Geek News: OS X Tiger

Now that we've got that out of the way let's get to it. The latest version of Mac OS X - Tiger was announced April 12th and will be available for purchase on April 29th.

"Boasting over 200 new features and innovations including Spotlight™, a revolutionary desktop search technology that lets users instantly find anything stored on their Mac®, including documents, emails, contacts and images; and Dashboard, a new way to instantly access important information like weather forecasts and stock quotes, using a dazzling new class of applications called widgets."

Apple Press Release - 4/12/05

Spotlight works a lot like the finder in iTunes that allows you to instantly find any song in your library by searching for name, artist or album. The neat thing with Spotlight is that it is built in to the core of the operating system, meaning that any time a file is added or modified the information in that file is indexed, allowing you to find anything on your computer instantly. Spotlight indexes e-mail, contacts, calendar events, Microsoft Office documents, photos, music and quick time movies. This may not seem like a big deal to you but, just try using the "search" tool in windows and see how slowly files are brought up. Another cool feature in Spotlight are Smart Folders. These are custom searches that you create. Lets say you're working on a presentation for a client meeting and you want to include pictures from your last visit to their office, reference a memo you sent them and address all the issues they raised in an email from last month. Normally, to do this you'd need to do a lot of clicking and searching, now with Spotlight you can run a search by client name, client contact name, a word that was used in an email by that client. Spotlight offers organization and search capabilities unlike any other product on the market. Learn more about Spotlight. If you're like me, (which might be a scary thing for some of you to realize), you probably are working along and a sudden thought crosses your mind - "geez, I wonder what the weather is going to be like this evening" or "Is Obliviate a real word? - I think I'll look it up in a dictionary." Normally this means that I start up Firefox jump online and visit weather.com or dictionary.com, enter the search terms and wait a few seconds to get the info I want. With Dashboard, in a single click, I have this info at my fingertips. Dashboard works like another layer of your desktop, when you want info that it provides you can with a single click show your Dashboard layer and hide everything else. Dashboard uses Widgets, mini-applications that provide you with fast access to the information you need. Tiger ships with 14 Widgets: Stickies - Digital sticky notes; Stocks - a stock ticker; Weather - providing weather conditions around the world and a six day forecast; Phone Book; Dictionary; World Clock; Calculator; an iTunes Controller, Calendar; Flight Tracker; translator; Address Book, a Unit Converter; and a Tile Game. Because widgets are build on web standards like HTML, CSS and JavaScript you'll be sure to see many people putting out their own widgets. The last improvement I'll cover is with iChat AV, the Mac's instant messenger program. With the inclusion of H.264 Video compression as part of the operating system, iChat offers clear video conferencing with up to 4 people via a broadband connection to the internet. Plus you can audio conference with up to 10 participants. Think of the money you could save on long distance by chatting this way. Of course, iChat offers a great text based chat application that is easy to use and navigate, compatible with many different programs like AOL Instant Messenger and Jabber. To take full advantage of iChat AV's power you need to use a good Firewire camera and a microphone - Apple offers iSight for $149, but if you have a digital video camera, you can use that too. If you're going the iSight route, you'll want to check out DV Forge's SightFlex. They offer some great accessories for anything Mac related. All together Mac OS X Tiger offers some pretty cool stuff to make your life much easier (at least the parts of your life that you're sitting in front of a computer.) So why am I so, excited about this? Because in a few short weeks I'll be the proud owner of a shiny, new, 15-inch Apple Powerbook and I'm all geeked out while I wait. I made the switch in my mind years ago, but I'll finally be able to do it thanks in part to Gitgan and the work that it has provided me. We've got some big changes coming up soon at Gitgan and you'll definitely want to keep checking the blog to see more on that in the coming weeks. If you've stuck with me through this whole post, thanks!