Differences between OS X Panther and Tiger

[Mr. Rogers]

What are the differences between OS X Panther and Tiger?

[Warrior4Christ]

It has Spotlight indexed searching tool, Dashboard (collection of commonly used widgets), and some new versions of other programs, probably most notably iChat AV, and also a price tag.

I dunno. Wait for a proper response from a Mac guru.

[Arnobius]

What are the differences between OS X Panther and Tiger?

A couple hundred bucks?

[shooraijin]

Wrong, the upgrade is $129. Go back to the store.

I use Jaguar, Panther and Tiger on a daily basis -- my desktop dual G4 has Jaguar 10.2.8 because of some incompatibilities with old software I still use, my file server runs Panther 10.3.9 and my new iBook G4 runs Tiger 10.4.2.

Apple will give you a long list of what's changed, but only some of it is noticible to the mere mortal user. I'll just note those below. I'll throw in Jag -> Panther, too.

Panther improvements over Jag (just the ones I notice or use regularly)
---
New kernel, performance increases (noticibly faster)
Expose (window management)
Graphics subsystem performance improvement
Additional window classes -- more relevant to programmers
FontBook
Better Finder windows, including a customizable sidebar and volumes list
iChat AV
Pixlet video compression

Tiger improvements over Panther (again, a limited list)
---
New kernel, performance increases (noticibly faster)
CoreImage GPU copper (although applications can't automagically take advantage of it)
Dictionary/thesaurus
Dashboard, although it's debatable if this is an improvement -- I think it's a waste of CPU time and I don't use any applets in it, but some people love it
More than merely token 64-bit support, but only relevant with a G5
QT 7 and H.264, although this can be added to 10.3 too
improved iChat AV
Spotlight instant search, and it really works! Wow!
Automator, an arguable improvement on AppleScript

Is it worth the money? I didn't think so, actually, unless you're really wowed by Spotlight (which I think really *is* cool) and Dashboard (which I think is a waste of time). On the other hand, I got Tiger with my iBook, and my iBook *feels* snappier than my dualie in some tasks even though the dualie wallops it in raw CPU bench. If you can find it marked down, it might be worth it. Wait a bit and see.

To those people running Jaguar, unless you have a good reason to stay on Jag (and unfortunately I do: some of my old Mac apps don't like Panther, and Apple progressively disabled old-style AFP volume support in Panther and Tiger so that my newer installations can't connect to my old Mac servers), the upgrade to Panther *is* worth the money. But I assume you're running Panther already.

[Mithrandir]

Just for the record, dashboard is really usefull for some people. I can pull up a dictionary, calculator, language translator or coding reference manual all with a single keystroke. I turn off the widgets I don't use freqently and it seems to be pretty quick.

[Warrior4Christ]

Just for the record, dashboard is really usefull for some people. I can pull up a dictionary, calculator, language translator or coding reference manual all with a single keystroke. I turn off the widgets I don't use freqently and it seems to be pretty quick.

I'm still trying to find out how to turn off the useless stock/weather/news feeds (that's dashboard-related, right?). I always get 5 annoying requests for a password to access the proxy.

[Mr. SmartyPants]

How DO you turn those off? (10.3) When i want to Install something, or configure an option, it asks me for my password... which gets annoying to type in everytime

[shooraijin]

Why do you want to turn that off? That's for your protection so you know what's going on. If something's modifying system files, you're darn tooting I want to know about it (and even refuse to give it permission if I don't want it doing that).

Just because there's minimal malware for the Mac doesn't mean you should ignore such warnings. One day, there might be a Trojan making the rounds (other than the pathetic little for-show things that sputtered out in a day or two), and what if it asks to format your hard disk and you give it permission?

[Mr. SmartyPants]

bah bah fine fine... you win XD