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Friday, April 29, 2005
A HUGE day for Apple today with the release of the latest Mac OS X - version 10.4 - Tiger.
Looking around the internet chat, some see the reported 200 extra 'new' features as little more than an update or upgrade rather than a full blown version. And will be reluctant to fork out the £89 upgrade fee.
I, on the other hand, believe that this is going to be a very significant step. Some of the features in Tiger are really very clever - for example:
:: Spotlight: a kind of a Google for your desktop. Searches for a word or string in folders, files, emails, images, apps and everything - returning results to you sorted by relevance and kind. It's also built-in to the OS, so looks like it will be lightning fast too :-) You don't need it? Really? Suppose you don't use Google on the internet either!
:: Dashboard: A collection of little apps (widgets) on your desktop which give you immediate access to Yellow Pages, weather reports, share prices, flight tracking, dictionary/thesaurus. All single-clicked on and off.
Well worth the money I would say. Moves Apple OS significantly further away from the features offered in the current Windows OS as well. With Microsoft's Longhorn not planned to be available until 2006 - but don't hold your breath - Tiger could offer yet another reason to switch to Mac - go on, you know you want to >:-D
More good news for Apple, it's financial results for FY Q2 were release a couple of weeks ago and makes for good reading. Revenues up 70% on the same period a year ago, a 43% increase in CPU units and a 558% increase in iPods over the year ago quarter. Maybe, just maybe the much talked about iPod halo effect is beginning to kick in.
Still, even though the figures were way over the analysts expectations - on these announcements, Apple's shares dropped 9% :-(( What do you have to do to get a break on Wall Street? What does big Steve have to do?
Well, maybe if he got into Time magazine's Time 100 list of the world's most influential people. So he did B-)
Along with Gordon Brown (but not Tony Blair), heads of Yahoo!, Google, the Dalai Lama and Bill Gates. Bill however, got in due to his outstanding philanthropy rather than his position as the head of Microsoft. That said, he deserves a lot of praise for the charity work he does - but doesn't like to talk about.
.: posted by Ali 3:26 PM
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