Product Reviews

After months in which almost every day brought us rumours that the new edition of Apple's operating system was about to be released, the Cupertino-based company quietly and without fanfare finally made the announcement Mac users the world over had been waiting for since June last year. Mac OS X 10.4, codenamed and marketed as 'Tiger', should be in the shops by the time you read this.

And it's big news. In this feature we'll lay the new operating system bare and show you all its new features, but this release is about more then just new features. It marks a slowing in Apple's release schedule; it's now 17 months since the release of Mac OS X 10.3. This suggests that Apple is now much happier with Mac OS X than it was with the early releases, and feels it can now focus on enriching it rather than working with basic functionality.

We'll be showcasing its key features to give you all the information you need to make the decision on whether or not to upgrade. There's a huge amount to talk about in Tiger, so get your teeth into our in-depth guide.

Mac OS X 10.4 breaks new ground in several different areas. Some of the most important are Spotlight, for fast, complex search control; Dashboard, for adding software tools very simply; Automator, for streamlining workflows by automating tasks with a high degree of intelligence; and VoiceOver, for making the Mac much more accessible to those with visual or motor impairments that make unassisted interfaces hard to use.

Spotlight

When we looked at the Spotlight search feature in last summer's early Tiger developer preview we felt that the implementation at that point was significantly lacking in user control. The menubar-accessible search field still defaults to searching everywhere local - in other words, every non-network volume - rather than allowing the search focus to be narrowed down before you begin, but now you can narrow your search from there if you prefer. It indexes the contents of drives in the background, and in our tests searches were performed at very impressive speeds, even though it indexes the contents of virtually every document on your Mac, allowing for content as well as filename searches.

The results are shown in a categorised, sub-divided list grouped according to kind and presented in an exceptionally clear manner in the Finder window. For example, when we searched for 'script', the result was sorted into groups labelled Folders, AppleScripts, Applications, System Preferences, Fonts, Documents and Other. (The Spotlight section of System Preferences allows you to customise the order in which the category groups are presented, and a Privacy option lets nominated folders or disks be exempt from searching.) Above this, a bar appears with buttons for different parts of your Mac. These are what gives you the ability to narrow down the focus of the search to specific parts of your Mac or, for that matter, any mounted server volumes. Click one and your search is performed on just that item instead.

This is just the beginning. A universal keyboard shortcut opens a full Spotlight search window regardless of the current application, giving even greater control over searches. As well as sorting by kind, results can be grouped according to date (today, since yesterday, this week, this month, or this year) and by person. It also offers sub-sorting by name, date, person or kind within a group. Spotlight's abilities go even further than that. The Smart Folder feature is essentially a saved Spotlight search. Note that it isn't the results of the search - it's the actual search term and settings saved as a self-contained script and presented as a folder. Open this and you'll get the latest results for that search.

Third-party application developers can add Spotlight support by including data that Spotlight uses to learn how to read those document file formats, so Apple doesn't have the hassle of managing this process and releasing updates to keep its abilities current. Judging by the enthusiasm programmers have shown so far, it seems certain that Spotlight support will be built into just about everything.

Microsoft, for example, has confirmed that Spotlight is already able to index Word, Excel and PowerPoint files, though it's still working on Entourage support.

However, there's one major flaw in Spotlight. In tests, it didn't find text within words; searching for 'summer' won't find files named 'midsummer'. This will pose all sorts of problems until it is fixed.

Dashboard

This feature is the visual crowd-pleaser of the bunch. Dashboard is a complete application environment that runs what Apple calls 'widgets', essentially mini-applications that act as the 21st century equivalent of the Desk Accessories from System 6 and earlier. These widgets are written using HTML and whatever CSS, JavaScript and other elements are needed, and run within the Dashboard environment. This sits invisibly in the background, and when invoked jumps into view (using the Exposé display engine), presenting any currently running widgets while dimming your normal display behind them.

Widgets included in the copy of Tiger that we examined included a text translation tool powered by Systran, a look-up bar for the new built-in dictionary and thesaurus and another for the Yellow Pages, a flight tracker, a stock tracker, a frankly beautiful weather tracker, and more. To add a widget, drag it from strip that can pop up at the bottom of the screen to a position on your desktop; it plops into place with a most satisfying, if showy, ripple effect. To configure a widget, click on a tiny button in one corner and the whole thing rotates (in full simulated 3D) to show the back of the device, where the relevant options are presented. Some widgets, such as the Yellow Pages one, seem to be still US-only in their scope, but because they are built from HTML with supporting extras it won't be long before alternative versions are available, either directly from Apple or from any web developer with time to experiment.

Dashboard's most obvious weakness is that it's either in front of all your applications or it's entirely invisible. If you want to leave a dictionary reference result open and visible beside your regular windows as you work then Dashboard's Dictionary widget won't be ideal. (Fortunately, there's a new standalone Dictionary application, but we'll cover that later.) What saves Dashboard from being too disassociated from normal everyday use is the ease and speed of conjuring it up. As a development of OS X 10.3's Exposé, it's controlled using the same section of System Preferences. A tap of the F12 key (or whichever you prefer) opens and closes it, and you can select corners of the screen to trigger it with a simple gesture. This makes it suddenly much more useful, despite being an 'all or nothing' affair. We expect to be using it all the time.

Automator

AppleScript has been Apple's tool of choice for automating your own Mac, and there's no denying its power. Unfortunately, most Mac users find it much too complex to grasp. This is where Automator excels. It is an easy method of automating your Mac; select from libraries of collected operations, pick the actions you want to perform, then fine-tune them to your needs by selecting from the various pop-up menus and buttons in each one. The whole thing is code-free: there's no scripting in sight. The final product can be run as a 'workflow' from Automator, saved as an Automator workflow document or a standalone application, or even as a plug-in for use with the Finder, Folder Actions, iCal alarms, Image Capture, part of a print workflow, or for the Script menu.

Applications can ship with their own Automator libraries to help you get more from your software, linking the software in with everything else to make your Mac more and more productive. Automator is something that you will have to explore and put to work in your own way, but it will certainly become a firm favourite with anyone that deals with production workflows of any kind. And, of course, the more ingrained Automator becomes in people's Mac lives, the less likely they are to countenance using a PC for anything.

VoiceOver

VoiceOver tackles something that has needed attention for many years - greater accessibility of the Mac OS interface to those with disabilities. Until now, Apple's efforts in this area have been cursory compared with Microsoft's developments. This all changes with Tiger's VoiceOver.

This provides spoken and high-visibility feedback as you move around the interface and interact with controls, and it can also help you use the interface without relying on the mouse. Text can be spoken as you type, working at the character or word level, reading out punctuation, and so on. The VoiceOver 'cursor' provides visual feedback of the current item in focus, and this can range from a simple visual box around the item through to a massively scaled image. Text-to-speech technology isn't perfect, so a custom pronunciation guide can override certain key words - a particularly invaluable trick when dealing with acronyms. There's far more in VoiceOver than we can cover here, but it's an impressive leap forward.

The applications

A large number of applications are bundled with Tiger. Many of these are updates to ones we've all seen before, while some are new. Two of the most important are Mail and Safari, both now in version 2.

Mail

Mail, Apple's email application, has had a major facelift. It follows the Tiger interface look, and the result is particularly clean and professional. There are some minor changes that seasoned Mail users might take time to get used to, but overall, it has been greatly improved. The drawer is now a panel on the left-hand side, the button icons are simplified and streamlined into groups - the overall appearance is very slick.

The biggest new feature in Mail is Smart Mailboxes, something that will make busy email users sit up and pay attention. Smart Mailboxes act like Smart Folders in the Finder; they search your stored email for messages that match your criteria, but without moving anything around. For example, if you need to regularly dig out emails that contain certain words, a Smart Mailbox can do this automatically.

Adding new accounts to Mail is simpler than before: a 'New Account' assistant checks the settings given at each step and produces a fully configured account setup in around three simple steps. The Connection Doctor, a concept lifted from iChat AV, helps troubleshoot problems with connections for both incoming and outgoing mail. If problems are found, it gives clear information, and double-clicking the note takes you straight tothe revelant preferences settings.

Email can be a surprisingly personal

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thing, and we're sure Mail won't please everyone. Having said that, there's no doubt that it should be the automatic first choice for just about every Mac user we can think of.

Safari RSS

Safari RSS brings general improvements in its ability to handle troublesome sites and extends its compliance with standards, both the technical and the 'real world' variety. There are several more obvious enhancements, but one of the biggest for many people is the Mail Contents of This Page item in the File menu. Go to a page, choose this, and the complete web page layout appears in a new message in Mail. Apple has solved the problem that clients pose to web designers time and again - that is, how to turn a web layout into a well-formed HTML email. With Tiger and Safari RSS this is now less of a problem, though you will still need to be aware of the email clients' limitations of the mail recipients.

The other major new feature is Safari's built-in support for RSS, the increasingly popular format used for presenting news and blog articles in compact, syndicatable form. When you visit a well-built page that includes an RSS feed link, you'll see an RSS button at the right end of the Address Bar. Clicking that opens the RSS channel and presents the items in a clear, logical manner. A panel on the right of the window lets you sort articles by date, title, and more, and you can limit what's displayed to items from today, yesterday, the past seven days, or everything from this month or last month. Going further, there's the ability to search articles and to control how much of an article is shown using a slider. If you detect the hand of Spotlight in here you'd be right: Apple is using Spotlight and related OS technologies to present the RSS data in ways to suit you. Bookmarked articles will be checked for updates on a regular basis, and expired articles are removed by default.

Preview

Preview has been beefed up dramatically, although you may not notice at first. It now boasts features that put Adobe Reader in the shade - text and oval graphic annotations, ColorSync profile matching and assigning, an iTunes-like rating feature, bookmarking for quick recall of favourite images and more. There are even image-correction settings for adjusting exposure, white and black point, gamma, saturation, contrast and brightness, sharpness, and even a variable sepia tint option. PDF professionals will appreciate the option to show a document's media box or crop box, and everyone that deals with large numbers of images will love the slideshow feature with its scaling and 'n-up' options. This won't replace Acrobat Professional for serious work, but it certainly makes Adobe Reader redundant for many users.

We've listed several other additions and enhancements elsewhere in this feature, but the upshot of all this is that Tiger delivers an even stronger, more integrated Mac OS than Panther did back in the summer of 2003.

The road to Tiger

The first the world saw of OS X was the public beta, sold in late 2000 for $30. It looked very similar to the system we know and use today, except for one key difference: the Apple logo was in the centre of the menu bar, not on the left.

It had been under development for five years by that point and had its roots in NeXT, yet retained a working familiarity with OS 9.

The first 'proper' release was version 10.0, codenamed Cheetah, but even this wasn't without its flaws. For starters, it didn't have a DVD player, which was a serious omission in an operating system used by movie-making pros. There were, of course, successive updates over the next few months, adding in such key features as audio CD burning from iTunes in version 10.0.3, and key fixes for USB devices and sleep problems in version 10.0.4.

Cheetah was a short-lived release, and Puma, OS X 10.1, superseded it later that year. Apple rightly saw that it couldn't charge for new software that was effectively replacing a buggy first attempt, and so distributed this update for free. It also added in the long-awaited DVD player.

The biggest change in Apple's approach to its operating system came in 2002 with Jaguar's August debut. From then on, you could forget about version numbers as Apple started to use its big cat codenames as marketing tools. This was officially OS X 10.2, but few people called it that.

Jaguar cost £99. This matched OS X 10.0 pound-for-pound, and set the standard for future releases. When version 10.3 arrived, it, too, was a pound shy of £100. It was a surprise, then, to see OS X 10.4 marketed £10 cheaper, at £89 including VAT.

Jaguar was an important release, as it built in a lot of the features that we now take for granted. They also did much to justify the price, particularly as Apple was now rolling out operating systems at a rate of one a year.

Jaguar was starting to mature by now, but with the launch of OS X 10.3, or Panther, it finally came of age. This was the fully fledged system operating system we had been waiting for. When it appeared on 24 October 2003, it sported a more sober, calmer and toned-down interface, and Apple boasted of 150 enhancements over its previous release.

This was the first time we got to try out system-level encryption with FileVault, live video conferencing with iChat AV and Word document editing in TextEdit. With Panther, Apple had taken OS X to a level where it could rest for some years, now being a complete, stable OS.

To upgrade or not to upgrade

Ten reasons to upgrade

1. Our favourite Tiger feature is Spotlight. Anyone who regularly uses command-F to search for files will know just how frustratingly slow this can be - especially if you're searching by content. And if you use Mail as your email package, indexing and searching its database seems to take forever. Spotlight puts an end to that and allows you to search your files with immediate results.

2. Dashboard is Tiger's most controversial feature due to its close resemblance to Konfabulator. It may seem gimmicky, but their are some truly useful applications for it, and we're certain that within a few weeks you'll wonder how you ever survived without it.

3. Automator makes the laborious job of performing repetitive and mundane tasks a thing of the past. You create workflows by dragging and dropping actions in Automator's interface and enact them at the click of a button. The Actions that ship with Tiger allow you to automate Finder processes and those in Apple applications such as iLife. Third-party actions will allow you to integrate non-Apple applications into workflows.

4. Smart Folders take the concept of Smart Playlists in iTunes and Smart Albums in iPhoto and apply them to the Finder. So you can, for example, save the results of a Spotlight search query as a Smart Folder and it will dynamically update every time you open it.

5. Safari RSS adds a host of new features including an RSS reader, the ability to archive web pages (a feature Internet Explorer has boasted for years), and the ability to view PDFs in the browser.

6. iChat AV has parental controls for buddy lists, supports the open Jabber network, enables multi-person audio and video conferencing and uses the H.264 video codec to improve video quality.

7. QuickTime 7 adds a new set of AV controls, has support for surround sound output and lets you capture video from a FireWire camera directly.

8. VoiceOver provides Mac users with a visual impairment with much better accessibility. It essentially builds a screen reader into the operating system, includes magnification options, and is completely keyboard driven.

9. Mail has been given an overhaul with a new user interface, Spotlight searching, and Smart Mailboxes. There are also parental controls that allow parents to 'whitelist' family and friends so they can control from whom their children receive email.

10. Core Video allows developers to apply some of the benefits of Core Image to video, so that graphics processors can take on much of the work of rendering filters and effects, reducing the load on the CPU.

Five reasons not to upgrade:

1. The cost. For £89 you could get a new printer, hard drive or 512MB of RAM.

2. Upgrading the operating system takes time and there's always the worry that something will go wrong; don't upgrade in the middle of a mission-critical project.

3. No one likes trying to work in an unfamiliar environment; Tiger is a major upgrade and will take time to get used to.

4. Your current operating system does everything you want it to in a way you're happy with. Why change?

5. You're fed up with being 'fleeced' for nigh on a hundred quid every year or so and want to make a stand by using the oldest OS version you can get away with. Besides, Tiger won't make Word 5.1 run any faster.

Developer reaction

Apple is learning. Ultimately, it doesn't matter how beautiful its hardware is, or how elegant its operating system. We as users care most about applications, about the tools that allow us to do the cool stuff we like to do.

With this latest release of its operating system, Apple has handed the developers who create these applications an astonishing set of tools of their own with which they can begin building new and genuinely exciting applications for us. Some of the most radical new developments in Tiger - technologies such as Core Image - won't be immediately apparent to end users, but will be leveraged by developers in the next generation of applications that we can buy.

And boy, are they excited. 'Tiger looks like it's shaping up to be an excellent release,' says Daniel Counsell, software director of Realmac Software. 'Core Data will definitely speed up development, just like Bindings did when Apple first introduced them. You could build a whole app now without writing a single line ofcode!'

Counsell sees particular potential in Spotlight, a sentiment echoed by iView Multimedia's chief technology officer, Yan Calotychos. 'We're thrilled with the release of Tiger. It's a much fuller and richer operating system. Spotlight's the main deal for us as a digital asset management application developer. We've already built Spotlight functionality into our application, and it was a surprisingly easy process; it's a very well thought-out system,' he says.

And they're not alone. Dr Markus Fest, chief technology officer at Elgato, has nothing but praise for the new operating system. 'We are excited about Tiger. Apple has once again leapfrogged the competition. EyeTV supports Mpeg-4, so we're especially excited about the industry-leading Mpeg-4 features in Tiger,' he enthuses.

The president of Code Line Software, Matheau Dakoske, is similarly upbeat. 'As OS X matures, it's becoming more and more difficult to develop applications with the same functionality on other platforms,' he says. 'OS X's tight integration with PDF alone makes it especially powerful for developing graphics and document-based applications. I think Apple's handing developers a very strong platform to create some truly fresh and innovative applications. The new API's are incredible. Tiger will really help level the playing field by giving small and independent developers access to some sophisticated technologies they wouldn't normally have.'

The future's bright. The future's orange with black stripes.