The Hickensian
57 comments
Tiger-r-r-r-r
One ‘archive and install’ later, and I’m now running on 10.4. This is just a quick post to offload the Tiger related thoughts in my head to make room for more important matters.
Apart from all the obvious shiny bits (dashboard, mail 2, saved searches, spotlight, etc) these are things I love so far:
- Overall it seems very snappy. I’m not sure if this is due to a fresh install, but it feels very responsive and peppy – hooray! Jeff Croft found this too.
- One of the best features of Safari RSS, which no one seems to have mentioned yet, is the way it handles pages it can’t find. No longer do you get a sheet which you have to ‘OK’. Just a error message displayed in the browser window – just like every other browser, and its so much less irritating for it.
- Safari’s in-built RSS reader is actually much better than I expected. It now occupies a tab, rather than using the separate, overlayed window that was shown in the preview demonstrations. Great for small amounts of feeds, but lacks features such as mark as read/unread functions to make it practical.
- NewsFire is faster again, and it doesn’t suffer from the constant crashing that 10.3.9 was causing it to do. I’m torn between this and NetNewsWire yet again, and NewsFire is winning at the moment.
- I love being able to add the ‘unified toolbar’ look to Omniweb (using Interface Builder), without resorting to shapeshifter themes. I guess this has the potential to be overused in future apps, but personally I love this clean, less anaemic, look.
In contrast there are only a few negative experiences:
- Mail’s new toolbar icons. What were Apple thinking?
- To be able to use signatures in Mail, they have to drag and dropped onto the relevant account icon in the signatures preferences. Trouble is, no accounts were showing up, and the only way to get to show up was to remove them all and add them again.
- I really miss uControl. So far, its the only app I’ve found that either doesn’t work or hasn’t been updated for Tiger. If anyone knows of a similiar app (Sidetrack isn’t quite the same thing), that uses a keystroke and mouse movement to emulate a scrollwheel – I’d love to know about it.
- Dashboard is slow to startup, but once you let all your widgets load, switching to it is real quick.
When opening a new safari window, the focus used to go straight to the location bar, not any more. Grrr!– not anymore – strangeness!Word hinting that I used every day in Safari (alt-escape after typing a few letters) is no more. Does anyone know the new key combo?”– again, back to normal, more strangeness!
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Frank said 1524 days ago:
How do you add the ‘unified toolbar’ look to OmniWeb? I’d like to have it, too…Sam said 1524 days ago:
I decided to “update” to Tiger, not sure if that was the best option. Things aren’t quite as smooth as Panther on my Powerbook. Might have to Archive and Install after all.Have you considered using iScroll2 for your scrollwheel?
http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/17240
Not sure if that covers all your needs though.
Neil T. said 1524 days ago:
Most of the comments I’ve heard about Mail in 10.4 is that it’s a downgrade rather than an upgrade. How does Thunderbird stack up against it?David M. said 1524 days ago:
I’m on a 15” TiBook (1GHz, 1GB RAM), and Tiger is screaming along. I did an ‘archive and install’ so if it’s feeling slow, I’d try that. My first impressions are that Spotlight is worth the price of admission alone. I’m using it as an application launcher, too, and I still can’t believe how thorough the indexing is. Dashboard is fun, although it’s where I notice that the Powerbook doesn’t have a CoreImage-capable GPU.Jon Hicks said 1524 days ago:
Frank – you have to open the .nib files in Interface builder (part of xCode), If you have xCode installed, ctrl click Omniweb, go to Contents>Resources>English.lproj and open up WebBrowser.nib. Open up WebBrowser.nib and apply the unified toolbar in the inspector palette.I’m going to release a new version of the Omniweb Theme soon-ish, which will include replacement .nib files for windows like the downloads manager.
Sam -yeah, I’m really looking for a non-trackpad solution, but thanks.
Jon Hicks said 1524 days ago:
Neil T – I think it depends on your criteria. Apart from the awful toolbar buttons, I think its an upgrade, and definitely prefer it to Thunderbird.Junap said 1524 days ago:
I’d love to know how mail 2 stacks up against thunderbird too. I switched from TB to Mail1 about 3 months ago for a trial run, and while it’s ‘ok’ I do miss some of TB’s features and speed. I was hoping mail2 would resolve that for me, as I like having an OS-level address book, which TB can’t provide.David Appleyard said 1524 days ago:
If you want to lose those nasty Mail buttons, try this:http://otierney.net/cagefighter/
It works great for me :) – And I’d disagree with Mail in Tiger being a downgrade. It’s much faster, and the integration with spotlight is priceless!
Junap said 1524 days ago:
and why does everyone else have Tiger already when Amazon haven’t even shipped my copy yet? grrr…Tore Mogensen said 1524 days ago:
I was planning to upgrade to Tiger tonight, but being a Mac n00b, I have a question.I origally planned backup all my important stuff to my iPod and doing a clean install (which seems to be the only to do thing on a PC), but you guys all talk about “archive and install”. During my first three months with my owerbook I’ve tried a lot of apps, settings, etc. that I later ditched again, so will an “archive and install” be sufficient and will I be able to get my data from Panther to Tiger afterwards?
Jon Hicks said 1524 days ago:
Tore – in your situation do an archive and install. It will leave your home folder and settings untouched, put your current system files into another folder on your HD, and do a clean install of the operating system. Its the best of both worlds. When you boot up from the CD, choose archive and install by clicking ‘options’.http://www.macworld.com/2005/04/features/tigerinstallation/index.php
You should still do a complete backup first though! ;o)
Simon said 1524 days ago:
I’m quite happy with Mail 2 right now, but it’s a bit slow compare to the version 1, on my dual G4 1.25Ghz..Even I cannot import my email database :( (from Mail 1 or Entourage) I don’t get it…
Melvin Rivera said 1524 days ago:
Mail’s new toolbar icons. What were Apple thinking?i couldn’t agree more. it was probably designed by the same guy who did the dashboard calculator. ;-)
elsmoko said 1524 days ago:
Safari looks so much better with the Unified Toolbar look. At last, I can use Safari as my primary browser again. Thank you Apple.John Athayde said 1524 days ago:
I did a complete archive and install myself over the weekend. I’ve found no serious problems except with Palm and PGP so far. I’ve yet to try the PGP 9 beta that’s out yet, even though I’ve downloaded it and was using the last one in 10.3.9. Sapphire plugins don’t work in Shake, either, but GenArts is supposed to be releasing a patch today (Monday). Other than that, all my apps have been working just great.From a usability front: One thing I do like is how iChat no longer pops to the front application when you receive a new IM. Much appreciated.
Yannick L. said 1524 days ago:
hehe man all this Mac talk is making me want to get one.Micheal said 1524 days ago:
Quartz 2D Exteme … does anyone know why this isn’t enabled as a default option in Tiger (10.4)?If anyone knows, please share the info.
Thanks!
Andrew Fee said 1524 days ago:
I think the reason Quartz 2D Extreme isn’t enabled by default is because progress bars absolutely kill performance when it’s on.I’m guessing they just need a frame limiter or something for them. It’s a shame though, because even though Tiger has really sped things up for me, enabling Quartz 2D Extreme made things even better. I’ve RSS feeds to be a bit sluggish on my system (maxed out 17” PB) when using the two-fingered scrolling, but having it enabled sorted that out completely.
Paul Livingstone said 1524 days ago:
I’m still waiting for Tiger. The UK delivery company (TNT UK) have been sitting on both Tiger and iLife 05 since Friday, claiming only to deliver on business days. Naturally, this is a bank holiday… so I’m going to have to wait till tomorrow.Britain is so draconian. What kind of logistics company doesn’t work on weekends or bank holidays? Why the hell do banks need holidays anyway, and why does the whole fricking country grind to a halt because of them? Grr.
I’ll be doing a ‘clean’ install on my iMac G5 hopefully. I feel that this is the simplest and most effective way to install any operating system.
Sean S said 1524 days ago:
Safari pet peeves:1. The way it loads images
2. Support for favicons has slipped (some appear very ugly)
3. The downloads window now asks if you’re sure you want to download an application. Can this be turned off anywhere?
robert3 said 1524 days ago:
I’ve been singing my praises of to Tiger to my friends, but these are some of my minor issues.I’m not liking the way Safari’s download window works now. Is there no option to turn off the download warnings?
Mail’s new toolbar icons – definitely going to take some time to get used to.
Is it me or does the menu text seem bolder when highlighting it? It’s something that caught my attention when installing.
Andrew Fee said 1524 days ago:
Paul, I agree completely with you, but give Apple a call if you ordered Tiger before the 26th.They said you would have it by Friday, and they’re handing out copies of iLife ‘05 or iWork to everyone that didn’t get theirs on time.
Ben said 1524 days ago:
Hey Jon, heres another awesome feature for the safari rss… how do make the awesome rss screensaver that ships with tiger to use any rss feed that you want….I’ve now got Hicks Design as my screensaver ;)
linkage : http://creativebits.org/node/1365
Aias Cienfuegos said 1524 days ago:
remember when using a browser on a mac made u feel like u were nothing? ahh… choice, camino gets Form Fill and safari rss and steroids, jon if u had a dilemma with omniweb and the choice in browsers how u like it now?!so far i am really diggin tiger but having got used to konfabulator dashboard is not really doing it for me. so if i want to use a widget i have to leave dashboard open all the time? how much does that suck.
Andrew Escobar said 1524 days ago:
I used cage fighter (http://otierney.net/cagefighter/) to get rid of those horrid buttons in mail. They are not the same as Panther and seem to be original work. If only I could get the old style buttons I’d be happy. Still, Mail is a great update.I am sick and tired of Safari asking me if I’m sure I want to download and open an “application.” It happens countless times a day and is very frustrating. Anyone know of a way to stop this? (andrewe /a/ gmail /./ com)
Best thing about tiger for me… I am in love (yes -love) with iChat AV 3.0!
Brutal said 1524 days ago:
Fortunately I’m using Gmail – and since they haven’t implemented IMAP support yet, I don’t have to see Mail.app at all ;)Paul said 1524 days ago:
I can’t begin to explain how much I hate the new mail style – it really suprises me this happened?? Was it a side project for the work-experience guy?Even Cage Fighter isn’t a perfect fix – I want my old (more intuitive) icons back!!!
As to the rest of the OS, it seems light years faster – but that could be because it’s now running on my brand new G5 (sorry, but I just had to mention that!!!)
Paul Livingstone said 1524 days ago:
So, Apple and the logistics company TNT UK have goosed up my pre- order for Tiger. Surprise surprise. I’m still waiting.I note that London based customers recieved a delivery of the OS on saturday, regardless of TNT’s “we only deliver on business days” policy. Typical.
I’ve had so many run in’s with Apple since I started working for the education sector in Scotland. I never really expected them to ship on time, their delivery service is apalling. Boo, Apple. Boo!
Allen said 1523 days ago:
Heres a link to a very, very long and technical article on Tiger. http://arstechnica.com/reviews/os/macosx-10.4.arsThree things that makes Tiger a must-upgrade:
1. better multi-threading support on the kernel level (wee!). No more never-ending beach ball of death, especially with troublesome networks.
2. extended attributes on files and directories. The article explains in-depth on this one.
3. deprecation of QuickDraw. Quicktime is now fantastic. Press the enlarge button while a video in quicktime is running and see the effects. Or shift-minimise and see the video play while it’s sucked in to the dock. Nifty.
In regards to system performance. Factors such as the new launchd daemon, improved kernel (along with kernel version abstraction!), Updated Quartz engine (even without Quartz Extreme) and file indexing with extended attributes should all contribute to the performance one way or another.
For me, I’m a happy camper.
Gustaf Lindqvist said 1523 days ago:
Mail’s new toolbar icons. What were Apple thinking?Hicks, you should check out this: http://www.otierney.net/cagefighter/
It will help you turn Mail.app’s new toolbar buttons off.
Mark said 1523 days ago:
Tiger has been pleasant for me so far (5th day of install). It seems more repsonisive and is definately very nice to use on my 1.25 Ghz Powerbook G4 15”. I had some annoying issues with Panther that Tiger seemed to clean right up. Mail is a bit odd but it works well.uwan said 1523 days ago:
nice site, hehehe…John Blaze said 1522 days ago:
The biggest problem with Tiger is Kernel related. For example, Apple changed the kernel implementation of the Berkeley TCP/IP stack. This has caused a major fuss as VPN applications are fu*ked. Also, of you have a Maxtor One Touch FireWire HD and LiCie… watch out. The kernel has fu*ked them… fixes are on the quick with 10.4.1 coming around May 19th or so…Siobhan Curran said 1522 days ago:
Is it me or does the menu text seem bolder when highlighting it? It’s something that caught my attention when installing.I noticed that too on my laptops. For some reason, light text on a dark background gets artificially emboldened. I used to have the same problem in Panther. I thought it was something to do with the text-smoothing settings, but switching to ‘Thousands of Colours’ rather than ‘Millions’ was the only thing that seemed to work … but not in Tiger. My CRT screen is fine though.
it was probably designed by the same guy who did the dashboard calculator
I think they drafted that guy in from Fisher Price. My First Mail.app™ ;-)
pketh said 1521 days ago:
about mail.app …can’t you just use candybar or something to change the icons like you could in the panther version?
Gustaf Lindqvist said 1521 days ago:
I found a even better site: http://www.buyicons.com/It will help you change Mail.app’s new toolbar to safar icons.
cmoney said 1521 days ago:
I don’t know what everyone’s hang up with Mail is. It’s so much better looking than the old Mail.app and with Spotlight built in, we now have production-strength searching. The only issue I have is the lack of status line anywhere so I can’t tell it’s checking mail, sending mail, etc unless I have the activity window open.As for Tiger, I did a regular upgrade instead of archive and install on two different machines and both went fine. Tiger seems to be a bit of a memory hog though so my Powerbook will soon be maxed out at 1.25GB instead. Even then, my G5 with 1.5GB finds itself swapping out a lot more.
I love the built-in dictionary and the integration into various apps. I wish Dashboard were simply on the desktop instead and bringing it forward could be as easy as hitting F11 and moving all the windows out of the way. That way people who wanted widgets on the dashboard could have their way as well.
Overall, not a bad upgrade, hopefully the timing is right that 10.5 will come out at the same time as Longhorn! Maybe that’s been their plan all along?
clint said 1521 days ago:
gotta agree with the mail comments, those icons/buttons are an eyesore…but then again mail has always been sort of an outcast visually. I was glad they didnt give it the brushed metal bit, but its never really been integrated into the flow it seems….just wish there was a way to use a non metal theme built into tiger, looks like shapeshifter is still gonna be a priority….milk.. mmmm…..hope that gets a tiger facelift soon!
Clark said 1521 days ago:
I like mail’s new icons. A bit on the muddy side but otherwise fine.jared said 1521 days ago:
i think im in love with tiger thus far… i mean.. it’s just more things to customize right?i’ve already started. (i happen to deteste the brushed metal look, so i had to take it out of the widget bar):
on side note, the widgets are a little scary, since they really have access to your entire system, and it’s pretty out of your control. for example, the television widget seen below drains 92% of my CPU.. no way to know whether this is intentionally maliscious, or just an accidental leak. but either way, it’s a little scarey.
you continue to be amazing though jon.
xo jared
Paul D said 1521 days ago:
So far, I’m really enjoying tiger. The speed boost itself is a nice bonus. I’m actually using Dashboard for one or two things (I didn’t think I would), Smart Folders are useful (if a bit rough still), and Automator puts remarkable cross-application operations into the hands of non-programmers.I dislike Mail’s bubble icons, but the program itself is better and faster. I think superior junk filtering, search, and smart mailboxes put it ahead of Thunderbird, not to mention scripting and Spotlight integration.
I haven’t had any problems with CPU drains from widgets. All properly designed widgets are supposed to pause while hidden anyway.
Tiger also eliminated a few pesky Panther bugs, so I’m pretty content.
Junap said 1520 days ago:
Finally got my copy! Archive and install didn’t quite seem as clean as it could be for me – a few lockups and crashes with iPhoto, Dreamweaver, Photoshop would only open images from the menu command etc.Went for an Erase instead and things are running nicely now – though it’s a pain restoring my iTunes library from DVDs when it’s all sitting right there on my iPod and I can’t just sync it :(
brian w said 1519 days ago:
“When opening a new safari window, the focus used to go straight to the location bar, not any more. Grrr!”—This still works fine for me in Tiger with Safari 2.0; are you running a plugin of some kind that might be interfering?“Word hinting that I used every day in Safari (alt-escape after typing a few letters) is no more. Does anyone know the new key combo?”—This also works fine for me in Tiger; option-escape brings up the popup selection box in form fields as well as the location bar.
François said 1519 days ago:
“Mail’s new toolbar icons. What were Apple thinking?”I thought exactly the same when I first saw the new Mail screen captures. How did Apple manage to let this through? Don’t they have at least ONE employee who pointed to these new icons and complained about how utterly ugly they are?
Paul D said 1519 days ago:
Option-escape activates word-hinting for me in Safari. Escape does it in other Cocoa apps.JaX said 1519 days ago:
I love your vector trees! Do this for all the sections on your site, just with different colors =DAnthony said 1518 days ago:
The upgrade is definitely worth it. There were certainly a few kinks to work out in getting it customized and running the way I liked under Panther—especially with Mail 2—but man, it rocks.And, as you noted Jon, Newsfire even works great now! Have ditched NetNewsWire for the moment and switched back. Having the option to view by most recently updated feeds in Newsfire is wonderful, and its podcast integration is well done.
Also just downloaded a the hack Jon had on PimpMySafari to convert Safari’s theme to a Tiger version, which is MUCH better. Still don’t understand why QuickTime, iCal and Safari kept the brushed metal look when other apps moved away from it. Oh, well.
Am consulting with Microsoft at their Silicon Valley Campus right now—am sure folks there will be interested in seeing the update. Heh.
Jon Hicks said 1517 days ago:
Sorry – not sure what was causing it, but ignore the last 2 points on my negative listAt least Saft now cures the download warning annoyance!
Jonathan said 1516 days ago:
“Word hinting that I used every day in Safari (alt-escape after typing a few letters) is no more. Does anyone know the new key combo?”Try F5. Works here, but so does alt-escape, so maybe it won’t help you.
Josh said 1516 days ago:
Hey Hicks,Just wanted to drop a comment saying I luv the new header image! The illustration looks better to me than the real thing. Good work!
Jon Hicks said 1516 days ago:
Thanks Josh – thats very kind of you! :DDave Simon said 1515 days ago:
Tiger seems faster on my G4 – 350 – could be an illusion. There are some odd things going on, however, like my keychain sometimes forgetting passwords and Adium and Firefox have both had episodes where what I type doesn’t show up, but it is entered – if I send a message, it shows once it is sent but not in the entry box.Safari RSS is pretty good and the new dialogs in Safari are much nicer. I hated to popup windows.
But you are all right, the new Mail is UGLY. Thanks to the cagefighter, it’s fixed!
Mike S. said 1514 days ago:
One thing that hasn’t been mentioned is the crash dialogue box in Tiger. It used to include buttons that let you send a report to Apple or cancel.In Tiger, that has been changed to include a new, much needed button — Reopen — which lets you reopen the crashed app (obviously).
By far one of the best features that nobody has mentioned.
Ian said 1514 days ago:
Jon and everyone else who dislikes the Mail toolbar.I just reverted back to the original Panther toolbar and works great.
You can find the information here.
Ian said 1514 days ago:
Link got stripped I see.http://forums.applenova.com/showthread.php?t=6548&page=2&pp=30
Andrew Escobar said 1508 days ago:
Hey Ian!Those are my files on AppleNova! :) cool
You are free to go to AppleNova and check out that hack, but I’ve made critical changes to completely stop mail from crashing when composing emails.
If you’d like to “revert” back to a Panther-like toolbar (full size beautiful icons) download my Mail Stamps utility.
Visit andrewescobar.com/mailstamps for more info.
Andrew Escobar said 1508 days ago:
“I used cage fighter [...] They are not the same as Panther and seem to be original work. If only I could get the old style buttons I’d be happy.I am sick and tired of Safari asking me if I’m sure I want to download and open an “application.” It happens countless times a day and is very frustrating. Anyone know of a way to stop this? ”
... funny how I provide my own solutions :) ...
1. My app Mail Stamps as noted above gives me the “old style” panther icons in Mail: http://andrewescobar.com/mailstamps
2. Stop that annoying questioning “Are you sure you want to downloaded?” in Safar: http://www.ocdev.com/