Handpicked Software

I’ve been saving up my Tiger impressions, thinking that one day I would sit down and write a more extended review, but posts like this one on Apple Matters keep reminding me of Tiger’s little annoyances. If I don’t get down some of these notes now, I probably never will.

Don’t get me wrong. I love Tiger. It’s the most beautiful OS I’ve ever seen, and I’m not just talking about the RSS Visualizer screen saver. I find myself using Spotlight and Dashboard every day. Core Image Fun House and Quartz Composer are real gems. I haven’t spent much time with it yet, but I think Automator will be a time-saver once I’ve delved into it.

But Tiger also has its flaws. Here are a few of the things that annoy me the most:

1. Safari makes you okay downloads for applications, or you have to manually unstuff downloads.
2. Can’t move icons to the toolbar in System Preferences anymore.
3. My “Always Open With…” preferences aren’t remembered for some files.
4. The iCal icon has a nasty way of reverting back to Jul 17.
5. Several applications now quit unexpectedly when I close them.
6. The interface is more polished, but the proliferation of window styles is becoming annoying. I don’t even know what to call them—there’s Mail’s new look, the transparent palettes in iPhoto, the Platinum look, the Aqua look… Apple used to have consistent UI design. Now, it’s a hodgepodge.

Anyway, like many of you, I await the next update. In the meantime, I’m happy that Tiger seems to run noticeably faster on my machine. And Speech commands actually work (I use it to launch applications; it’s faster than Spotlight). I call my computer Mona (it was Leonardo, but I prefer the Vicki system voice to the others).

“Mona! Mail to Steve Jobs!”