technology Tiger

Posted May 1, 2005 • Comments Off on Tiger

I got my copy of Mac OS X 10.4, Tiger, from Amazon on Friday morning. I took my computer to work and upgraded it in stolen moments while I worked all day (and well into the night, I might add). So I had it installed hours before it was “released” at 6 pm.

I wrote down new things as I noticed them (some are major; some are very subtle), intending to blog about it at length, but I left the notepad at work. Since then, except for the many hours I spent on Saturday and Sunday preparing and cooking for and attending and sleeping off David’s surprise party, I’ve been using Tiger without a hitch. The only thing I had that isn’t compatible is one little haxie (DockDetox) that never did what I wanted it for anyway.

There’s lots of new stuff in Tiger, but the two big things are Spotlight and Dashboard.

Dashboard rocks my socks. It’s like Konfabulator but so, so much better. It’s only there when you need it—no clutter!—but does wonderful things. I like it a LOT.

Spotlight did not in fact rock my socks, or any other part of my wardrobe, UNTIL I went through iPhoto and laboriously added keywords and comments to all my photos. From “Caitlin” and “Maryland” on photos from Jackie’s house to “birds” and “grass” and “water” on photos of Canada geese in a park on the Alexandria waterfront. I tagged artistic photos with their main colors, photos where I was trying techniques with the names of the techniques, and so on.

This was something I’d been meaning to do anyway, and I did it as an experiment to see how quickly and thoroughly Spotlight indexed the entries. It did it INSTANTLY—I didn’t have to re-index or anything. As soon as I typed in the comments in iPhoto, Spotlight knew they were there.

Now, when I type “purple” into Spotlight, I get hits on 51 images, all of which are purple. From the album cover of Prince’s “Purple Rain” to photos I’ve taken of irises to the purple abstract desktop pictures that came with the computer. I didn’t realize I needed this, but woo doggies I did. Images are just the start; I also of course get all the songs in iTunes that are FROM “Purple Rain” (as well as “Interstate Love Song” by STP, which is on the album “Purple”).

That’s only the tip of the iceberg, though. If I type “Potter,” I get not only every Harry Potter site I’ve bookmarked, but the Potter books and DVDs I’ve entered into Delicious Library, the Harry Potter images I have lying around, the release dates of Half-Blood Prince and the Goblet of Fire movie in iCal, all the Harry Potter icons I have in Pixadex, and soon, very soon I hope, all the emails I’ve written in Entourage mentioning the word.

And THAT is only the tip of the iceberg. EVERY APPLICATION has a little search box somewhere in it now. Not just iCal and iTunes and iEverythingElse that came with Tiger or has been upgraded recently (I do have iLife ’05), but the open/save dialogs in every app, so I can easily find the folder I want to save or get a file from or to. This will soon be priceless at work. The searching is incredibly fast. As-you-type fast.

Anyway. I still plan to write up some more impressions of Tiger, but suffice it to say for now that a) I like it, b) I’m glad I upgraded with no hesitation, and c) Spotlight is the best new thing in it.