Everything Must Go! Tiger Worth the Price?

by Chris Seibold Apr 18, 2005

For most of us there is a sense of familiarity when yet another obnoxious car dealership ad comes on the radio. The ads are generally the same: A voice over guy who sounds as though he stumbled across a cache of amphetamines and a copy of “How to Talk Really Loud on the Radio” exhorts listeners to head to X dealership for the biggest sale of the year. Then listeners are hit with the “because” part of the ad. The “because” part of the ad explains why the dealer is having such a truly memorable sale and usually involves some plausible reason: over stocked, factory incentives, etc. The aforementioned “because” part is crucial owing to the fact that without that info we might think they just wanted to make a few extra bucks over the labor day weekend.

People, after hearing the 10,000th such ad, become justifiably cynical. They start to wonder: “Is the auto dealer really trying to save me some dough, or does he just want to sell a few more cars?”  Hence most of us wait until we actually need a car to buy one instead of following the, I am sure, sincere advice of the auto dealership. After all, I doubt have you ever been in the process of buying a car and had the sales guy pull you aside and whisper conspiratorially in your ear “Buddy, I’ve got to tell you, you’re doing this at the absolute worst time. Next week we’re selling this vehicle for a nickel.” Which explains why many people greet dealership ads with a more than trivial amount of skepticism.

With that example newly imprinted on our hippocampus we can turn out attention to Tiger. Apple is touting Tiger (unsurprisingly) as the greatest system ever. Apparently Apple thinks 10.4 is something so great that if you don’t pre-order the bundled box of software for guaranteed April 29th delivery you’ll spend April 30th being laughed at by all the smart folks who ratcheted up their credit cards bills to be part of the first wave. This leaves us with a question: Is Apple using the same methods as car dealerships to move a little extra product? Or is Tiger a truly significant upgrade?

The answer to the first question is obviously yes. In fact it is expected. We have become jaded and cynical enough of marketer’s claims by this point that if Apple didn’t claim Tiger was the greatest operating system of all time people would shy away from the thing. For example if Apple said Tiger was “pretty darned good” you undoubtedly hear analysis along the lines of the following: “Expect Tiger to be a very minor upgrade, even spokespeople in Apple’s employ are low key about the release calling it only “fairly nifty.” So the folks in the marketing arm at Apple are in a conundrum, every release has to be the most important release ever and contain hundreds of must have new features …even if they aren’t really “must have.” So given that not every release is as great as Apple would lead us to believe the question becomes how often have the releases lived up to the hype?

Let us constrain that discussion to post OS X releases for the sake of brevity. In it’s earliest incarnation OS X was a beta release. Sure it was a beta release Apple got people to actually pay thirty bucks for but it was still a beta release. Keeping that fact in mind the release of 10.1 was a significant upgrade. On the other hand OS 9 was still the operating most commonly used and compared to that OS 10.1 (Puma) lacked quite a bit. Puma was the computer equivalent to dry shaving with a dull razor. Sure the razor scrapes hair off your face but the process is slow, painful and the results are less than ideal.

Jaguar, OS 10.2, was everything Apple would have you believe. Jaguar made OS X useable by most folks and included some highly useful programs and features. For example Jaguar added Quartz Extreme, iChat and spring loaded folders (the secret is using tiny springs I hear). Jaguar also made OS X feel much faster than it had in 10.1. If this was your yardstick to measure the validity of Apple’s marketing claims you’d undoubtedly call the goodwill spreaders at Apple headquarters the most honest marketers on the planet.

Your assessment of the veracity of the folks charged with getting the word out about the greatness of Apple’s products might have changed with the release of Panther (can we please stop with the cat names? Or at least include the munchkin somewhere down the line). With a finally enjoyable OS X version released Apple didn’t sit back and say “Ah, let us wait until we can come up with something really REALLY good.” Instead they released Panther. Sure it featured Expose but another major selling point, Font Book, is pretty weak. It also featured a performance boost but, in the end, Panther wasn’t $129 better than Jaguar. Many of Panthers improvements were already available via third party solution or were merely (bad joke coming) iCandy. Most people familiar with both Macs and PCs would say, with plenty of justification, that there was a lot more to XP service pack 2 than Panther. The argument is easily justified, XP SP 2 actually adds a lot of security to your Windows based PC, Panther added a chess game. Sure you can argue the comparison is unfair by noting that XP should have been secure from the start. I agree but from a value perspective XP Service Pack 2 was all over Panther.

So the final question is will Tiger be Cheetah or Jaguar? The magic eight ball says yes but that thing is only right about fifty percent of the time. Looking at the long, long list of new features, however, we see quite a few things to be very excited about. Core Audio and Video may not seem like huge improvements to the average guy but for programmers they’re huge steps forward. Spotlight could be very cool because, face it, OS X’s current search function is slow and somewhat unreliable. Safari RSS could be great or lame depending on the implementation. Actually with the sheer number of features it is easy to find something that seems completely lame (buy printing supplies) while also finding a things that are seemingly indispensable (automator).  Of course, that is the Apple way: throw a million features at the consumer and hope that like the auto buyer they’re impressed with the volume if nothing else. This time around I think you will be.

Comments

  • Chris, totally agree.  Panther was Exposé. It was under the hood where Panther shone - but still maybe not worth the full upgrade cost.

    But Tiger is so many things.

    The Parental Controls are going to be a fantastic. I know some folks say “nothing beats supervision”. But you can’t be there all the time or spend all your life checking their history logs.  It’s like saying “Nothing beats safe driving”. Well true, but it doesn’t mean you’re not gunna have a car crash.  So wear the seat belt.

    I’m very interested in the Thesaurus. Is it just a widget? Or built into the OS like the dictionary? Hopefully the latter.

    Scalable cursors for those with poor eyesight? I’ll take that - and my eyesight’s fine!

    AI laptop battery management. Finally.

    VPN that stays connected thru logouts and fast user switching. Yayyy!

    Network and Airport diagnostic tools. Cool!

    And I haven’t even got to Spotlight or any of Tiger’s other show pieces.

    Chris Howard had this to say on Apr 19, 2005 Posts: 1209
  • A lot of people look at the applications like iChat, Expose, updated Mail, Safari, etc but in reality these apps showcase the amazing set of frameworks and APIs that Apple have been developing and continue to develop. Apple could have done all the coding under the bonnet for every OSX release but without the “candy” or “carrot” nobody would buy it. What has happened as time passes, is that developers get to grips with the real OS under the hood and produce fab programs like FCP, Delicious Library, Motion, etc. So yes Panther appeared to be a minor upgrade but it was a lot more. With Tiger, Apple had to produce a lot more candy to showcase the Tiger x-factor - which is why it took longer to develop this time around. Apple have already started 10.5 development. However, the underlying technologies under the hood have developers salivating. Even the MACBU at MS are excited. I suspect that 10.5 will be released end of 2006 along with, or shortly after Longhorn. At that point, the applications being produced by developers for the Mac will make XP and just-released longhorn apps look dated. Just you wait and see.

    MS is all about market share, making obscene amounts of money and making XP/Longhorn the centre of the user’s universe. With Apple, they only want to provide the best tools available so users can be as creative and productive as possible. Just look at the task metaphor used by XP (and Longhorn no doubt). This implies users are stupid - and frankly I rarely use any of the tasks thrown in front of my face. OSX is all about minimalist and it works. MS just don’t get it. Look at the iPod as compared to the competitors - their devices play music, tune into your favorite radio station, let you record your own voice, etc - all I want to do is listen to my music.

    Sheridan had this to say on Apr 19, 2005 Posts: 1
  • I absolutely disagree that 10.2 was the Greatest Upgrade and that 10.3 was merely an update. For my money (!), though 10.2 made OSX usable, it was 10.3 that made the whole concept of OSX useFUL. The point mentioned about the underlying structure of 10.3 being the main improvement is absolutely true, and the significance thereof becomes evident when you look at how many MAJOR improvements have been introduced in the following point releases (10.3.1-9). On top of that, basic code optimization really took off with 10.3, and running 10.3.9 against any 10.2 version makes you wonder why anyone even bothered back then. By now, using XPostFacto, 10.3.9 running on my 233MHz PDQ is actually PLEASANT to use - something I would have foresworn could ever be said about OSX. Now, if only the developers would focus on bringing back coherence and internal logic into the new UI concept they are building (just wait until you use Exposé, Spotlight and Automator together; THEN you will agree that Apple has finally made it past the OS8 and NeXT paradigms), and then I can retire a happy man…. grin

    Peter J. Pedersen had this to say on Apr 19, 2005 Posts: 2
  • I think the big deal with OS 10.2 was it was the first truly usable version of OS X. It wasn’t (too slow), and you could actually, say select a folder with a thousand items and drag it to another folder.

    However, while 10.2 itself was usable in the sense that you wouldn’t bang your head against a wall (or boot into OS 9) 10.3 was the first version of OS X that didn’t just meet parity with OS 9 it exceeded it.

    Hopefully Tiger will be the leap that you hint at Peter. In many ways, we are basically using the same operating system as the first mac, albeit a more powerful version.

    Hadley Stern had this to say on Apr 19, 2005 Posts: 114
  • Hey nice site redesign guys. I’m loving it.

    Panther was a tricky OS. It was so Nuts N bolts laden that Apple could really only hype Expose as a new marketable feature. The reality was Panther further evolved the undercarriage of OSX and solidified some API. It was a developers release for sure. I remember many more people proclaiming they would sit Panther out because nothing in it was worth it. Until they sat down and used a Mac running panther.

    Expose wowed them but the #1 comment I heard was how Panther was so much more fluid than Jaguar. Some things are rather drab on paper but come to life in actual usage.

    Tiger is a whole new beast (pun intended). It has the eye candy in Spotlight but it also usher in the newest API and frameworks for building exemplarary apps on Macs. As Apple would say it completes the trifecta of the Model View Controller paradigm.

    I can’t think of many pain points that haven’t been addressed. Image I/O, Audio, threaded Quicktime, PDF handling, Scripting, Search, Mail(html support), Networking,

    I’m udderly(ode to Longhorn) amazed at the scope of what Apple has done. Consumers need not be that jazzed about Tiger. The excitement will come when they see what the best developers on Earth can do with these new technologies. Then and only then will the realize the full potential of Tiger.

    hmurchison had this to say on Apr 19, 2005 Posts: 145
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