The Truth About Mac OS X Tiger: You Heard It Here First!

Maybe you’ve heard the news: a little over a week ago, Apple Computer released a new version of their operating system, Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger. A lot of people were quick to weigh in about it—from the idiotic to the thoughtful to the amazingly in depth and technical.

I installed Mac OS X 10.4 on my PowerBook on Friday, and on my iMac G5 today. With my thorough testing of the operating system over the past three days, it is clear that there are only two features that truly matter in this upgrade. Two features that are so awesome they blow everything else out of the water. Spotlight? Fuck no. Y’all don’t need Spotlight, y’all just need to organize your folders. Okay. What else? Active Directory integration? The new flat blue Apple icon? No. No. No. The only two features to watch are this: desktop … yes, desktop patterns and dictionary. Okay, I’m going to stop for a moment and let that sink in.

[pause…]

First, desktop patterns. Apple really outdid themselves this time. I mean, they’ve gone toward some really trippy abstract desktop wallpapers in recent years, but this time they did some fantastic work. Boot up into Tiger and check out the Plants folder in the Wallpapers System Preferences. These are INCREDIBLE! I’m telling you, wo/man! No, really, check them out. Also check out the Black & White folder. Whew. Eye candy extreme. The wallpapers are worth the price of Tiger alone. Upgrade now damn it. Do it!

After I installed Tiger, my PowerBook looked like this, but before you look at that photo I’m telling you it’s a thousand times more cool than in this photo okay, so here’s the shot:

As promised there is one other super cool feature in Mac OS X 10.4. It’s the new Dictionary. Let me just say Dictionary rocks! The typography is crisp and fresh. It’s like looking at a book on the screen. But more importantly there are LOADS of dirty words. I don’t know what Apple was thinking, but it’s a little crazy all the words they have in that Dictionary. All the 5th grade boys with Macs are gonna go WILD with Dictionary. Wow. And we’re not talking pansy-assed definitions here. There is some serious etymology going on. First here’s a shot of the definiton for FUNKY:

That is so impressive! I mean these etymologists are fantastic people. The other word I wanted to highlight is another F-word. Err…but believe me there are far worse words I could be showing you. But I’m totally impressed by their definition for FUCK. I’ve never seen such a complete definition. I won’t show you the whole thing. In fact, I’ll just show you a little bit to illustrate how complete this definition is. And just in case it wasn’t clear by this point, Dictionary rocks!

So, anyway. Tiger. Yes, you must have it. If you don’t have a Mac, you are seriously missing out!