Are you using Tigers big ticket features?

Dashboard - I keep the Weather widget on my desktop as a matter of course. My wife and daughter have taken to just asking me "What is it like outside" before they go anywhere. I use other Dashboard widgets as well, but not as often. Spotlight - I use it whenever I need to find a file I am not sure of the location to. A few times a week, but not more than that. Very handy when you need it, and out of the way when you don't need it. Automator - never have used it. I have some Applescripts already, so haven't found a need for Automator. Dictionary - Use it all the time, how did we live without this built into the OS before? Expose - Use it, but this isn't a Tiger feature, why was it included in this article?

oops, my bad, I didn't see that there was a second page of comments. Ignore my previous post please.

umm any particular reason why my comment wasn't posted???

I have read through most of your comments and this is what I got from it. Spotlight: A quick application launcher for those less used apps that don't receive the special permission of sitting in the dock! I totally agree with this. I only use iSync every few days, but I don't want to put it in my dock, I have bigger and better things down there. Dashboard: A big memory hog that doesn't necessarily provide enough features to be worth using constantly. However I feel that there are plenty of good widgets out there, especially for those online all of the time. My fliker and imageshack widgets are very handy, the others are just used for fun things. I do recognize that it is a little slow currently and hopefully this is solved with my intel mac next year :O. Also, if you are on dial-up dashboard is almost worthless to you, most are just pretty bookmarks allowing you to avoid going to a web page, a nice feature unless you have five or more of these auto-updating widgets. Can you say BOGGGGG. (Thank god for high speed!!!) Expos麠Some of you love it, others hate it! I love it, but only certain parts of it do I find myself using. View desktop is the one I find myself using the most. Mainly when I am downloading tons of crap. Show all windows is ok, I use it mostly as a tool to show off to PC users in the wild. I try to not have more then one window open per application, so I don't use the application window viewer very often. I find Command Tab to be a much quicker application switcher than anything Expos頣an do. But that is Dock utility, not Expos鍊 Automator: Not many normal users seem to use this little guy. I personally have a few different things I use it for. I clean up with Cocktail and I have created a few life posters ( http://www.macilife.com/2005/07/how-to-make-life-poster-tiger-edition.html ). There are many other things it is good for like changing hundreds of file names and arranging them in order or letting it get things done for you quicker then doing them by hand. I find that I use pre made workflows more often than creating my own. What I find most entertaining here is that no one is going to make any changes in the way the mac around. So thanks for reading my log post!

The main reason I'm using Tiger instead of Panther is its support for my DVD burner. I could use PatchBurn, but I don't completely trust it. That's not exactly a "big ticket" feature, but it's important to me. As for the rest: Dashboard: Oh look, I can waste cycles AND play rip offs of old arcade games. Where do I sign up? Expos麠Neat, but like so many of Steve's "gee whiz" showoff toys, for me it's a pointless, unintuitive waste of cycles. I didn't use it in Panther and I've been running Panther since it premiered. Spotlight: I see the promise and I'm starting to use it. "Smart" folders: Not really feeling the love yet, but again, I see the promise so I'm playing with it to see what I can do with them. Automator: I can't use what I don't comprehend, and I don't "get" Automator yet. I'll have to play around with it and see if I can make it do anything genuinely useful. I'm not holding my breath. Not because of a limitation in Automator, but because I'm an idiot where programming and scripting are involved. 8^)

I try to ease the new features into my usual work patterns. And I find that they do help out. Basically for each new feature I try to take one thing from it each week or so and integrate it into my desktop behavior. This week I am trying to use Spotlight more for than just search, but for applicatrion launching. Expos頉 already use quite a bit since it was introduced a while ago. I have a hot corner for show dekstop, and the all windows expos頩s very handy. Automator is my next thing to tackle... find the things that I do on a regular basis and get them into tasks. Actually launchd took precidence over Automator. Dashboard is nice when I get in and get out for some information. I actually didn't use stickies before dashboard as I didn't want them adding clutter to my already cluttered desktop. I think Dashboard is entirely misunderstood by most people and widget developers. There is a fine line in dashboard, and that is the information transaction. You go in get your info and get out, that's what it is designed for. Not to keep you in there for 5-10 minutes, or even to drag you in for asearch box that just returns you to your browser of choice. Still too system resource intensive, hopefully that will change in the future. Overall, they all have their uses, and would make the perfect neighbor, they don't get in the way if you don't want to use them, and they are there to lend a helping hand and are readily avialable to assist when you do.

Dashboard- nice eye candy. Too bad it you have to activate it to see it. And while its active, you can't do anything else. See, there's this little thing called multitasking computing that I'm used too... Throw in the memory issues, and its pretty worthless. Spotlight- I was unimpressed at first... I pretty much knew where to find what I want on my computer. But now I use it to find and launch applications. I used to mostly use the dock (either actual aliases or right-clicking the app folder alias). But Spotlight is MUCH faster than right-clicking the app folder. And now I've reduced the size of my dock by about half(I still have some as a security blanket, besides some of the icons are cool :) ). I also used the "recent items' in the Apple menu (kickin' it old school, System 7.5 style). Spotlight is faster than that too. Expose-Awesome, what can I say? I use it all the time. Finally, I predict big things for Smart Folders. That is an awesome feature.

Expose - Use all the time, since Panther Spotlight - Significantly exceeding expectations. Going to it more and more. Dashboard - Cute but nothing really useful for me. I keep the old calculator in my dock, along with the old stickies app, where they can do good right next to the other apps instead of in their own little world. For everything else of possible use, I find the web sufficient. Automator - I keep looking at it, but yet to find anything I'm compelled to do with it. Safari RSS - Maybe I'm just too accustomed to Bloglines. Never use it.

I use Spotlight and Dashboard all the time. Dashboard does drag some, but my 2GB of ram overcomes it.

I use Spotlight and Dashboard all the time. Dashboard does drag some, but my 2GB of ram overcomes it.