Practical Mac / Glenn Fleishman
Nimble new 'Tiger' from Apple lands on its feet

E-mail this article Print this article Search archive Most e-mailed articles

"Tiger" is the name of the next release of Mac OS X, Apple Computer announced this week, following its habit of naming its Unix-based operating system after big cats like Puma (10.1), Jaguar (10.2) and Panther (10.3).

Tiger brings to mind an eponymous William Blake poem, which begins "Tiger, tiger burning bright." Apple has never been better poised to make its core users happier or to find a broader audience.

But what's missing from Panther that only Tiger can bring?

Apple's additions to Panther included an overall speed boost, quick window hiding and showing, fast user switching for machines shared by multiple users, support for more printers, including those shared via Windows, and better corporate-security support for remote and wireless networks. It also included iChat AV as a basic feature.

Panther has been mostly perfected through microreleases — it's up to version 10.3.3 — that eliminated early design mistakes in file sharing and kept certain new features from working.

Apple hasn't reached the end of the road as to what an operating system can provide, but the maturity of Mac OS X makes it harder to compile a wish list that isn't made up entirely of small feature improvements and bug fixes or complaints about iSync.

I'd like to hear from readers about substantial features they would like to see in a future release that aren't available from Mac software developers.

Music to your (and their) ears: Apple has sold 70 million songs since it introduced iTunes Music Store a year ago and is on track to sell 140 million in the next 12 months.

Prices for songs remain generally 99 cents for a track or $9.99 per album. In a conference call, Chief Executive Steve Jobs disputed published reports that song and album prices had increased.
 
That conference call served to unveil iTunes 4.5, which has a surprising number of new features and terms for a modest version-number change.

Apple changed its contract terms for songs purchased from the iTunes store. Previously, purchased songs could be played on up to three authorized computers; that number was bumped up to five.

Authorization is limited to a specific piece of hardware, not the contents of a hard drive. This becomes important when you migrate your files from an older to a newer Mac, your Macintosh dies and has to be replaced or if you store music on an external hard drive.

You can deauthorize a machine via iTunes, but once you no longer have access to the original machine, you have to work through Apple to regain that authorization (www.apple.com/support/itunes/authorization.html).

Apple reduced the number of audio CDs you can burn from playlists that contain purchased songs from 10 to seven. A playlist is defined as a set of songs in any order, according to an Apple spokesperson. But change the set by even a single song being added or removed, and you can burn another seven. (You can also rip back the audio CD you produced to convert the songs to freely burnable MP3s.)

You can now publish playlists via iTunes to share with friends; Apple calls this an iMix. Friends can view your playlist when you send them an announcement e-mail via the service and purchase all the songs on it with a single click.

An earlier iTunes feature that lets you copy URLs that point to iTunes locations works with iMixes as well: Command-click on the name or album mosaic for the iMix and choose Copy iTunes Music Store URL to link to the set of songs via a Web page or in e-mail.

Apple has solved part of its incompatibility with the Windows Media Audio (WMA) format files. Even the Windows version of iTunes can't play them. iTunes 4.5 adds an import feature to convert WMA music not protected by license restrictions into the quality AAC format.

You can also now rip audio into a lossless format that Apple developed. It cuts the size of a CD-quality audio file in half; a typical audio CD requires about 10 megabytes per minute. A comparable MP3 or AAC version would cut the size to a tenth but lose fidelity.

Printing jewel-case liners for burned audio CDs is now a single-button operation. You can use Apple's database of album covers or upload your own to create automatic mosaics of mixed songs. The print feature has a number of options to create a track list with details.

There is also a new section for browsing for music features, 1,000 radio stations and their most recently played songs, in no identifiable play order. In the Seattle area, offerings are limited to rock, pop and country stations. This reflects the tracking service that Apple must be using to provide these listings, which typically omits college, alternative, and classical stations because these stations often don't provide (or even create) preset lists for a day's broadcast.

iTunes 4.5 works under Mac OS X 10.1.5 or later and Windows XP or 2000 and is a free download for both platforms (apple.com/itunes).

Glenn Fleishman writes the Practical Mac column for Personal Technology and about technology in general for The Seattle Times and other publications. Send questions to gfleishman@seattletimes.com.

More columns at www.seattletimes.com/columnists