10.4.2 Review

Hmmm... Mail 2.0 imported everything just fine for me: mailboxes, messages and even the rules. I've had no problems whatsoever with mail.

I'm still on Jaguar! Am I behind the times? What are the additional benefits of me upgrading, besides the computer stealing more of my free time? Widgets? Why do I need to be kept up to date with so much crap? Do I need to be handcuffed even more to the computer than I already am? I mean besides Email, Online Banking and Investments, Digital Photography and reading some world and sports news, I don't use the computer for anything else! You must be all Video Editors, Animators, Spammers, Porn servers or Advertisers or something, right? Otherwise you must have so much to say on your personal Blogs, to let the world REALLY know what you're thinking? OK I know I know I know evertually I have to upgrade...... I wish I had someone to do all the computer stuff for me so I could free myself to do other things like play more golf and go fishing without my tech stuff......

Where to begin? Tiger introduced Mail v.2, which did not automatically import my mailboxes, addresses or anything. I had to spend about 6 hours manually importing all my mailboxes, so if you have a lot of archived mail and mailboxes like I do then Mail v.2 is a pig. It also doesn't import your Mail rules - so all those filters you set up to combat junk mail will all be lost. It also does not consistently follow the settings you make for sounds; sometimes beeping every time it checks for new mail - even though no new mail arrives. iTunes: never consistently remembers what you were listening to last so you always have to scroll through the list upon opening iTunes. System Preferences: Sound refuses to remember that I set the balance of the stereo speakers slightly over to the right, and after a restart the balance will be back in the center again. Also it intermittently forgets what volume setting you left the Mac on before a restart, so that, for example the sound is at full volume after a restart even though it was set on low before. Finder windows STILL do not update either in the foreground or the background, so that if you keep a window organized by Date Modified, it is lying to you until you click on the files you just updated. The Search bar in Finder windows is useless. It does not find partial file names; e.g. try finding ".jpg" in a folder that you KNOW contains .jpg files. It won't find any. SpotLight is way overrated; it is a beta product pretending to be ready for prime time. It looks great - but works inconsistently and does not work in the way a Finder find should do; e.g. having got a list of search results, and then having found several items that seem to fit the description of what it was you were looking for there is no way you can then organize those particular finds in chronological order. Stick with the Finder Find instead. The desktop STILL refuses to remember icon positions after a monitor resolution change, except when you force it to keep organized by name or date, say.

If the technology works...it is obsolete. Though I have had a few bumps and bruises (mostly over the Quicktime 7.0 munching my 6.5 Quicktime Pro and then not letting me use the reinstall 6.5 "on this computer") I love each upgrade and Tiger is no exception. And you are right Rodimus Prime, the grass is greener (or is it blueer?) on this side.

I'm one of those 10.3.9 troglodytes who's waiting for a 10.4.x release that I can feel comfortable with. I get to play in 10.4 on my wife's iMac, so I'm not unaware of Tiger's benefits, but they're not compelling enough to get me to upgrade my big box. Yet. Panther's been good to me.

I wouldn't say that 10.4.2 is as stable as 10.3.9. Tiger still feels unfinished, has too many rough edges for me to be comfortable. And after re-installing the system SEVEN times last weekend, and having had lots of odd stuff happening (applications restarting unbidden, others quitting without a peep, torrents starting and stopping in Azureus) I've taken a step back in time to 10.3.9. It may all be in my mind but I feel a thousand times more comfortable already.

" I still have this problem where if I'm connected to any network shares and I lose my network connection... the whole OS hangs forever and I can't do anything about it except press the power button until it shuts down." I've got this same problem - it drives me nuts. I'm using a dual monitor setup with a remote desktop client running Windows XP professional on my left and Tiger on my right. Been setup this way for the better part of the last 6 months. Roughly 25% of the time I try to copy across the network via a mounted share it just hangs. Force quitting the Finder is useless as that takes down the whole system. Once it happens I just have to force reboot, every time. I'd still be upset about the situation however my 6 month old Windows XP box died - hard on Monday. Smoke and everything. PSU, MOBO and possibly the processor croaked. I'm not looking forward to fixing it nor to reactiving XP for the fifth time in six months. On a brighter note, it did make me realize that while Macs may have their quirks, the grass really is greener on our side. :)

The Jeremy, I did a clean install. I'm gonna do a fresh install again this weekend and see if that helps.

oh and Ben (message #9), how much time do you spend on your mac? I find it hard to believe that anyone spending at least a few hours a day has not run into a single Tiger bug. That first release was more buggy then windowsMe for crying out loud ! Finally with 10.4.2, its as stable as 10.3.9 was.

no more virex, that's correct. just download ClamXav which is free if you're really worried about storing/passing along windows viruses. and forget .Mac, that service is a waste.