Posted on 04/29/2005 10:19:17 PM PDT by Swordmaker
Some people just aren't frightened by the prospect of big felines on the loose.
Hundreds of Mac users in the SoHo neighborhood of Manhattan certainly didn't seem to be, while they stood patiently in line and watched a man in a cat suit dance to the tune of "Eye of the Tiger," promoting the debut of Apple's new operating system.
The scene was repeated at Apple Stores from coast to coast at 6 p.m. local time for the worldwide unveiling of Tiger, the latest update to OS X. In New York, people had queued up in an ever-renewing line for nearly three city blocks around the Prince Street store in order to purchase the $129 update for their home computer systems.
Across the country in San Francisco, the line outside the Apple Store snaked up Stockton Street wrapping around to O'Farrell. Ten minutes before the San Francisco opened its doors, more than 200 people were lined up, waiting to get their hands on Tiger and its promised 200 features and enhancements.
Customers standing in line on Friday evening seemed particularly excited about the various new features Tiger is offering. One of them was Willie Fuchs, a 56-year-old graphic artist from Queen who sat comfortably in a foldout chair at the front of the SoHo queue. Fuchs arrived on the spot at 2:45 p.m. and read the iPod photo user's guide to pass the time.
Was there a special reason he wanted to be the first in the store?
"Somebody has to be number one," he said with a smile, adding, "I like the Spotlight and the Safari RSS. Plus, it has, like, a total of 200 new features. It's really worth it."
Mike Davidson, a high school teacher who had come all the way from Rutherford, New Jersey, to compete with Fuchs for the choice spot at the front of the line, agreed. "I'm excited about every one of the 200 features," he said. "I'm really hoping that the Spotlight feature makes my life easier."
In San Francisco, first-in-line honors went to Mario Ortiz, who showed up at the Apple Store two hours before the Tiger event. Ortiz, from San Francisco, had ordered a copy of OS X 10.4 from Amazon.com, but the software hadn't arrived yet; he decided to come down to the San Francisco store to get his hands on a copy.
"I've pretty much been an Apple fan for a while," said Ortiz, adding that he makes it a habit to be among the first adapters of Mac operating systems. "I want to keep up the tradition."
Right behind Ortiz was San Franciscan David Dellinger, who came to the Apple Store even though he planned to wait a week or two before installing Tiger to "let the dust settle."
"I had never come to a launch event before," said Dellinger, who was eager to try out the latest version of iChat AV. "Hands down, the quality [of iChat's video] is so much better than what's out there."
Andrew Taylor and his wife may have travelled the farthest to be a part of the San Francisco launch -- they're on vacation from England and decided to take advantage of their close proximity to an Apple Store. "We don't have this back home, so it's good to be in San Francisco," Taylor said.
Automator is the feature that most excites Taylor. "As a tool, the opportunities are just endless," he said.
Other Mac users created their own excitement. In New York, 14-year-old Richard Hart stood out from the rest of the crowd by donning a Winnie the Pooh costume. "I tried to buy a Tigger costume, but I couldn't find one," explained Hart, who's hoping Tiger will speed up his work on documentary about the industrialization of Long Island. "It's a little 'out there,' but most of the people here are."
Costumes weren't just restricted to customers. At the San Francisco Apple Store, employee Nikki Bongard donned a set of ears and pair of Tiger-stripped sleeves to help greet patrons. "You've got to get into the spirit," she said.
More than just the prospect of trying and buying a brand new operating system brought out Mac partisans. Apple employees also handed out scratcher cards to some of the early arrivals. At a minimum, customers won a free song download from the iTunes Music Store; other prizes included assorted iPods, AirPort Express hubs, and 15-inch PowerBooks.
Although most people in the queue were excited to buy the new software, others standing outside the store seemed less sure why they needed to be there. In New York, Joyce Bautista freely admitted that, after seeing all the new features Tiger offers, she thought, "I don't need any of that."
"I just learned that I'm supposed to get it, otherwise my iPod's not going to work," she said, adding in a whisper, "I don't even have the Internet at home. This is all in the pursuit of the iPod."
Meanwhile, some passersby outside the SoHo store looked on in bewilderment at the ever-growing line of Tiger-buyers and cheering Apple store employees (complete with a dancing man in a Tiger suit). One woman who walked by shrugged and said, "Maybe there's a celebrity."
Little did she know that, for devoted Mac users, there are few bigger stars than Tiger right now.
[Philip Michaels contributed to this report from San Francisco.]
I got mine by FedEx at 6:30PM, Nyah, Nyah, Nyah.... ;^)>
If you want on or off the Mac Ping List, Freepmail me.
The I-Product Cult rejoices!
Maybe it's just my connection, but the iTunes Music Store seems to be running very slow right now. They gave away a lot of free music prizes at the Apple Stores tonight.
Well you couldn't pay me enough to stand in line for Tiger. I mean like it has what, about 4% of the Mac market. And how many programs have been written for it? It's just an operating system for God sake! BTW, I object to your snooty, "I got mine at six thirty" attitude. Hate it, hate it, hate it! (breathing into a paper bag while typing "GET A LIFE")
Well, some of us just got it... and some don't got it... ;^)>
Note the goatee on the emoticon!
Ha, ha, I was going to post this, you beat me to it.
White courtesy phone.
(note the adorable clown nose)
I must also admit, Dashboard is great, I thought it would annoy me.
Still backing up...
LOL!.
Risin' up, back on the street.....
dadadadadadadada DUNT dunt dunt daaaaaaa...
From Swordmaker, now coming at ya from the back of the TIGER!
Installation went very smoothly.
When upgrading or installing, you can save a lot of time by selecting the Custom Install option and turning off a lot of the foreign languages and keyboard layouts you won't need... like Korean and the several flavors of Chinese.
Don't believe the time remaining clock during installation (I don't know why they bother including it on any computer... it is never accurate!)... it either exagerates or underestimates the time. It started out saying 60 minutes. Dropped to 50 minutes after doing the initial core installation and then climbed back to 54 minutes... but dropped about four minutes later to say 5 minutes... which took about 34 minutes to finish. I don't think it counts the installation of all those languages in its timing.
Safari was installed in less time than it takes for Netscape 7 to boot...
A word of warning... The default for the system's background is a random picture from your Pictures folder - if you have photos or graphics in your home directory's PICTURES folder, you will find them randomly popping up on your screen blanker or as your background. The system is set to put a picture from your folder on the screen... and it takes it randomly. This applies to the screen blanker as well. If you have downloaded a few of those naughty picture (or taken a few of you and the spouse) and DON'T want them to suddenly appear on your screen... MOVE THEM ELSEWHERE! You can also select a specific folder for the background and blanker to use... but be prepared.
First impressions?
Everything seems faster... snappier. Safari loads pages at least twice as fast... whow!.
A new screen blanker animation is really kinda cool... it provides sweeping, rotating RSS feed text AND the ability to read more about the news if you desire merely by pressing a designated key. The animation is glass smooth on my G5... and other animations appear even better than on OSX.3.
The system needs to be left on for about an hour after installation for SPOTLIGHT to index your files. SPOTLIGHT itself appears as a blue circle with magnifying glass icon on the menu bar at the upper right. Searches with SPOTLIGHT are lightning fast... and include even text imbedded in files... email, text, MSWord docs... and more. Remember those dirty picture files? SPOTLIGHT allows you to specify areas you DON'T WANT to index in the SYSTEM PREFERENCES/SPOTLIGHT/PRIVACY... you can also turn off the indexing of images but that might be overkill. Simply put your private stuff in a private folder and then mark that for no indexing. One thing lacking is a way to lock changes to the SPOTLIGHT preferences... I think this should be added.
MAIL has been complete renovated. It looks completely different but still familiar. It has a cool new slide show feature for emails that include multiple pictures... you can view them as a slide show full screen. As you browse the pictures you can rotate them, zoom, and even add one to iPhoto if you choose. A new Connection Doctor checks and helps you trouble shoot your connection to your email accounts.
The built in calculator has been improved with a new function... PROGRAMMER VIEW... which allows converion of binary to hex to decimal to Octal and back and forth. Not too much use to average users, but very useful for programmers. The calcuator widget in Dashboard is for the rest of us ilnumerate users... basic... very basic.
Besides the very basic calculator, other widgets include a calendar, a clock, and a area customizable (by zip code or city and state) weather report. It includes a six day forcast... Six? yup, only six.
Well it's getting late and I am getting rum-dum so off to bed I go.
If you want on or off the Mac Ping List, Freepmail me.
Found OS X "neato" and "keen."
But standing with mobs
Shook his fist at Steve Jobs
And screamed out something most obscene.
Strange... but only some are broken.
Apple's works... but Favicon's own does not. Rotten Tomatoes works, Atomfilms' doesn't... Rush Limgaugh's and CNN's both work ... Half.com's works but eBay's doesn't.
Wierd.
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