The first time I installed a pre-release version of Tiger, I was worried. Unlike most people, who may be concerned about whether or not their machine will work properly afterward, I had an entirely different worry: who would need my ebook about upgrading if the process works this well? Apple clearly paid a great deal of attention to the installer, which is far better in Tiger than in any previous version of Mac OS X

Much will be written about Spotlight, one of Tiger's marquee features that takes system-wide search from a time-consuming annoyance to an efficient part of everyone's workflow

Think of Tiger's new Dashboard feature as a constantly running pseudo-application. It is constantly running in the sense that you cannot quit it; it is a pseudo-application in the sense that it isn't a distinct process (it's really an aspect of the Dock) and in the sense that (like the Dock) it behaves differently from any other application. Dashboard is always in one of two states

The history of the Mac is paved with Apple's attempts to enable ordinary users to tap the programmable power of their own computers. Apple events allowed applications to tell each other what to do

Apple Releases iTunes 4.8 -- Apple today released iTunes 4.8, a free download with minimal documentation. According to the ReadMe file, "iTunes 4.8 includes new Music Store features and support for transferring contacts and calendars from your computer to your iPod," noting that the latter feature requires Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger

Last year I "attended" a briefing with a few Apple representatives while sitting in my office chair in Seattle. They were in Cupertino, and thanks to the video chat capabilities of iChat AV, we had a face-to-face conversation

Last week, Apple released Mac OS X 10.4.1 Update for the just-released Mac OS X 10.4 "Tiger" operating system. (And, of course, Apple did so within minutes of our publishing TidBITS-780

In a week that saw a spate of Apple updates, the company's largest was Mac OS X 10.4.2, which incorporated a number of fixes to improve reliability and compatibility

Apple has released Mac OS X 10.4.3, the latest update to its Tiger operating system. Two versions are available: one, the "Delta" update, updates Mac OS X 10.4.2 to 10.4.3, while the other "Combo" update brings either Mac OS X 10.4 or 10.4.1 to version 10.4.3

Mac OS X 10.4.4 Released -- Apple pushed out Mac OS X 10.4.4 last week, adding universal binary (for Intel-processor compatibility) components and resolving a number of problems with Safari, iChat, and other system resources

Mac OS X 10.4.5 Fixes Nits -- Apple last week released Mac OS X 10.4.5, a bug-fix update that offers oodles of small changes. Most notable are a fix that prevents Safari from crashing when deleting AOL email messages via AOL webmail, proper functioning of Apple's IPsec VPN client with Cisco servers whether or not NAT (Network Address Translation) is used, a fix for synchronizing with an iDisk larger than 4 GB, and a fix that enables some previously problematic Epson printers to be used successfully via an AirPort Extreme base station

Apple Releases Mac OS X 10.4.6 Update -- Just as we were finalizing this issue, Apple released Mac OS X 10.4.6 Update, which appears to be a massive, miscellaneous bug-fix update

Apple Releases Mac OS X 10.4.7 Update -- Apple last week released Mac OS X 10.4.7, a free update to Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, with a variety of improvements and bug fixes