my computer would hang when playing large DV files (such as the ones I made in iMovie) but now they run without a hitch even though the hardware is the same. This Tiger upgrade doesn't include some of the apps (games, Quicken, etc.) that my wife has on her new MacBook, but it did include a 30-day trial verion of iWorks which has come in handy!

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