Apple Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger [OLD VERSION]

When OS 10.4 was released much was expected by the consumer and OS 10.4 delivered. Not that it was the perfect release as it was followed up with upgrades but the first release was solid. Stable and easy to use, after installation I found no problems on my mac. And even more so enjoyed the new features that it offers. 10.4 is the final version that can be run on most G3 macs. It will be in demand as consumers look to upgrade their G3s. Many chose not to upgrade when it was released but for different reasons want to move up now. It's solid, dependable and can be upgraded to 10.4.11 for free from Apple's web site.

I'm not a fan of buying a new OS when it first comes out. I'd rather wait until most, if not many, of the bugs have been fixed. My iBook came with OS X Jaguar (10.3.x) preinstalled, and had been upgraded to 10.3.9. When Apple came out with Leopard (10.5), I took the plunge and bought Tiger (10.4.x), and now my iBook is running on 10.4.11, and I've experienced no problems whatsoever. This laptop (12" screen, 1.2 GHz PowerPC G4, 768 MB DDR SDRAM, upgradable to 1.2 GB) is a couple years old (purchased in 2005), and, obvioiusly, uses the old PowerPC processor, but is quite capable of running Leopard should I choose to install it. However, I'm content to run on a slightly older OS, such as this one, knowing that the majority of the bugs experienced with it have been ironed out. My only real complaint so far is that it took an incredible amount of time to install, but it has worked flawlessly ever since. RECOMMENDED!

I bought a used Mac with Panther already on it. I bought Tiger because that was the current O/S release, and since I had no bonafide O/S installer disk, I wanted a safe recovery disk I could use to reboot and rebuild the whole system from if I ever needed it.

This is on a G4 733 MHz, with 768 MB RAM.

Lots of eye candy, zero substance. If you are happy with Panther, don't bother.
After using Tiger for a year, I have yet to see it do anything at all of any use.
The machine does NOT run faster, and
Spotlight? Good God. MAKE IT DIE.

1. Spotlight's drive indexing will either kill your performance (if you let it update often enough to be of any use), or be out of date so it can't find files. TURN IT OFF.

2. Spotlight can't find half the files that are really on your drive. TURN IT OFF.
Even if you get rid of it, and get rid of all its indexes, it STILL will fail to find some files. AMAZING. They took a simple idea like searching through the drive directory for a file name and they broke it.
It took digging around on forums and a lot of screwing around to truly disable it. Now, when I search for a file, it takes longer because it has to actually search the disk, but guess what? It ACTUALLY FINDS THE FILES.

Panther's search dialogs were much simpler, worked faster, and found everything. Spotlight is the single biggest reason to avoid Tiger.

I got Tiger to improve the working of my Powerbook G4 1.5. My Jaguar installation was getting pokey after two years and a clean install with Tiger cleared out the annoying slowdowns in my computer. Before Tiger, my computer would hang when playing large DV files (such as the ones I made in iMovie) but now they run without a hitch even though the hardware is the same. This Tiger upgrade doesn't include some of the apps (games, Quicken, etc.) that my wife has on her new MacBook, but it did include a 30-day trial verion of iWorks which has come in handy!

When I first switched over to the Mac (after years of believing in Windows XP's superiority, mind you), it was a Powerbook G4 with Mac OS X 10.3 Panther. After using it for just a few minutes, I was finally convinced that I was wrong about Mac vs. Windows in a big way. Once you get used to it, OS X is not only easier to use, but it is prettier, more powerful, and far more stable as well. Tiger improves on that platform. My favorite new feature is Dashboard, which brings a whole bunch of handy little apps to your fingertips, such as a calculator, calendar, stock tracker, weather forecast, dictionary, sticky notes, and hundreds more available for download at Apple's website. Spotlight is also a cool feature; certainly better than any other search feature I've used. Microsoft will be coming out with its new Vista OS pretty soon, which basically steals most of OS X's ideas. Personally, I could care less. Give me OS X any day. I will be one of the first in line to buy Leopard when it comes out this spring!