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Happy birthday, Tiger
Reader JP Dane-Castro wrote in to remind us that it was exactly one year ago today that Apple starting shipping the world's most advanced operating system, Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger.Take stroll down memory lane by reading Apple's press release. Now, when is Leopard shipping?
Image Tricks 2.0
I'm beginning to think that today is some kind of image editing holiday, as Image Tricks, the freeware image editor that leverages Mac OS X Tiger's Core Image features, has been updated to version 2. New features include 'generators' - the ability to "randomly and manually generate images with mathematical algorithms," a fit-to-size option, PDF export, file size adjustment when exporting to JPEG, and other minor fixes and improvements.Image Tricks has also been divided into Free and Pro versions. For a mere $9.95 the Pro version will give you six more generators than the free version, and BeLight software has stated they have more generators they can add from their todo list if enough customers show interest.Check out BeLight Software's Image Tricks product page for more details on its abilities, and the downloads page for a copy of the upgradable Free version.
Pocketlight brings (some) Spotlight to Panther
If you're still using Panther for one reason or another but drool when you hear the word 'Spotlight,' an app by the name of Pocketlight can bring a little bit of Tiger to your Panther. Pocketlight isn't nearly as all-encompassing as Spotlight, but it can search Mail.app mailboxes, iCal events, Address Book contacts and files in a specified folder. In an odd turn of events, Pocketlight is only available for Mac OS X 10.3; not 10.4.Pocketlight is free, but the author states that it isn't going to be updated or enhanced from here on out, so grab it while you can.[via Hawk Wings]
OS X vs XP on a MacBook Pro
The good folks at Bare Feats love them some benchmarking, so I am surprised it took them so long to compare the performance of Windows XP versus OS X on a MacBook Pro. They took a look at how applications that are available on both OSs (and are Universal) ran on the MacBook Pro.The results? XP wins when running games (for the most part) while everything else goes to OS X. They did compare some apps running in Rosetta to the same apps running natively on XP, and XP blew OS X out of the water, as shown by the graph above (of course OS X running on a PowerPC would also blow Rosetta out of the water).[via Paul Thurrot's Internet Nexus]
Migrating to a MacBook Pro
Enterprise Mac's Tom Yager posted about his recent transition from a PowerBook to a MacBook Pro using Tiger's integrated Setup Assistant. Using Setup Assistant one can easily transfer old data, settings, applications and more to a new Mac over firewire. His migration took a little under two hours to transfer 60GB of data rather painlessly.What I found insightful with Tom Yager's post is that with Rosetta one can still use most old PowerPC applications without having to search for upgrades. This makes switching (or cloning) to a new machine a hopefully trivial experience. Have you had a breezy time of upgrading your Mac using Tiger's built in Setup Assistant? We're all ears.
Learn to love Apple's Calendar widget
When Apple first released Mac OS 10.4.4 with its brand new Dashboard widgets back in January, more than a few of you gave the updated calendar widget a big thumbs down. I don't mind it, but it seems I'm in the minority. This post is for you nay-sayers.Macworld is describing some great tips for quickly navigating the calendar widget. You can use your right and left arrow keys to jump from month to month, and the up and down arrows to move from year to year. To quickly return to the current month, just hit the home key (or fn plus left arrow on a laptop). Now don't you love calendar just a little bit more?
Found Footage: Tiger Quick Tour
We're all at some point subject to the typical "Yes, OS X is better. Why? Well, a lot of reasons, really..." scenarios, where we could sit there and ramble on for hours about OS X's undeniably fantastic features, its simplicity, and the overall beauty of the operating system itself. But let's face it: What good is the Talk without some substance and visual examples to back it up?For that, we have this great Tiger Quick Tour video, where OS X's Senior Director of Product Marketing, Ken Bereskin, takes you through Tiger feature by feature, from Spotlight to Dashboard to iChat, Safari, Mail, etc.So next time you're in one of those "Prove it" situations, just point the lambasting PC user in the direction of this well-done, informative video. Who knows, it may just make a switcher out of him.[via MacDailyNews]
TUAW Tip: Quit applications using Application Switcher
One of the key combinations that I use most on my Mac is Command Tab, which brings up the Application Switcher, as seen above (in most versions of OS X that is). This allows me to switch from one application to another just by hitting the Tab key to cycle through the running applications.You're saying, 'We know this already, Scott, what a lame tip!' Well, did you know that you can quit an application without leaving the Application Switcher? It is true. Simply hit Command Tab to bring up the Application Switcher and Tab to the application you want to quit. Once it is highlighted, without lifting your finger off of the Command button, hit the Q. Poof! The application quits (assuming that there are no unsaved documents currently in the application).
Comic Life 1.2 review
The good folks over at Nonstopmac (where they talk about Macs nonstop I would assume) have taken a close look at Comic Life, and they like what they see.Give the app 9 out of 10 nonstopmacs, I would say you should check out Comic Life (and plus we have written about it about a million times).
Ten Things to hate about OS X
I would have a hard time coming up with ten things that I hate about OS X, though hate is a very strong word. Owen Linzmayer has no such trouble it seems and has penned an article called, 'Ten Things I hate about OS X.' On his list is dock icon bouncing for a long time, no third party updates in the software updates (via the Apple menu), and he's no fan of the spinning beachball of death.What is on your list of things you hate about OS X?
YAMTT - Yet another Mail theme for Thunderbird
Hawk Wings has tracked down another Mail theme for Thunderbird by the name of TigerMail. While I know we've blogged one before, I can't track it down. From what I remember though, TigerMail is a much more accurate reproduction of the Tiger Mail look and feel. But if Panther Mail's look and feel is more your style, CrossOver might just be the Thunderbird theme for you.
Top 8 reasons Mail.app sucks
It looks like we here at TUAW are not the only ones who aren't thrilled with Mail.app (I, personally, use Entourage but that's a different post entirely).%uFFFD Someone has posted their top 8 reasons Mail.app sucks. They probably could have pushed their way to 10, but top 10 lists are so 'played,' as the kids say.Flaky IMAP support seems to be the biggest complaint though I have yet to use an email client that does IMAP perfectly.
Make KDE look like OS X
Let's face it, not everyone gets to use OS X. It is sad, but it is true. In fact some people have to use Linux running KDE (K Desktop Environment) of all things!If you are one of those sad souls a tutorial has been put together that makes your computing environment look kinda like OS X, so that you can at least pretend that you are using some cool Mac when in fact you're using some no name beige box that your little brother built for you (not that there is anything wrong with that).
Is Spotlight spying on you?
I'm not sure what the Mac Observer's John Kheit has on his hard drives, and I am not sure I want to know. He seems a little too worried about the metadata that built in OS search tools like Spotlight, or its Windows counterpart, are storing as a matter of course.All kidding aside, the fact that many more files are now storing metadata is something every computer user should be aware of to avoid many issues. Give John's column a read and then become paranoid about what your files know about you.
Apple Matters Gems of 2005
Chris Howard has complied a list of Mac gems that were 'unearthed' in 2005 and some of his choices might surprise you. He starts off with Pages, but I actually forgot was introduced this year (though I'm not very bright so that isn't a big shock).He goes on to list applications both big and small that have impacted his Mac usage (and it seems he's an Ecto guy).What gems did you find for your Mac this year?
Apple offers Podcasting server
Apple is positioning OS X Tiger as a 'podcasting server' for education markets. Basically they are touting the built in blog software that comes with Tiger as transforming a Xserve into a 'podcasting server.' While technically this is correct, given this reasoning any server that has blogging software installed on it (i.e. Wordpress or Movable Type but in OS X's case it is Blojsom) is transformed from a mundane server into a podcasting server.Apple does mention that this 'podcasting server' is powered by Blojsom, but the whole thing smacks of trying to pull a fast one on someone who may not know that any old server can do what Apple is claiming is unique to Tiger.[Via Micro Persuasion]
Essential Tiger Server Admin book canceled
If you just recieved an Xserve running Tiger and you were hoping that O'Reilly would be releasing an updated version of their Panther server admin book, you're out of luck. Faced with the choice between canceling the book or making sacrifices for production time, the author decided not to go forward with the project.O'Reilly doesn't think there is a demand for an OS X server admin book, if you want one let them know!
20 Tiger Secrets
Macworld is running a seriously sweet two-page collection of 20 tips - most, if not all, of which I haven't seen anywhere else yet. head over to Tiger Secrets: System Settings to learn such gems as how to get the System Preferences' toolbar back, customize Tiger's PDF print services, network with firewire and more.I think these tips are great examples of some of Mac OSX's most potent yet ambiguous allure - all the little things that make it such a fantastic experience. Definitely an enlightening read, so go check it out.
Cocktail 3.6.5 (Tiger edition) available
Today Cocktail released version 3.6.5 of the Tiger edition of its OS X utility (is it me or are these folks fast and furious with their updates?). Cocktail puts a pretty face on all sorts of useful disk utilities, system tools, network tools and a lot more. Version 3.6.5 is built on a universal binary to run natively on PowerPCs and MacTels. It's a must-have for many Mac OS X geeks.This is a free update for registered users. A single user license is $14.95US. Cocktail 3.6.5 requires Mac OS X or Mac OS X Server 10.4 (or later). Cocktail 3.5.4 (Panther Edition) requires Mac OS X or Mac OS X Server 10.3 - 10.3.9, and Cocktail 3.5 (Jaguar Edition) requires Mac OS X or Mac OS X Server 10.2 - 10.2.8. [Via Resexcellence]
Gmail Notifier for OS X
It looks like Google is showing us Mac users some love after the whole GTalk client thing. Gmail Notifier, which was Windows only, is now available for Mac OS 10.3.8 and later (including Tiger).What is Gmail Notifier? Much like Gcount, GmailStatus, and Gpeek, it is a simple program that lets you know when you have email in your Gmail account by displaying the icon on the left in your menu bar.Thanks for the tip, Ferjan.More exciting pictures from the install after the jump.
