Tiger

I did start this thread for general gripes about Tiger, rather than Apple history...
 
Wow, Lisa looks/looked AMAZING :)

My friend has the first Mac, makes me want to go visit him and have a play on it. I remember vaguely roadrunner. And he's little capture device where we had to sit very still to have our picture taken then we looked like photocopies on a sceeen LOL

Couldn't say if it was 0.9 fryke, I wasn't system knowledgeable until System 7's and above.

Edit Here: Yep sorry fjdouse, say no more.

Tiger rocks :D
 
I've found (for those actually interested in the original point of the thread) that using OnyX to disable the dashboard DOES give some relief to the gloppy performance I've been referring to. Of course, then one is running a crippled system, and as per my experience so far, tomorrow it could run like a bag-o-sh*t when I next boot up.

Having already forked out once for a memory upgrade, should I now fork out MORE cash for a 512 to 1GB upgrade? The prices for the memory are so stupidly high, I can't resolve the.. morality ..of spending such amounts on something so.. (can't find the right word).. minor. (?)
 
fryke said:
Well, you _have_ to keep in mind that you're comparing the very _end_ of refinement of Panther with early updates of Tiger...

Why does anyone upgrade? As far as I can tell the only application that I've wanted that I couldn't have in Panthers was the latest kismac release.

On my other computer I'm still running Debian's Woody release -- although I was feeling adventurous three years ago and upgraded to the 2.4 kernel. :7)

Once you have a system that is stable, secure, and performs consistently day after day after day why change?
 
A bit belatedly, I've noticed and started reading this thread. I'm sorry to hear of your bad experiences with Tiger, fjdouse. :(

My background is that my family was amongst the first to use a Mac (128 K in 1984, etc.) and I've stuck with them. I use IRIX (and sometimes Solaris) and Windows XP (because I'm forced to...) at work, and I prefer to use Macs at home. There were times when I wondered whether a switch to Windows for my home computer would make things easier overall, although I didn't like the idea, but, after using PCs a fair amount at work, I became more and more convinced that OS X was a much better operating system and, over the years, I've become happier with my choice.

I have been quite happy with Tiger, by contrast. When I first installed it, I felt like nothing much had changed. After a little bit of usage, I started to feel like the OS was a bit "slicker," for want of a better way of putting it. Things felt a bit quicker and a bit better implemented, and I was left feeling a lot of tinkering had gone on under the hood, so perhaps some of the biggest changes were "understated" in my eyes. I have had one kernel panic so far (and even one is too many in my books, but maybe I'm being greedy :) ), but then I've had more in Panther. Admittedly, I've been using Panther for longer, and, also, I'd add that I've had very, very few kernel panics over the years, since starting with 10.1.

Maybe one reason I like Tiger is that I never got very excited about it or looked forward to it that much, as I was not overly excited by the keynote or descriptions on the Apple site (?). A bit like a pessimist being pleasantly surprised! I do like and use Dashboard, and I've never had problems with it. It has always been quick and I've downloaded a number of useful widgets, some of which I've used daily. I was never overly excited about Spotlight, especially as I rarely ever used the "Find" feature, but I've been fairly impressed and have used it more than I expected. It might take a second for the results to come up, but it feels very quick to me and seems to work as hoped. I haven't encountered problems with it, but have not used it that much.

By comparison, I felt a little disappointed with Panther, but still glad I got it. I rarely use(d) Exposé in the end, although I thought it looked nice. I feel like I'm the only Mac user in the world who virtually never uses it, as I am in the habit of hiding the current application when switching to something else; this keeps things in order for me, but I guess it means I also do little dragging-and-dropping, too. The thing I used most in Panther was probably "Labels." Jaguar, on the other hand, really did feel like a bigger upgrade. With regards to Safari, I think it always automatically decompressed attachments, and that was always one of the first things I turned off! It's a default which I'd like to see Apple change, for security reasons, but I don't think it was a Tiger-related issue. As far as Mail goes, I've actually been a bit happier with it, but always felt the need to run the activity viewer anyway, and so that is nothing new for me.

The rather disjointed appearance of parts of the OS is becoming an issue for me, and this is one area where I feel Apple do need to watch it a bit. I was really not a fan when Apple started using the Brushed Metal look in Panther, although I liked it waaaaaay back when QuickTime introduced it (QT 4?) as it was something a bit different. Having Brushed Metal windows in the OS just felt a bit too chunky and unwieldy. We now have Aqua, Brushed Metal, the new appearance of Mail etc. in Tiger, and the new iTunes appearance. I actually think the new iTunes interface looks quite a bit better, but it's a matter of opinion, I guess. I would prefer it if Apple made the GUI a little bit more consistent, whether it was the case that all windows had the same appearance, whether OS and application windows looked different, or whatever they decided upon. A theme manager might be a nice option, too.

I'm not meaning to deny your own experiences, only add my own two cents' worth and say my experiences have been very different indeed... Oh, errr, this post ended up a bit longer than I expected, sorry about that! :)
 
Lt Major Burns said:
have you turned beam syncing off in the Quartzdebugger? my performance improved tenfold after that.
Nice idea, but that will only work (AFAIK) by forcing the app to quit, otherwise it will reset back to default. Also, it's not permanent, requiring it to be done each boot. Shunting graphics isn't really the problem though, it's more to do with the overall performance.
 
Viro said:
What is beam syncing and what are the ill effects of turning it off?
Beam syncing (afaik) prevents 'tearing', for example when dragging windows etc. The ill effects of turning it off is that 'tearing' can occur again, but the tradeoff is higher fps. I think I'm correct in saying that disabling beam syncing uses an undocumented API and therefore could disappear in future.
 
fjdouse: About 512 MB/1024MB... For a while, my PB only recognised one of my two 512 MB sticks, and I've found my PB to be SOOOOO slow that I couldn't live with it. I sold both and got one 1024 MB stick and ever since, I'm back to 'normal'. Sure, the system - under REALLY heavy load and low disk space - still bogs down sometimes, but only if I have to expect it, not out of nowhere. In my experience, 512 MB is the absolute minimum tolerable for Tiger - and only if you do _nothing_ else than iTunes/Safari/Mail.app and TextEdit. If you open anything else (say, the Dashboard...), 512 MB is not enough. I still have the feeling that Tiger has _some_ memory leaks, though.
 
My Mac is running 768MB RAM and my system runs fantastic, even if it is a little on the slow side. I use a lot of heavy apps like Photoshop and Final Cut Pro, and the Mac works very well. Obviously apart from my sheer frustration at the look of Tiger and its inconsistency, my only other real complaint is I randomly get a lot of rainbow beachballs, especially in Photoshop occasionally. Like I don't even have to be doing anything and I'll get one for 3 seconds or something. Weird, but I've lived with it.

I also can't wait for 10.4.3, hopefully I can turn on my Mac for once without having recovered files in the Trash! :p
 
Btw.: Does anyone know what Photoshop really _does_ when in its preferences you set the memory useage thingie? It seems odd that with a system like OS X I can set ONE application to take like 50% of my memory. It's the only application that has that 'feature' I think, and it kinda worries me. If I set it too high, does that affect my system performance? If too low, my Photoshop performance? What's a good value? Can't Adobe just decide that for its users?! ;)
 
I think Photoshop relies on scratch disks more than anything, so I don't think it will use as much RAM as you specify, unless you have some kind of huge file open. Just a guess :p
 
Photoshop does rely heavily on scratch disks, that is if you have a fairly limited amount of ram
and extremely large files
i wouldn't recommend setting the ram usage of PS to more than 60%
keep in mind, you have an OS to run, and all the background stuff with it
 
I'd say Tiger is still in beta, and likely will be for a good while. Rather than working out most, if not all, of the bugs before putting it on the market, Apple realizes that it means a lot more money in their pockets if they do the following: launch a big hype campaign well before the product is released and is really ready, then wait for the herd of sheeple, who really must be first on their block to have the absolutely latest Apple product, to madly rush to the store and buy it. Then wait for the new purchasers to do the in-depth testing that they should have done beforehand.
I'm still running OS 10.3.9 because it's solid, stable and smooth. I don't need or even want gimmicks. I don't even use Expose.
Will I eventually get Tiger? Perhaps, but not for at least a year,
after most of Tiger's bugs are fixed AND I can be persuaded that Tiger offers a demonstrably superior user experience than Panther.
 
That was maybe true for 10.4-10.4.2, but with 10.4.3, most of the gripes _I_'ve had are gone. Spotlight, I fear, won't *ever* become as useful to me as simple filename-based search was in Panther, but that's not something Apple seems to consider a bug. Rather, they want to urge me to forget my file names and remember the content. :p

Either way: I don't think Apple released Tiger prematurely. There are some conceptual issues I have with Tiger, but bug-wise, Tiger has been better for me than Panther (comparing the early versions of each, not 10.3.9 vs. 10.4.0, which wouldn't make much sense...).
 
Tiger is most definitely not a Beta. I've been using it since the day it was released, and I have pretty much no gripes with it. All my apps work nicely, and games get a slightly better boost thanks to the newer OpenGL drivers (thinking of WoW especially). Spotlight is nice, and works for most things as well.
 
Well, as with any .0 release, it's always going to have issues, hence why 10.3.9 was very solid for Mobius Rex. Of course, that upgrade didn't go smothly for anyone either.

As for usage in 10.4.3, I'm actually quite happy with it. It works like a champ and has yet to crap out on me. Only once did I get a kernel panic but that was of my own doing. :D

My only issues with it are the interface inconsistencies. If they could just fix that up, I would be happy. Considering that KDE does a good job of trying to unify different widgets like GTK and others (sometimes through the help of the gtk-qt engine), and it is by far nowhere near the ease of use of OS X, why is it so hard for Apple to do the same if not better?
 
I agree with everyone above. 10.4.3 is excellent, and has fixed all the problems I was having. I can now recommend people to upgrade to it :)
 
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