Mac OS X 10.4 is also called Tiger and it is the fifth major release of Apple desktop, Mac OS X, and server operating system for Macintosh systems. It successfully came into the market on 29 April 2005 as the successor to Mac OS X Panther.
It comprises some new features including a fast searching system called Spotlight, a unified theme, a new version of the Safari web browser, a Dashboard, and improved support for 64-bit addressing on Power Mac G5s.
Apple announced a transition to an Intel x86 processor during Tiger’s lifetime, making it the first released Apple operating system to work on Apple-Intel architecture machines.
End User features
- Spotlight
- iChat AV
- Mail 2
- Dashboard
- .Mac syncing
- Quick Time 7
- Xcode 2.0
Spotlight is a search feature that allows users to locate apps and media using a search bar.
iChat AV now supports up to 4 participants in a group video call and up to 10 participants in an audio call.
Mail 2 is now integrated with the spotlight search system and many other new features.
Users can now add and customize widgets giving them fast access to their favourite apps.
Syncing processes are now carried out using .Mac System preferences pan instead of the iSync application.
Apple now has the support of the H.264/AVC codec that offers better videos in terms of quality and scalability
The Cocoa development tool now includes visual modeling and an integrated reference library.
New Applications in Mac OS X Tiger
- Automator: It lets you automate the tasks you do most often. It is simple to create Automator “workflows” by dragging “actions” and choosing options. Then you can share your workflows in several convenient formats.
- Grapher: It’s a new application that efficiently creates 2D and 3D graphs which are similar to that of Graphing Calculator.
- Dictionary: A dictionary and thesaurus application uses the New Oxford American Dictionary, Second Edition. It provides a fast graphical user interface for displaying the dictionary and allows the user to find the dictionary with Spotlight, print definitions, and copy and paste text into documents.
- Quartz Composer: Quartz Composer is a development tool for processing and rendering graphical data.
- Dashboard:Dashboard is a widget application; here Tiger widgets include a dictionary, calculator, world clock, and more.
System Requirements
- 256 MB of RAM
- 3 GB of free disk space; 4 GB if you install the XCode 2 Developer Tools
- Built-in FireWire
- A PowerPC G3, G4, or G5 processor
Graphical User Interface
In every new release of Mac OS X, you can notice Apple modifies the graphical user interface somewhat. In Tiger, the menu bar is displayed at the top of the screen now featured with a colored spotlight button in the upper right corner. In addition, Tiger introduced a new window theme, that is often called Unified and this theme integrates the bar and the toolbar of a window.
