Tiger

No doubt by now you’ve heard about the Widget security issue. Thankfully, most of the Mac news sites have been fairly even-handed in their reporting. This hasn’t stopped from others on the net from proclaiming this the end of Mac security and that it’s no better than Windows (lots of hyperbole, not much substance). I’ve seen bits and pieces of information on this, but nothing that totally consolidates it yet. The MacCentral article linked probably has the best overview, but I’d like to break it down a little differently. ...

The first of my series of posts on Tiger’s new features finally begins tonight with Spotlight. This post is somewhat long because of the pictures that I decided to include. As such, most of the article is in the extended section. At the same time, those pictures actually make it fun to read even for the not so geeky, so definitely take a look. ...

When I took a screenshot of Safari’s contextual menu last night, I expected that it would be output as a PDF (the default format in Panther). I also wanted to take the opportunity to try out the Flickr upload widget that I mentioned before (which is terribly slick). I wasn’t sure that Flickr supported PDF, so I thought I’d have to convert the screenshot file. Much to my surprise, it was formatted as a PNG file. With that, I just went ahead and uploaded it (and it seems to have worked perfectly).

I don’t think I’m the only one using a Mac that has become really accustomed to using context menus. Until I started using gestures to operate my web browser, I would regularly use the context menu to move back (because clicking the back button is really inconvenient). Safari continually jerked me around by being the only browser that didn’t have back and forward options. It’s one of the most common functions. This finally changed in Tiger and Safari 2.0. ...

I promised a feature review last night and between a not so great commute, reinstalling software, and upgrading the Pismo, I never got around to playing with Spotlight, nevermind take screenshots or write it up. In fact, I barely had time to catch House. I’d promise to get around to it tonight, but I have a softball game, some email regarding getting my own place to reply to, and a W-9 to fill out.

I’ve got Mac OS X Tiger installed on the 12″ Powerbook and the MDD G4 Powermac. Let me tell you, it’s awesome. It’s fast and even more multitasking capable (if that’s even really possible). I have a few quick thoughts this morning. I’ll have a much more complete analysis of Spotlight tonight. Spotlight may be more like LaunchBar than I originally thought. It served as a decent replacement until I got LaunchBar installed. However, it isn’t quite the same because it groups by kind and it doesn’t indicate location. That’s bad because when I do a search for a certain application, Spotlight is currently bringing up duplicates that exist on my Panther backup. ...

My sadness quickly turned into rage last night because I wouldn’t have my toy this weekend. I read at several places, including Macworld’s forums that if you didn’t get your copy of Tiger on time, you could call Apple to get one of three things for free. iLife ‘05 iWork $30 Apple Store coupon Finding this out, I called up and they promptly offered me iLife ‘05. I didn’t hear him offer the other two options, but personally, I didn’t care as that was what I wanted anyway. ...

I was riding on cloud 9 last night. Today was supposed to be a great day. My day was supposed to be wake up at 9, see some houses at 11, then come home and relax before Tiger arrived late afternoon or in the evening. Everything went according to plan… except for the last part. My copy of Mac OS X Tiger got delayed for delivery by Apple. I could have driven to an Apple Store to get it, but nooooo, I had to tell Apple ahead of time that I wanted a copy. Rookie mistake apparently. ...