I think at present that Tiger has the upper hand at the moment because Visturd isnot yet available. But Apple's recent declaration to release Leopard clearly shows that it shouldnot take this complacently. Remember, that with M$ control over 90% of the computer consumers and can afford to play catch up the way it did in the OS and internet browser wars. Therefore there is always room for improvements. While we're at it, among my wish list for Leopard: 1. Tabbed finder window 2. Context sensitive side bar/ finder buttons 3. Application Menu (even tho theres Expose, I still need it especially if I'm using an ordinary mouse. 4. Themes(Im tired of brush metal look,too industrial) 5. Integrate iPhoto with Finder 6. What do you think of a tripanel desktop? 7. What about a double deck Dock 8. An animated finder icon (Eversince its introduction we have always wondered what's the use of the face if it would not communicate to users- Really just optional)

I said it on MacRumors forums too - it's a total joke that this eWeek writer is even making LOOSE comparisons to Tiger, which is and HAS BEEN shipping, to Vista, which has another 12-18 months to go, and has had features slowly peeled off of it.

What's hillarious are all you Mac-fans who've never touched Vista or Longhorn, have no idea how its really different (except for the sugar coating stuff that articles like eWeek's espouse) and say how it sucks and OS X is great and all. Hey, I like OS X, but Tiger's got some issues, I still see the beachball of death in the finder too often for my tastes (and this is on a freaking 2.3GHz G5). Networking is slow. Spotlight is flaky and slow (I was trying to find some files by date, but nothing came up. I had to mark my whole Documents folder private, then remove the setting to get it to re-index so I can find a file. Then I made the mistake of searching my whole computer, typed the letter 'c' and finder hung for minutes until I relaunched it).

Oh, as for the icons, maybe you Mac people really care whether a document will open in Word or TextEdit or Photoshop or whatever. Me, I've moved to working with files, not with applications (you know, where Apple tried to get you all 10 years ago with Cyberdog).

Oh, and I don't remember you all complaining when OS X was released, and minimized windows show as icon previews of the current window, which, if I'm not mistaken, is the SAME EXACT THING!

Let's see here... Hold down option, pick "Show Inspector" and hide everything except "preview" then go about looking at your document thumbnails. Ok, so Word docs don't show but it wouldn't take much to get that done. No idea why Apple's not doing that or even .RTF considering TextEdit understands them. Looks like QT files / images, PDF and raw text only right now. That works for those who don't want to use column view. Now, what were they saying again? And, yes, CAIRO of 1995 promised an object-based file system database setup that was axed from Longhorn not too long ago. BeOS was great for its use of threads and BeFS. Now if we can just get a Finder that's better threaded. I assume threading will improve somewhat dramatically post Leopard/Intel.

if you want a really good file preview, try Path Finder, Cocoatech's file browser. You can read Word and PDF files in the preview drawer, or have the preview in a separate, resizable window. Way better than Apple's Finder.

Disclaimer: I don't work or CocoaTech - I'm just a satisfied customer!

PS: To any Canadians out there: Congrats on how your rescue services dealt with the recent air crash - a fine job indeed.

LouZer,

I have to agree with your angst concerning Spotlight. It is slow and flaky, but the main issue I see with it is not providing a "reset" option. Spotlight needs a method to clear out then build a new index. Perhaps MacOSXHints has a trick or workaround, but I think Apple should incorporate this feature in a future Spotlight update.

It's not any problem with Mac OS X that makes Finder so laggy.

The NeXT file browser on my NeXTstation Mono (which is roughly equivalent to a Performa 575) has fewer problems with beachballs than Finder on my Mac mini. And that's on a much older version of the same OS.

Apple took the fast, responsive NeXT file manager and merged it with the creaky old Finder and the resulting Frankenstein's Monster is nobody's friend.

They really need to surgically separate the two and give people a REAL choice of which interface (spatial finder, or NeXT browser) they want to use, instead of one that's not really spatial but not quite a regular browser either... and gimme my Shelf back (yes, I use XShelf, but it's not the same).

I've looked at the Longhorn beta. I used a 2.83 GHz Pentium 4, 768 MB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce 4 card with 128 MB RAM on board, on a 80 GB partition of a 250 GB Hitachi SATA drive. Longhorn didn't like my video card (I was limited to 1024x768 on a 19" monitor, way, way, way less than what WinXP running on another partition on the very same drive could do) and also didn't like one of my NICs (a RealTech 10/100) and wasn't thrilled with another (a Linksys 801.11g wireless card) in that it didn't work at all with the RealTech and performance was flakey with the Linksys. AVG and Spybot S&D were less than stellar on it. My HP MFD wouldn't print at all (BIG surprise there, HP software breaks if you look at it too hard) though the network printer worked fine. I haven't had time to really wring it out, but so far it looks as though the Longhorn beta is about where the OS X Public Beta was... nowhere near ready for prime time. It needs a lot of work. Seriously. Tiger has its problems, but it's simply streets ahead of the Longhorn beta.

That's not to say that there aren't things done right. Networking is Done Right (where it works, but that's a NIC and driver issue...) and out of the box security is way better than XP. Apple needs to seriously work on their networking problems. And they need to do it quickly. It should be embarassing to them that a beta does networking better than their release OS.

LouZer,

I have to agree with your angst concerning Spotlight. It is slow and flaky, but the main issue I see with it is not providing a "reset" option. Spotlight needs a method to clear out then build a new index. Perhaps MacOSXHints has a trick or workaround, but I think Apple should incorporate this feature in a future Spotlight update.

Actually, spotlight is just another of a long line of new 'features' that Apple rushes out the door, lacking the complete package of configuration and settings that it really needs, plus not realizing how it integrates into its apps. (For example, Dashboard is released with no way to remove a widget. What kind of stupidity was that?) For example, there's a privacy tab in the spotlight settings for hiding directories from indexing. But guess what, it also means you can't search for just a file by name in those directories (according to the reports I've read, I have enough troubles just trying to find the files I want without making them private). There's no way to turn off indexing on external disks as a whole. Stupid. You also can't search for invisible files like you could in 10.3. There's no way to just turn it off, nor to reset the indexes (like you said).

Everyone laughs at how long it takes MS to get out an update, but how long would it take Apple if they were forced by their user base to make sure the OS worked well before it was released, as opposed to having to wait for the second or third update to get rid of all the major issues people have with it.

Who in the world is going to trust using "LONGHORN" when it first comes out? Give me a break (er... I mean, don't break my computer), nobody is really going to use this until Microsoft comes out with Longhorn Service patch 1 or 2 which will be years after its initial release.

By then, Macs will have Intel chips running OS XI right along side X11 and Windows on the same computer. People will have less and less reason to buy Windows and no reason to buy Dells.

OK, so that was two more things.

OS X can show the document preview in the icon - and has been able to since 10.0, at least for Cocoa apps. It's up to the app developer to do this - look at the Omni products. OmniGraffle document icons show previews of the graphs, as they are saved.

My first computer in 1984 was an Apple IIe. I had it for a couple years then sold it. I didn't get back into computers until 1993 when I bought an IBM-compatible. I became a windows user, learned to build my own PC's etc... Six months ago, I bought an iMac G5 and OS X (picked up Tiger the day it was released). Last week I sold my iMac and purchased parts to build another PC.

Now, let me just say that OS X is a much more pleasant experience than Windows... however, I had trouble matching certain programs on the Mac side of things. I just have too much Windows software that I've purchased over the years.

I will say that I'm closely watching Vista and the Mac/Intel deal. Does anyone here think that if a hacker can find a way around the "TPM" (Trusted Platform Module) and can get OS X to run on a PC that it could hurt Apple Hardware sales?

I guess I'm saying I was seduced by Mac but I'm a slave to Windows-based software, which in essence makes me a slave to Windows itself.

-Mike countrydj@gmail.com

Somebody mentioned spotlight doesn't have a reset button. If you hit the delete key, your search is reset instantly. Just have to learn to think differently...

Sometimes I wonder how Apple CEO Steve Jobs can sleep at night. He appears to spend half his waking hours ridiculing Microsoft's admittedly behind-schedule operating system, Windows Vista, for copying Mac OS X features. But this week at Apple's annual Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC), he announced ten new features for Leopard, the next version of OS X, most of which will seem more than vaguely familiar to Windows users. I'm not dim: Microsoft does copy Apple on a fairly regular basis. But seriously, Steve. Apple's just as bad.

More important, perhaps, is that the new OS X features that Jobs and company announced this week aren't, by and large, all that impressive. Two of the new features--Time Machine and Spaces--are valuable additions to OS X and worth discussing, though both, interestingly, have been done before in other OSes. The other Leopard features Apple announced, alas, are almost all a complete waste of time. They're the types of things one might expect of a minor, interim update, or from free Web downloads. They are certainly not major features as Jobs claimed.

OK, enough Jobs bashing. The guy's a visionary and truly important presence in the industry, and it will be a sad, sad day when he steps down from his post at Apple and fades into the sunset. (The reality of this possibility seemed all the more real this week. Am I the only one that though Jobs looked oddly gaunt and sickly during the WWDC keynote?) But as I've often said of Apple and Jobs: They do good work. It's too bad they feel the need to exaggerate so much.

Anyway, what I'd like to do here is address Apple's comments about Windows Vista and Microsoft, and take a look at the Leopard features Apple announced at WWDC. It's important for you to understand, however, that I don't have Leopard. I'm basing this only on what Apple showed off at WWDC.

Redmond, start your photocopiers If you watch the WWDC keynote telecast (and the accompanying "PC guy" intro video, both of which are available on the Apple Web site), you'll notice immediately that Apple is more than a little preoccupied with Windows Vista. That's understandable, since Windows is Mac OS X's primary competition (in the sense that 2 percent of the market is competition for Windows) and Apple was inspired by Vista features like Spotlight (er, sorry, Windows Search) when creating its previous OS X version, Tiger (see my review). But that's not a slam, really. Give Apple some credit for getting to market first--by a long shot--and doing a fantastic job of implementing features that Microsoft, frankly, may never get right.

But by the same token, I have to admit to being a bit shocked by how childish Apple is about Vista. Say what you will about Microsoft (heck, I do), but the company is at least deferential to its customers in public, about as far from smug as is humanly possible, and it very rarely takes pointed shots at the competition. From the opening PC g

http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/macosx_leopard_preview.asp