Mac OS X v10.4 explained

Mac OS X version 10.4 “Tiger” was the fifth major release of Mac OS X, Apple’s desktop and server operating system for Macintosh computers. Tiger was released to the public on 29 April 2005 for US$129.95 as the successor to Mac OS X v10.3 “Panther”, which was released 18 months earlier. Tiger was superseded by Mac OS X v10.5 “Leopard” on 26 October 2007, after 30 months, making Mac OS X v10.4 the longest running version of Mac OS X.^[1] Some of the new features include a fast searching system called Spotlight, a new version of the Safari web browser, Dashboard, a new ‘Unified’ theme, and improved support for 64-bit addressing on Power Mac G5s.

Mac OS X v10.4 “Tiger” was included with all new Macintosh computers, and was also available as an upgrade for existing Mac OS X users, or users of supported pre-Mac OS X systems. The server edition, Mac OS X Server 10.4, was also available for some Macintosh product lines. Tiger is also the first version of any released Apple operating system to work on Apple-Intel architecture machines (Apple machines using x86 processors). The Apple TV, as released in March 2007, ships with a customized version of Mac OS X v10.4 branded "Apple TV OS" that replaces the usual graphical user interface with an updated version of Front Row.^[2]

Six weeks after its official release, Apple had delivered 2 million copies of Tiger, representing 16 % of all Mac OS X users. Apple claimed that Tiger was the most successful Apple OS release in the company’s history.^[3] At the World Wide Developers Conference on June 11, 2007, Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced that out of the 22 million Mac OS X users, more than 67 % were using Tiger.^[4] Tiger was supported until November 2007 because of the release of Mac OS X Leopard 10.5 ^[5], after which only security-related updates to Tiger were produced.

System Requirements

Mac OS X v10.4 was initially available in a PowerPC edition, with an Intel edition released beginning at 10.4.6; there is no universal version of the client operating system, although Tiger Server was made available on a universal DVD from version 10.4.7. While Apple shipped the PowerPC edition bundled with PowerPC-based Macs and also sold it as a separate retail box, the only way to get the Intel version was bundled with an Intel-based Mac. However, there were still unofficial places to buy the Intel version such as eBay, although the only Intel discs produced were the gray-colored "restore" DVDs supplied with new Macs that will only install on the model of Mac that they are intended for, unlike the retail DVD that can be used on any Mac supported by Tiger.

The system requirements of the PowerPC edition are:^[6]

• A PowerPC G3, G4, or G5 processor running at 333 MHz or more
• Built-in FireWire
• At least 256 MB of RAM (512 MB or 1 GB recommended)
• At least 3 GB of available hard disk space; 4 GB of disk space including the Xcode 2 Tools
• DVD drive (CD media exchange was available; offer ended 19 March 2007)

Tiger removed support for older New World ROM Macs such as the original iMacs and iBooks that were supported in Panther; however it is possible to install Tiger on these Macs using third-party software (such as XPostFacto) that overrides the checks made at the beginning of the installation process. Likewise, machines such as beige Power Mac G3s and “Wall Street” PowerBook G3s that were dropped by Panther (the preceding release of Mac OS X) can also be made to run both Panther and Tiger in this way. Also Tiger can be installed on unsupported Macs by installing it on a supported Mac, then swapping hard drives.

History

Mac OS X v10.4 “Tiger” was originally previewed by Apple CEO Steve Jobs in his keynote speech at the Worldwide Developers Conference on 28 June 2004. Later in December 2004, several non-commercial developer releases of Tiger were leaked onto the Internet. As a result, Apple sued the file sharers who were distributing Tiger for free by using BitTorrent.^[7] On 12 April 2005, it was announced that Tiger would be officially released worldwide on 29 April. All Apple Stores around the world held Tiger seminars, presentations and demos.

On [6 June 2005 at the Worldwide Developers Conference in [[San Francisco]], Jobs announced that almost two million copies had been sold in the six weeks since Tiger’s release, making it the most successful operating system release in Apple’s history. It was also revealed that Mac OS X had been engineered from its inception to work with Intel’s x86 line of processors in addition to the PowerPC, the CPU for which the operating system had always been publicly marketed. In June 2005, Apple announced plans to release the first x86-based computers in June 2006, transitioning the rest of their computers to x86 by June 2007. On 10 January 2006, Apple released their first iMac and MacBook Pro featuring an Intel Core Duo processor, and announced that the entire Apple product line would be transitioned to Intel processors by the end of 2006. Apple then released the Mac Pro and announced the new Xserve on 8 August 2006, completing the Intel transition in 210 days, rather than the full year that they had planned, and roughly ten months ahead of the original schedule.

Tiger is the first version of Mac OS X to be supplied on a DVD rather than on CDs, although the DVD could originally be exchanged for CDs for $9.95. It is also the first version of Mac OS to have an update version number ending with a value greater than 9, with the 10.4.10 and 10.4.11 updates.

New and changed features

End-user features

Apple advertises that Mac OS X v10.4 Tiger has 200+ features, including:

• Spotlight – Spotlight is a full-text and metadata search engine, which can search everything from Word documents to iCal calendars to Address Book cards, as well as any text within PDF files. The feature is also used to build the concept of smart folders into the Finder. Spotlight will index files as they are saved, so they can be quickly and easily found through a search-as-you-type box in the menu bar.
• iChat AV – The new iChat AV 3.0 in Tiger supports up to four participants in a video conference and ten participants in an audio conference. It also now supports communication using the Jabber protocol. A Jabber server called iChat Server is included on Mac OS X Tiger Server.
• Safari RSS – The new Safari 2.0 web browser in Tiger features a built-in reader for RSS and Atom web syndication that can be accessed easily from an RSS button in the address bar of the web browser window. An updated version of Safari, included as part of the free Mac OS X v10.4.3 update, can also pass the Acid2 web standards test.
• Mail 2 – The new version of Mail.app email client included in Tiger featured an updated interface, "Smart Mailboxes" which utilize the Spotlight search system, parental controls, as well as several other features.

• Dashboard – The Dashboard is a new mini-applications layer based on HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, which returns the desk accessories concept to the Mac OS. These accessories are known as widgets. It comes with several widgets such as Weather, World Clock, Unit Converter, and Dictionary/Thesaurus. More are available for free online. Its similarity to the Konfabulator application caused some criticism.^[8]
• Automator – A scripting tool called Automator to link applications together to form complex automated workflows (written in AppleScript, Cocoa, or both). Automator comes with a complete library of actions for several applications that can be used together to make a Workflow.
• VoiceOver – VoiceOver is an accessibility interface that offers the user magnification options, keyboard control and spoken English descriptions of what is happening on screen. VoiceOver enables users with visual impairment the ability to use applications via spoken commands. It also allows a user to work collaboratively with other users on a single Mac by allowing multiple users give voice commands to scroll text, etc. VoiceOver is capable of reading aloud the contents of files including web pages, mail messages and word processing files. The complete keyboard navigation lets the user control the computer with the keyboard rather than mouse, a menu is displayed in a window showing all the available keyboard commands that can be used.
• A complete built-in Dictionary/Thesaurus based on the New Oxford American Dictionary, Second Edition, accessible through an application, Dictionary, a Dashboard widget, and as a system-wide command (see below).
• .Mac syncing – Though this is not a new feature, .Mac syncing in Tiger is much improved over Panther. Syncing tasks in Tiger are now accomplished through the .Mac system preferences pane rather than the iSync application.
• QuickTime 7 – A new version of Apple’s multimedia software has support for the new H.264/AVC codec which offers better quality and scalability than other video codecs. This new codec is used by iChat AV for clearer video conferencing. New classes within Cocoa provide full access to QuickTime for Cocoa application developers. The new QuickTime 7 player application bundled with Mac OS X Tiger now includes more advanced audio and video controls as well as a more detailed Information dialog, and the new player has been rebuilt using Apple’s Cocoa API to take advantage of the new technologies more easily.
• New Unix features – New versions of cp, mv, and rsync which support files with resource forks. Command-line support for features like the above-mentioned Spotlight are also included.
• Xcode 2.0 – Xcode 2.0, Apple’s Cocoa development tool now includes visual modelling, an integrated Apple Reference Library and graphical remote debugging.

New applications in Tiger

• Automator – Automator uses workflows to process repetitive tasks automatically
• Grapher – Grapher is a new application capable of creating 2D and 3D graphs similar to that of Graphing Calculator.
• Dictionary – A dictionary and thesaurus program which uses the New Oxford American Dictionary. It has a fast GUI for displaying the Dictionary, and allows the user to search the dictionary with Spotlight, to print definitions, and to copy and paste text into documents. Dictionary also provides a Dictionary service in the Application menu, and Cocoa and WebKit provides a global keyboard shortcut (ctrl-⌘-D by default) for all applications that display text with them. Its use was furthered in the next version of OS X by providing definitions from Wikipedia. The Dictionary application is a more feature-filled version of the Dictionary widget.
• Quartz Composer – Quartz Composer is a development tool for processing and rendering graphical data.
• AU Lab – AU Lab is a developer application for testing and mixing Audio Units.

Improvements

• An upgraded kernel with optimized kernel resource locking and access control lists, and with support for 64-bit userland address spaces on machines with 64-bit processors.^[9]
• An updated libSystem with both 32-bit and 64-bit versions; combined with the aforementioned kernel change, this allows individual applications to address more than 4GB of memory when run on 64-bit processors, although an application using Apple libraries or frameworks other than libSystem would need to have two processes, one running the 64-bit code and one running the code that requires other libraries and frameworks.^{[9] [10]}
• A new startup daemon called launchd that allows for faster boots.
• The printing dialog in Tiger now features a drop down menu for creating PDFs, sending PDFs to Mail, and other PDF related actions. However, the user interface has been criticized for creating a hybrid widget that looks like a plain button but acts like a pop-up menu. This is one of only three places in the entire Mac OS X interface where such an element appears.
• Dock menus now have menu items to open an application at login, or to remove the icon from the dock.
• The Window menu in the Finder now features a "Cycle Through Windows" menu item.
• The Get Info window for items in the Finder now includes a "More Info" section that includes Spotlight information tags such as Image Height & Width, when the file was last opened, and where the file originated.
• Early development of resolution independence. Apple notes that this will be a user-level feature in a future version of Mac OS X.^[11] Among the changes, the maximum size of icons has been increased to 256x256. However, the Finder does not yet support this size.

Technologies

• A new graphics processing API, Core Image, leveraging the power of the available accelerated graphics cards.

Core Image allows programmers to easily leverage programmable GPUs for fast image processing for special effects and image correction tools. Some of the included Image Units included are Blur, Color Blending, Generator Filters, Distortion Filters, Geometry Filters, Halftone features and much more.

• A new data persistence API, Core Data, that makes it easier for developers to handle structured data in their applications.

The Mac OS X Core Data API helps developers create data structures for their applications. Core Data provides undo, redo and save functions for developers without them having to write any code.

• A new video graphics API, Core Video, which leverages Core Image to provide real-time video processing.

Apple’s Motion real-time video effects program takes advantage of Core Video in Mac OS X Tiger. Core Video lets developers easily integrate real-time video effects and processing into their applications.

• Core Audio integrates a range of audio functionality directly into the operating system.

Interface differences

In every major new revision of Mac OS X, Apple alters the graphical user interface somewhat. In Tiger the menu bar displayed at the top of the screen now features a colored Spotlight button in the upper right corner; the menu itself has a smoother 'glassy' texture to replace the faint pinstripes in 10.3.

Also of note, 10.4 introduces a new window theme, often described as ‘Unified’. A variation on the standard, non-brushed metal theme used since the introduction of Mac OS X, this theme integrates the title bar and the toolbar of a window. A prominent example of an application that utilizes this theme is Mail.

Tiger trademark lawsuit

Shortly before the release of Mac OS X x10.4, the computer retailer TigerDirect.com, Inc. filed a lawsuit against Apple, alleging that Apple infringed TigerDirect.com’s trademark with the Mac OS X Tiger operating system.^[12]

The following is a quotation from TigerDirect.com’s court memorandum:

Apple Computer’s use of its infringing family of Tiger marks to expand sales of products besides its operating system software is already evident — for example, Apple Computer is offering free iPods and laptops as part of its Tiger World Premiere giveaway. In short, notwithstanding its representation to the PTO that it would only use Tiger in connection with their unique computer operating system software, Apple Computer has in recent weeks used a family of Tiger marks in connection with a substantially broader group of products and services, including the very products and services currently offered by Tiger Direct under its famous family of Tiger marks.^[13]

The judge in the case ruled in Apple’s favor.^[14]

Support for Intel processors

At the 2005 Worldwide Developers Conference, Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced that Apple would begin selling Mac computers with Intel processors in 2006. To allow developers to begin producing software for these Intel-based Macs, Apple made Developer Transition Kits available for sale which included a version of Mac OS X v10.4.1 designed to run on x86 processors.

This build includes Apple’s Rosetta—a translation process that allows Intel processor versions of the OS to run PPC software with little penalty. This is contrasted with the current Mac OS 9 Classic mode, which uses comparably larger amounts of system resources.

Soon after the Developer Transition Kits began shipping, copies of Tiger x86 leaked onto file sharing networks. Although Apple had implemented a Trusted Computing DRM scheme in the transition hardware and OS in an attempt to stop people installing Tiger x86 on non-Apple PCs,OSx86 project had soon managed to remove this restriction.^[15] As Apple released each update with newer safeguards to prevent its use on non-Apple hardware, hacked versions were released that circumvented Apple’s safeguards. However, with the release of 10.4.5, 10.4.6, and 10.4.7 the hacked versions continued to use the kernel from the 10.4.4 because later kernels have hardware locks and depend heavily on Extensible Firmware Interface. By late 2006, the 10.4.8 kernel was cracked.^[16]

At MacWorld San Francisco 2006, Jobs announced the immediate availability of Mac OS X v10.4.4, the first publicly available release of Mac OS X Tiger compiled for both PowerPC and Intel x86 based machines.

Version history

Mac OS X version	build	release date	notes
10.4.0	8A428	29 April 2005	retail
10.4.1	8B15	16 May 2005	Apple Download Page
10.4.2	8C46	12 July 2005	Apple Download Page
10.4.2	8E102	12 October 2005	exclusively for Front Row iMac G5 released on same date
10.4.2	8E45	19 October 2005	exclusively for PowerBook G4s released on same date
10.4.2	8E90	19 October 2005	exclusively for Power Mac G5 Dual and Quad released on same date
10.4.3	8F46	31 October 2005	Apple Download Page. Included in updated retail copies
10.4.4	8G32 for PowerPC 8G1165 for Intel	10 January 2006	Apple Download Page
10.4.5	8H14 for PowerPC 8G1454 for Intel	14 February 2006	Apple Download Page
10.4.6	8I127 for PowerPC 8I1119 for Intel	3 April 2006	Apple Download Page (PowerPC / Intel) 8I127 included in latest retail copies
10.4.7	8J135 for PowerPC 8J2135a for Intel	27 June 2006	Apple Download Page (PowerPC / Intel)
10.4.7	8K1079	7 August 2006	exclusively for Mac Pro released the same date
10.4.7	8N5107	7 August 2006	exclusively for Apple TV (formerly codenamed iTV)[17]
10.4.8	8L127 for PowerPC 8L2127 for Intel	29 September 2006	Apple Download Page (PowerPC / Intel)
10.4.9	8P135 for PowerPC 8P2137 for Intel	13 March 2007	Apple Download Page (PowerPC / Intel)
10.4.10	8R218 for PowerPC 8R2218 for Intel	20 June 2007	Apple Download Page (PowerPC / Intel)
10.4.11	8S165 for PowerPC 8S2167 for Intel	14 November 2007	Apple Download Page (PowerPC / Intel)

External links

• Ars Technica Mac OS X 10.4 Review and Overview
• Mac OS X Tiger 'Developer' Overview

Notes and References

1. News: Knight. Dan. Leopard Delayed to October. And the Bad Thing Is?. LowEnd Mac. Cobweb Publishing, Inc.. 2007-04-13. 2007-12-09.
2. Web site: Apple TV OS successfully booted on Macs. 27 March 2007. MacNN. 2007-04-15.
3. Web site: WWDC 2005 Keynote Live Update. Peter Cohen and Jason Snell. Macworld.com. 6 June 2005. 2006-07-10.
4. Web site: WWDC 2007 Keynote. Apple Inc.. 11 June 2007.
5. [Mac OS X v10.5]
6. Web site: System Requirements. http://web.archive.org/web/20070606013542/http://www.apple.com/macosx/upgrade/requirements.html. 2007-06-06. Apple. Apple. 2006-07-10.
7. News: Apple sues 'Tiger' file sharers. BBC News. BBC. 2004-12-22. 2007-12-09.
8. Web site: Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger. 17. John Siracusa. 28 April 2005. 2006-06-11.
9. Web site: Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger. 4. John Siracusa. 28 April 2005. ArsTechnica.com. 2007-02-25.
10. Web site: Developing 64-bit applications. Apple. 6 March 2006. Apple Developer Connection. 2007-03-05.
11. Web site: Resolution Independent UI. Apple Developer Connection. 2006-07-10.
12. Web site: Apple sued over "Tiger," injunction sought. AppleInsider Staff. 28 April 2005. AppleInsider. 2006-07-10.
13. Web site: Some points for TigerDirect. lawyerguy. 28 April 2005. Slashdot. 2006-07-10.
14. Web site: Court sides with Apple over “Tiger” trademark dispute. Kasper Jade. 13 May 2005. AppleInsider. 2006-08-10.
15. Web site: Mac Hacks Allow OS X on PCs. Mark Baard. 12 August 2005. Wired News. 2006-07-10.
16. Web site: Mac OS X 10.4.8 runs on any PC.... Tony Smith. 25 October 2006. Reg Hardware (The Register). 2006-12-16.
17. http://wiki.awkwardtv.org/wiki/index.php?title=Apple_TV_OS_10.4.7 Apple TV OS 10.4.7 - AwkwardTV