Tiger Impressions

Super Homo Dance Robo-Ninja Geek Mode Activated.
(…and for some reason, my hair is blue.)

Permit me to prattle, again, about Apple's latest operating software,Tiger. It was a bumpy start for me, but the OS has been stable and running on my computers for the past few days.

My impression is, it's GRRRR-humph.

Yawn.

The "features" -
Dashboard - Yawn. (Still using Konfabulator. Yes, it works and better in my opinion)
Spotlight - Yawn. (Scary and I'd say problematic.)
Automator - So?
iChat 3.0 - Group Conferencing? You're going to need a heavy duty machine to host the videochat and don't expect to see great video quality.
Mail 2.0 - Looks and works ok.
Safari 2.0 - Shrug. RSS? I'll stick with NewsFire thanks.

I'm underwhelmed.

Maybe my initial experience has colored my final impression of Tiger. There's
plenty of changes under the hood and I can't say whether they are all for the better.

Chris Glass has a more comprehensive user's POV on Tiger. He's more evenhanded with his observations, even if he is gullible. (secret, so was I. doh!)

There has been random flakiness, most inexplicable.

I've spent the last day, chatting online with L trying to figure out why his G5 is running slow with Tiger. Actually more like being run into the ground. Some background processes are ramping up and taking up more than 50% of his CPU Processing power. At the heart of the problem is Spotlight is my guess, aside from the fact that he's only running his G5 with 512mbs of RAM. CHOKE! GET MORE!

UPDATE: L reinstalled Suitcase. All's well now.

Nifty Utilities

I'd like to offer this to anyone who's got an iBook, or 1st/2nd Generation Aluminum Powerbook, the one's that DON'T have the 2 finger scroll feature. Check out SideTrack. It's an advanced trackpad driver replacement that adds finger scrolling to the sides and/or top and bottom of the trackpad. Your wrists and thumb will thank you.

Last one is Witch. Like the application switcher in OSX (CMD-Tab) but instead it'll switch between all your opened windows with OPT-Tab. It's neat.