Yesterday I received and installed the new Mac OS X Tiger. It took a while to install – almost an hour, altogether. So far I’m rather pleased with it.
Tiger has tons of new features, most of which I will never use. Here are the ones I like, as well as the biggest disappointment:
- PDF annotations. Whenever I undertake any research project I’m always collecting tons of pdf files. While it helps that most of these are full-text searchable, I’ve always hated not being able to attach notes or metadata to pdfs. Tiger includes a new version of the Preview pdf viewer which allows me to make annotations directly on PDF files. Even better, text entered in these annotations becomes searchable. Sweet! So now I can use notes to enter pseudo-metadata etc. (OK, I know Adobe Acrobat Professional allows you to annotate and create metadata for pdfs. However, I’m not about to pay $449 for that!)
- Desktop search. The new Spotlight feature is a built-in desktop search. It’s fast, comprehensive, and easy. I suspect that building the index for this is a big part of what made the Tiger installation take so long, but it’s worth it.
- Personal wiki. OK, this didn’t exactly come built-in with Tiger, but it’s really cool and I couldn’t use it before Tiger. There’s a new Tiger feature called the Dashboard, which is basically an easily accessed set of widgets: “mini-applications that let you perform common tasks and provide you with fast access to information.” A bunch of widgets come pre-installed. However, I checked out the widget library and found Wiketywidget. I’ve been playing around with this, and it’s working pretty well so far as an adjunct to my increasingly overtaxed wetware. (What’s a wiki?)
BIGGEST DISAPPOINTMENT: SAFARI RSS
The Mac web browser Safari now includes a built-in feed reader called Safari RSS. It’s slick. The display is very readable and usable.
The only problem is, it doesn’t allow you to import an existing list of feeds in the form of an OPML file. For me, that’s a show-stopper. In my current favorite feed reader, Sage (an extension to my preferred web browser Firefox), I have a list of more than 400 feed subscriptions. I wouldn’t mind trying Safari’s feed reader, but I must to be able to easily import my existing subscriptions. No dice.
Apparently there’s a hack to accomplish an OPML import, but I haven’t been able to make it work. Anyway, that feature should be built in to ANY feed reader. Period.
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