Spotlight on Tiger

I will now join the legions of other bloggers out there and offer my review and impressions of Mac OS X 10.4 "Tiger".

I must say that I am very impressed with this release. There were no snags during installation, and I have only been affected by one application that does not work (microsoft virtual pc... not much of a loss). Two of Tiger's features have had a significant impact on how I use my computers. Spotlight instant search technology, and Dashboard.

Spotlight
So what's the big deal about this thing? All computers can do some kind of search, right? That is true, but the real question is how WELL does it search. Spotlight combines 3 different search techniques. File Name search, Content Indexing, and Metadata. Meta-who? Metadata is information ABOUT your files. Things such as Author, date modified, the folder a file is in, the program that created a file...all of those are considered metadata. Spotlight utilizes these search methods to INSTANTLY search your drive. As you type your search query, spotlight is already providing you with results. There is no need to hit a "search" button. The biggest benefit I have had with this so far is being able to find emails that contain serial numbers for programs I have purchased. Now I only need to type "alarm clock" and it will bring up my serial number for Alarm Clock Pro. It is amazingly fast and simple.

Dashboard
Have you ever heard of Konfabulator? It is a program that allows little programs to run on your computer. Things like stock tickers, weather checkers, calculators, etc. are applications that are small enough to have running all the time. The problem with these programs until now was the fact that even when you are not using them, they are taking up processor time and RAM. Enter Dashboard. Apple takes this idea to a whole new level by hiding the applications when you don't want them, and they don't take any system resources unless you can see them. I can't tell you how many times I have already used this to check the weather or even just play around. This is a whole new concept for computer use, and I don't think windows will ever catch up to this one.

All in all, Tiger is an extremely solid operating system release, and I highly encourage you to check it out at www.apple.com/macosx