Apple unleashes Tiger

Our Corporate Bureau
11 May 2005

New Delhi: Apple has launched Mac OS X version 10.4 Tiger. Tiger has more than 200 new features and innovations including SpotlightT, a revolutionary desktop search technology that lets users instantly find anything stored on their Mac, including documents, emails, contacts and images; and Dashboard, a new way to instantly access important information like weather forecasts and stock quotes, using a new class of applications called widgets.

Says Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO, "Mac OS X Tiger is the most innovative and secure desktop operating system ever created. Tiger's groundbreaking new features like Spotlight and Dashboard will change the way people use their computers, and drive our competitors nuts trying to copy them."

Spotlight is Apple's new lightning fast way for users to find virtually anything stored on their Mac. For instance, users can instantly find songs in iTunes by name, artist or album, Spotlight searches the contents inside documents and information about those documents, or meta data, to find just about anything-emails, contacts, appointments, images, PDFs, and almost any type of document, including Microsoft Office documents - then automatically organises and instantly displays the results.

Because Spotlight technology is built right into the core of the operating system, it automatically updates results instantly whenever files change and enables developers to incorporate Spotlight technology into their applications. Apple has incorporated Spotlight search technology into several Tiger applications including mail, address book, finder and system preferences, and several third party developers are expected to introduce applications with Spotlight search technology in the coming months.

Dashboard offers new accessory applications called widgets that appear instantly to give users immediate access to information like stock quotes, weather forecasts, airline flight tracking, unit of measure, currency conversions and a phone book.

A single click activates a user's preferred Dashboard widgets with up-to-the-second information. Tiger packs are shipped with 14 widgets, and because Dashboard is based on standard web technologies such as HTML and JavaScript, it's easy for third party developers to create new widgets that users can easily add to their Dashboards.