Andy’s adventures with Mac OS 10.4 Tiger
Introduction: For what it’s worth, this section will be Andy’s ramblings on being an ‘early adopter’ of Apple’s latest Macintosh operating system. I’ve already written about the London launch, and the fun I had installing Tiger on my DVD. What next?
I don’t consider myself a power user by any means. I have a G3/800 iBook and a G4/775 desktop. The power user would consider them both candidates for ditching and upgrading, but they’re serving me well. Thankfully, Apple are still officially supporting G3s with Tiger, so long as they have FireWire port (I’m not quite sure why this is – I suspect it’s just an easy way to test how old a machine is, though I would’ve though they could use some other aspect of the machine, given that Firewire is only required for some aspects of iChat video conferencing that won’t run on a G3 or low-end G4 in any case.)
I do digital music, digital photography, web design, coding, a few games, general office stuff.
Anyway…
Virus Protection: Since installing Tiger, my Norton Antivirus has thrown up an error every time on startup – however it appears to continue functioning, does LiveUpdates, and I presume it is protecting my system. Dangerous…
Anyway, I’ve reinstalled the software on my G4 so I’ll find out tonight if it is behaving itself now.
Dashboard: Could be seen as a gimmick, but the widgets are quite useful as they stand, and hopefully a lot more, including ones not so geared for the US market, will become available.
Clicking on the ‘More Widgets’ button prompts for a username and password at the Apple site. Not sure if I should have that password? I’m on the lookout for new widgets. Will report them here.
The ‘cool ripple effect’ demonstrated at the launch event I suspect only works on high end Macs with above-average graphics cards. The ‘information flip’ graphic transition works well, but no ripples on my G3 or G4. Ahh well, it still looks darn cool. It is a bit sluggish when it first starts up, possibly owing to the number of Internet sites it tries to connect to in order to get the latest info.
So how good are Apple’s new version first releases, generally? I’m definitely not brave enough to be an early adopter with MS.
And how do you feel about shelling out money every couple of years for dot point upgrades? I guess somewhere near the conclusion of your assessment you’ll decide whether it was worth the money!
I decided after I had struggled with Mac OS 8 and not had the finances to upgrade, and gradually saw more and more software disappearing that would only run in OS 9, that I would not fall far behind in OS upgrades.
It can feel disconcerting to be paying out money for what sound like small upgrades – in fact the dot point versions are usually quite significantly updated.
I am pleased so far, but I’ve not really done huge amounts with the system. Spotlight and Dashboard are nice to have – Spotlight particularly.
I waited for a while installing 10.3 and decided this time to just go for it with Tiger. Nothing has stopped working, at least. I’ll keep the series going with new discoveries as I make them.