Just finished reading Walt’s review of Apple’s new OS upgrade in the Wall Street Journal. It’s filled with cool features, according to Walt, who says it’s “the best and most advanced personal computer operating system on the market, despite a few drawbacks. It leaves Windows XP in the dust.” A few drawbacks, he said? I was struck by this:
The only significant problem I noticed was that the computers seemed to run into slight, but greater-than-normal, delays from time to time. Certain functions, like Spotlight searches and the updated Safari Web browser, were very fast. But with other tasks, I noticed more spinning beach-ball icons, Apple’s symbol for delays, than I had with the prior Panther version of the Mac operating system.
In particular, the built-in e-mail program, Apple Mail, was slower. There was a perceptible lag in opening a new e-mail form, beginning a reply, and displaying the drop-down contact list that appears when you begin typing in an e-mail address.
Apple acknowledges it will need to tweak Tiger to eliminate the delays, and it promises to address the problem within a few months.
I don’t get it. This is shipping software. It costs $129. This problem occurred on all three computers that Walt tested Tiger on. Repeated delays in everyday use of the operating system would drive me nuts (you too, I bet). How would you feel if there was a “noticeable lag” in every single operation of your e-mail program? And this will be fixed within a few months???
I just wonder what the same review would have looked like it this operating system update had been released by a company that was located further north?
Ed Bott 
It would have said, “Finally! No more viruses! No more Trojan horses! No more worms! And the slight delays in the mail app are no more that the ones caused by security utilities in the XP.
Spotlight! Exposé! QuickTime7! Dashboard! Automator! iChat AV! .Mac Sync! Quartz Extreme! Aqua! Bonjour!
This is the best operating system available.”
Well if this was released by a company a little farther noth i would have expected and probably had my expectations realized, that i would get some sort of new virus form. Everytime the campus IT administrators have to dea lwith any sort of virus, the block a lot of ports on campus, yet if someone is running a MAC system, whether a prof or student, the port is immediately opened, because as the tech on the line said, “I have never heard of this happening to a MAC.” And eventually the IT people found out my actualy comp had no virus at all , yet somehow my IP address was reported. I find this amazing yet funnny, but i am not willing to upgrade to Tiger for the same reasons i didnt upgrade to Panther the first few months. There are plenty of problems i am sure needing to be worked out, so i avoid them and wait for an upgraded version to be released that has the few bugs worked out.
Slight dely? shipping software? o yea i forgot… does XP include anything like MAIL built in? I don’t think so….. Does it inculde a built in A/V chat… I dont think so again… Does it have a superfast search engine? nope…. does it get tons of viruses/hax/trojans….. YES!!
So really…. OSX Tiger Owns XP any day… It will also own Vista… O yea i forgot… even LEOPARD comes out before Vista…. No comparison between XP and Tiger