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May 01, 2005
Tiger
So, Tiger has been out for a couple of days. I don't own it -- yet. I will, and the reasons are many.
The technologies behind the new operating system are, simply stated, big moves. Apple has essentially identified really granular things that the OS should be doing and moved them where they belonged. They've finally made APIs available to developers that won't be broken in the next OS release. They've opened up major technologies for easier access by developers. And they have laid the ground work for even more innovative programs and features in future releases.
Apple could spend the next two or three OS release cycles leveraging everything that Tiger is introducing under the hood. And that's why I will spend the money, and recommend anyone else spend the money, on an upgrade. This isn't a small performance boost and it isn't improvements meant to make the OS more stable and more usable (though those are there). This is, conceptually, as big a leap under the skin as was OS 9 to OS 10.
I could go on and on about the changes but, lucky for me, John Siracusa over at Ars Technica already has. In an impressive dissection of Tiger, Siracusa takes you into the guts of the new OS, as well as showing you the new applications and user interfaces. He digs under the hood and provides the reasons for speed improvements and shows all the building blocks that have to go together to make those new technologies work.
I know it is very long, sometimes rather technical and often preachy, but it is worth every minute you spend reading it. The future is there, it has to be harnessed.
Posted by Samer at May 1, 2005 06:00 PM