Tiger has now been officially released, and I got my copy at 6:15 p.m. local time in Pasadena. Installed it in store, and played with it the whole time.
Spotlight is amazing. Really instant search. It is *wicked* fast! Much faster than the beta version I tried out on a friend’s computer, and that was already fast. It indexes everything. When it finishes indexing my backup/external hard drive, I’ll see just how good it is, and report back here.
Dashboard also exceeded my expectations. It is fast on my iBook, and not just beautiful, but also useful. At a touch of a key, I can gather all the tidbits of information I need, like weather forecasts, airline flight status, stocks, times around the world, and can also search in the built-in dictionary, do simple calculations, convert units, search in the yellow pages, and much more. Other features can be added by installing third party widgets.
Safari RSS is simply stunning in its speed and the new features. It is now even faster than the original Safari, despite new features. The most remarkable being the RSS capabilities. I can visit a site with an RSS feed, Safari would find it and display a little icon on the right side of the address bar, and if you click on it, the built-in RSS reader would go to that feed. By doing a simple drag-and-drop, you can then bookmark the RSS feed, and Safari would put a number by the feed to show new entries. The whole thing is done elegantly, and is very easy to use.
Other new features that others find great and I have yet to explore include the new Mail.app, iChat, Address Book, iCal, Automator, the new Preview, and Xcode 2. I’ll be beginning to use these when I really start using Tiger to its fullest, and I’ll write something if I find anything I like about these new upgrades and applications.
