TIGER
Latest
Apple emails Boot Camp users
I used the original Boot Camp beta last year just to see it work. I applied the subsequent updates, but haven't tinkered with it since.Today, I received an email from Apple that reads, in part:"...With the introduction of Leopard, the Boot Camp Beta program has ended. The Boot Camp Beta software will expire on December 31, and Apple won't offer further updates of Boot Camp Beta for Mac OS X Tiger."There's your warning, Tiger users. The Boot Camp beta expires December 31st. Upgrade to Leopard or run unsupported. You don't want that, of course. Windows needs all the support it can get.Thanks to everyone who sent this in.
OS X Tiger 10.4.11 now available
Fire up Software Update, Tiger users, Apple has just released 10.4.11 onto an eager world. This point update has a host of feature updates including: Safari 3 for Tiger (no longer in Beta) Additional RAW support for some camera models Support for Microsoft Presenter Mouse 8000 (I am sure this makes someone out there very happy) Improved iPhone syncing with Yahoo! And a host of other things that Apple has outlined in a handy table. I wish all Apple updates had such clear release notes. A blogger can dream, can't he?
iMac Software Update 1.2.1 (Tiger) is available
Here's a rather specific update for iMac users running Tiger (specifically, 20-inch and 24-inch aluminum iMacs with 2.0, 2.4, or 2.8 GHz processors). According to Apple, Update 1.2.1 "...improves the performance and reliability of graphics-intensive games and applications and fixes an issue that some customers encountered when installing Mac OS X Leopard after applying iMac Software Update 1.2." Check software update if you meet the criteria. Let us know if you have any problems.
Widget Watch: DockDoctor lets you choose your Dock's dimensions
First we tweaked the app indicators, and then we tweaked the color, and now we've finally come all the way back in our Time Machine (oh yes, pun very intended) to two weeks ago. Innermind Media, the folks behind WidgetWizard, are probably a little angry at Leopard, considering all that Web Clip functionality, and so they've released a free widget called DockDoctor that will subtract a dimension from your Dock with the click of a button (and bring it back with another click, which is probably just as valuable).I know it's not for everybody. I know some of you love the new Dock, or at least have gotten so used to it that it doesn't bother you. But this is OS X we're talking about, and so you should have the right to make your Dock look the way you want it to.
Pirates Online goes live on Mac
I heard a few times that Disney's new casual MMO Pirates of the Caribbean Online went live yesterday, but MacWorld reminds us that it's out for both Windows and Mac. Metacritic doesn't have too many reviews up as of this writing, but our friends at Joystiq found it to be a fun, easy to get into MMO when they played an earlier build of it, so if you're craving some pick-up-and-play pirate MMO gaming, it might be just what yer lookin' for, matey.Unless you're running Leopard, that is. Currently, the game's system requirements only list Tiger, and while MacWorld doesn't know whether Leopard is supported or not, they're not alone-- I called Laurie at "Pirates Online Customer Support" (boy, Disney sure poured a lot of money into this one), and while she was very helpful, she didn't know whether Leopard was supported or not. I threw a note into their system to try and check, and if I hear back, I'll update the post.Of course, you could just try downloading and running it yourself in Leopard, but then again this is only one day after Halloween, and running unsupported Disney software on your Mac is pretty scary -- might be a little much along with everything else.Update: Never mind-- our illustrious commenters say it runs just fine in Leopard. Keelhaul away!
Apple sells 2 million copies of Leopard since Friday
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that people seem to like Leopard. Apple today announced that they have sold two million copies of Leopard since it went on sale on this past Friday. That's an insane amount of sales (the number includes copies sold at retail outlets, online, with new Macs, and via customers using the Up-to-Date program).For comparison let's look at how Tiger did. Tiger went on sale on April 30th, 2005 at 6pm. Apple then announced 6 weeks later that the 2 millionth copy had just been sold. 5 weeks to sell 2 million copies isn't bad, but taking 5 days to do the same is incredible.Leopard is a hit.
POLL: Cheetah, Puma, Jaguar, Panther, Tiger, Leopard, and...
Oh my. There's nothing we blog monkeys like more than casting our minds forward to the next greatest thing. Now that Leopard is about here and soon to be common place, what's next? What's Apple's codename for Mac OS X 10.6? You know it's already in development. So what do you TUAW readers think the next great codename will be? Let us know in this unspun poll.
Mac 101: Enlarging Finder Previews
Leopard may be just around the corner but we're not ignoring you readers who aren't ready to upgrade. Here's a quick tip for those of you who plan on staying in Tiger land. Sometimes you want to view pictures by previewing them directly in Finder. To automatically view the largest possible preview, just double-tap the column resizing handle at the bottom right of the preview image. This automatically maximizes the picture without affecting your other columns.
Poll: OS war, 2007
2007 is definitely shaping up to be the year of the desktop OS: between Vista's much ballyhooed and better-late-than-never launch (and subsequently pending SP1 release), Apple's behind-schedule but super hyped release of Mac OS X Leopard, and unlikely upstart and fan fave Ubuntu's forthcoming Gutsy Gibbon launch. So, what's it gonna be? %Poll-4300%
TGS07: Finally, someone explains the tiger
As happy as we are to hear gameplay impressions of No More Heroes, all of which cast the game as a straightforward combo-based action game in the vein of God Hand (YES) with limited, and sensible, waggle, none of the hands-on posts have satisfied our curiosity regarding the game's most mysterious feature: the tiger.We've stared at screenshots and video, hoping to glean from context what is going on with the little tiger icon in the upper right corner, to no avail. We cheered as, during one TGS demo video, the booth attendant seemed to point in that direction, but nothing ever came of that, either. That's why Spencer Yip is awesome. He asked point-blank what the deal with the freaking tiger was, and brought back the answer to the expectant masses like Moses coming down with a very specific set of commandments that don't actually tell anyone to do anything. It turns out that it's a meter for a "super mode" transformation that has yet to be implemented.We can relax now.
Secure your Mac: Do as the Federales do
More security notes from the underground TUAW vault. Up until Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, you could see your tax dollars at work very readily, as the National Security Agency published OS-specific guidelines for hardening your OS X installation -- mostly commonsense items like "use strong passwords" and "turn off unneeded services," but it was nice to have a document with the imprimatur of the US Government's most professional paranoids that you could show to your spouse/boss/Russian friends and say "See, it's secured!"As of Tiger, however, the NSA has handed over the security stick to Apple and endorsed the vendor guides to securing both OS X and OS X Server as "[tracking] closely with the security level historically represented in the NSA guidelines." You can download the Server version of the PDF from the NSA's website, but oddly the client version seems to hang on download (spies! saboteurs!), so you can grab that one directly from the mothership. Between the two guides you have over 500 pages of security reading, so save the whole weekend.Oops, thanks Derek!
No More Heroes site updates
The No More Heroes site continues to leak bits and pieces of information -- just enough to keep us drooling -- and this latest update covers some of the ground already tread by this morning's video. Our hero Travis and his beam katana are the center of the new information, which is all about combat and the tools of the assassination trade. The beam katana can be used to deflect bullets (where've we seen that before?), but it's not a never-ending source of bloody awesome; like any gadget, it can run out of juice. Luckily, there are battery packs scattered around, but in the event you can't find one and find yourself in need of a good cutting edge, you can always get your waggle-charge on. Charging the katana is as simple as jerking the Wiimote up and down. The updates also show off something we've already seen -- Travis's penchant for wrestling moves -- and a shot of a fight brought to a grappling standstill. The image isn't terribly clear, but it seems that with a turn of the Wii remote, it's possible to break free and beat your opponent down. We couldn't possibly want this game more, but at this point, all we really want is to find out just what's up with the tiger indicator on the upper part of the screen. In videos, it can be seen wiggling around, and in these screens, it looks like he takes a little tiger-journey across the top of the image, but for what reason? We can wait for the game, but we must know the secret of the tiger! Perhaps he's like a pet, feeding on the blood of your enemies. It's either that, or he's linked to all the tiger rugs we keep seeing in the game.
OS X 10.4.10 now available
Fire up your Software Updaters, campers! Apple has just unleashed Mac OS X 10.4.10 for PPC/Intel Macs. Find out more about this update here (and the security implications here). Improved in 10.4.10 is: More RAW support for various cameras Improved decimal number rounding in certain applications Improves compatibility of Mathematica 6 with 64-bit Macs And a few other things. Sound off in the comments if you encounter any issues with this update. Oh, and if you are updating from something lower than OS X 10.4.9 download the Combo updater.Thanks to everyone who sent this in.
Cocktail 3.8 brings over 100 new features
Cocktail 3.8, the Tiger Edition of the indispensable Mac utility, brings with it a host of new features. Not least amongst these new features is a gorgeous UI overhaul, which makes Cocktail not only useful but a pleasure to use. For the uninitiated Cocktail is a small app that lets you control a number of things about your Mac, which normally are beyond the powers of the everyday Mac user.Beyond the new look, Cocktail 3.8 boasts over 100 new features, including: Fine grained control of Spotlight (you can enable/disable Spotlight for disks) Lots of new logging New ways to tweak the UI of a variety of Apple apps (including Safari, Mail, and Finder) A single user license costs $14.95, though there is a free trial available.Thanks, nevrozel.
Mii Spotlight: Take a look inside
It's Saturday, and obviously, that means another week in the Mii Spotlight! This week, however, we offer something a little different than our usual fare. Or, depending on how you look at things, it could be seen as exactly the same as our usual fare. Decide for yourself!
Breakfast Topic: Knowing when to quit
How do you know when you've had enough of Azeroth and it's time to go do something else? Do you play for a certain amount of time every day? Do you PvP until your eyeballs get all red and puffy? Do you grind and grind until you at last have something to show for your effort?Personally, on most days, I have lots to do, and commitments force me to say "I gotta go!" But on days when I have the whole day off and nothing specific planned, sometimes I feel like I can just let loose and play as long as I want. Other times I feel the need to limit myself to a certain amount of time with WoWTimer. I try to listen to that little intuitive meter inside my body that is always measuring whether or not whatever I'm doing is still a good use of my time. Seriously, when I'm spending too much time on WoW (or on anything really), I get this feeling in my chest and in my back, something like a tensing of muscles that tells me I should be more productive. It's different from sitting in a chair too long... it's more psychological, perhaps.How do you prevent yourself from getting carried away?
PC World 100 Best of 2007 honors Parallels, Tiger
When a leading computer publication has a revolving-door editor-in-chief hiring policy, it can make other weird editorial decisions look sane and prudent by comparison. Exhibit A: the annual PC World "100 Best" feature, which presents the 100 best products of 2007... online in May, and in print for July. Not even half the year has gone by, but the farsighted crew at PCW has already figured out the best of the bunch! Might as well take the rest of the year off, then...The real reasons that the 100 Best comes out mid-year (covering the end of 2006 and the start of 2007) are detailed in a post from once-and-current big kahuna Harry McCracken. It comes down to legacy scheduling of the product awards around the June date of the no-longer-extant PC Expo trade show. That's a relief; I was worried that we were changing the calendar again.Anyway, more to the point: the list is top-heavy with some big Mac products, including TUAW darling Parallels Desktop at #6 (the top-ranked application on any desktop platform, not counting #1 Google Apps Premier Edition), Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger at #9 and AppleTV at #11. The Intel Core 2 Duo processor that powers new Macs is a top pick at #2. Noticeably absent from the top 100 was the latest hotness from Redmond, which may correlate with PC World's comment on the Tiger ranking: "Name a good Vista feature that goes beyond what's in Tiger. Yeah, we can't either." Brrrrr.
10.4.10 on the way
Reports from AppleInsider and other sources indicate that the next Tiger update, ten-four-ten (sounds like a CB radio code) will be seeding to developers as early as next week. As Erica noted back in March, there's been some question of the exact naming for this update (10.4.9a? 10.4.9 SP1?) and it seems like 10.4.10 is the plan.With Leopard's ship date in the autumn, some final patches to the current big cat are certainly in order. At my office we're still waiting for a fix on longstanding issues with WPA2 authentication/Proxim wireless access points on the MacBooks/MBPs... perhaps this update will be the one that clears those nagging problems.
Ten things we still love about Tiger
Whether you're disappointed or pleased at the four-month delay for Leopard, there's no question that the progress, or lack thereof, on Apple's next OS release has been big news. With all the focus on 10.5, it seems to me that we've lost sight of all the wonderful things about our current main squeeze... so here goes: the top ten things we still love about Tiger. #10: Still runs on the vintage hardware. Officially, Tiger installs on any Mac with built-in FireWire; unofficially, any machine with a G3 processor and adequate RAM will rock the casbah. I've seen happy campers on original Bondi iMacs and USB-only iBooks with Tiger, although most folks on low-end gear will need to disable Spotlight to get adequate performance. #9: iChat AV multiparty video. Sure, it requires hefty hardware, and the connection troubleshooting is more finicky than Morris the Cat. It's all worth it for that moment when the entire family (or the far-flung workgroup) pop up on the same screen in glorious H.264 -- and for a lot cheaper than previous videoconferencing options.
Today's most failure-prone video: Console duds
In today's video pick, GameTrailers counts down its list of the top ten console failures, including the Jaguar, Virtual Boy, and 3DO. We were tortured by watching footage of these console failures, yet we couldn't turn away, wishing that the hardware had succeeded while laughing about all the obvious reasons the systems bombed. The list covers the systems we expected; would you have added others?See the video after the break.
