Apple marketed Mac OS X Tiger by its new features, Spotlight and Dashboard. But after using Tiger for about 5 months, I have yet to use Spotlight and I use Dashboard about 3 times a week. I feel slightly sorry for Konfabulator, since it was the original Dashboard. On top of that, the first versions of Konfabulator Mac-only. Was Tiger really worth the upgrade?
Tiger’s Spotlight is actually incredibly slow, unlike the Keynote presentation that Steve Jobs presented to preview Tiger. I guarantee that Steve was using the top-end model PowerMac, but with my iMac G5 with a 1.8GHZ processor, I don’t get that lightning-fast speed that Apple promotes.
Update! We have come to a conclusion that Spotlight does operate fairly fast after using it more often, rather than once a month. Andy has also mentioned that there are many features in Tiger that are useful to the pro user, that are not interesting or too complex for the average Mac user.
I do like some of the new features in Tiger, don’t get me wrong, but the main selling-points of Tiger seem to be disappointing to the average user. RSS was a really nice feature, and so was Automator, but they aren’t that big to get excited over. Dashboard if probably the coolest feature in Tiger, but Konfabulator is a great substitute if you don’t have Tiger.
Panther is known as the final transition stage into Mac OS X, since the versions before had so many bugs and issues. After looking back at my experience with Tiger, I think that it was really nothing to get excited over, but Apple did do a good job to make it look good. Like I said, I think that there are some great features in Tiger, but nothing that was really worth $129 dollars.
So, will the next version of Mac OS X, Leopard, include some features that might actually prove useful and worth the price? We already suspect one new feature, Chardonnay, to be included in Leopard, and I suspect to see other great new features in Leopard, and I know that Apple won’t let us down.
When I made this article, I wasn’t really putting down these features, I was just wondering if it was worth the price that I payed
for Tiger.
6 Responses
Ari says:
Um, I don’t know about your computer, but spotlight IS lightning-fast on mine. And i practically have the exact same computer as you. Any search yields results in less than 1.5 secs. (Yes, I have timed it). Plus, I think RSS is wonderful, and Automator is OK. I DO thnik that Dashboard is good if you personalize it with the right widgets.
November 23rd, 2005 at 6:29 pm
Appleologist says:
I totally agree, RSS and Automator are great applications. I also enjoy Dashboard a lot as well, but Spotlight disappoints me, it takes me a while to return search results (about 5-8 seconds). I think that Spotlight is the right direction, but it can be improved.
I was just stating my opinion that, was Tiger worth the $129 dollar price tag, or could I have waited for Leopard?
November 23rd, 2005 at 7:12 pm
Scott says:
Spotlight works great for me. How much ram do you have installed on your iMac?
November 23rd, 2005 at 8:11 pm
Appleologist says:
I appreciate your comments, and I’ve started a topic in the Forums for this subject.
November 23rd, 2005 at 10:29 pm
Andy Merrett says:
I think there was a lot more going on ‘under the hood’ – people have commented in the past that Apple bucks the trend: most people assume that new revisions of an existing OS get slower and less efficient – however OS X has got faster and more stable (IMO) with each new release.
There were upgrades for developers on Tiger, things that most end-users probably don’t see or use.
Dashboard is cool, Spotlight is useful, Automator confuses me as it feels like it doesn’t really do much – I guess I just haven’t learnt it. My apps do seem to run faster and are more stable under Tiger, and there are other features which I can’t necessarily name, but I wouldn’t be without them.
November 24th, 2005 at 7:51 am
Joey says:
I find Spotlight to be extremly useful, to me that alone was worth the 129. I haven’t had much use for Automator yet, but I have been to lazy to find ways that it could be useful to me. Dashboard is alright, the weather and worldwide clock widgets are the ones I use the most.
January 16th, 2006 at 11:20 am
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