Understand that the official word on Tiger originally came at Apple’s annual developer conclave, WWDC, in June 2004. Despite that long lead time, only now has a PC-oriented mail order house decided to sue over trademark infringement. This is no April fool’s joke either, but a real action filed by TigerDirect.com.

TigerDirect? Well, some of you have received the company’s mail order catalogs over the years, and so you might know that it sells both computer hardware and software. No Macs, by the way. As a result, TigerDirect is asking the United States District Court for the District of Florida to grant an injunction halting sales of Mac OS 10.4.

Now don’t despair. A hearing on the matter won’t occur till next week, so you can still get your copy of Tiger. What’s strange to me is that TigerDirect waited until the absolute last minute to file this action. I would not be so presumptuous as to regard this as more of a publicity stunt than a legitimate legal action. No doubt company really feels that you and I will be confused over the PC boxes and other products sold by TigerDirect and Apple’s newest operating system.

Oh, give me a break!

In any case, while the courts busy themselves over the issue and the legal fees mount, the launch of 10.4 is generating an unusual degree of frenzy from the media. You knew that The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal would publish early reviews of Tiger; that’s the operating system, not the mail order dealer of course. But even CNN and USA Today have entered the fray. Apple once again gets a huge amount of attention, far beyond its tiny share of the PC market. But, no, I didn’t see anything at the Fox News Web site. Maybe “fair and balanced” doesn’t include Apple.

All this fuss harkens back to, shall I say it, the original launch of Windows 95, the operating system that some believe first contributed to Apple’s huge market share decline. So it’s fitting that, nearly a decade later, Apple is truly striking back, although some of you no doubt felt the process had already begun.

Now it may seem there is no resemblance between the Windows 95 rollout and the publicity campaign over Tiger. But consider this: Windows 95 demonstrated that Microsoft was truly a serious contender in delivering a usable operating system. Sure it came at a time when Apple was messing things up big time, but it helped seal Microsoft’s dominance of the PC universe.

Now, in the scheme of things, Tiger with its 220 new features isn’t as huge an upgrade as the first version of Mac OS X. But Apple is at the crossroads now. With the iPod flying high, and its computer market share on the upswing once again, the stakes are extremely high. While nobody expects Tiger to be perfect out of the starting gate, at the same time there better not be any show stoppers, such as that bug that trashed FireWire drives in the initial release of Panther.

Sure, that particular bug was as much a problem with the drive firmware as with Apple’s implementation, but it caused no end of havoc for some people. Imagine the PC convert, finally switching to the Mac after being tempted with the iPod and the Mac mini. One false move, and Apple loses that customer forever. You can’t tell them to wait for 10.4.1, because that will come too late to make a difference.

But I remain optimistic, and I’m also rather surprised at the extent of demand for Tiger, even among the modest number of consulting clients I still retain. Two of those clients, folks less skilled at handling their Macs, placed their orders as soon as a shipping date was announced. That did not happen with Panther, and we’re talking about people who do not generally spend a lot of time combing Mac Web sites in search of news about the latest and greatest.

It also augers well for Tiger’s success. On the other hand, as I explained Thursday night in an unexpected appearance on the nationally syndicated Computer America radio show, don’t feel you have to be at the cutting edge, and the first on your block to put a Tiger in your tank. Even if you rushed to buy a copy, put the box in the closet or in a desk and get back to your daily life. Give others a chance to test it out and see if there are any notable bugs that might affect you.

The news travels fast, and you’ll see a trend within a few days. If the coast is clear, and as I said I’m optimistic that it will be, go for it. At the same time, don’t take the installation process casually. Ace Mac troubleshooter Ted Landau has written an article on the subject that pretty much mirrors my views, except for the one about partitioning the drive. That’s a bit much as far as I’m concerned. Click here to read the article and take away what you can before you dive in.

And stay tuned for my Tiger review, coming in issue #283 of our weekly newsletter.

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No, Microsoft haters, don’t begin that loud applause just yet. Whatever problems Microsoft is confronting these days, the company isn’t going away any time soon, or that matter for the foreseeable future. It is huge, well entrenched, and, frankly, people are just plain accustomed to using Windows, Office and all the rest. But there are troubling signs, and comparing the recent performance of Apple and Microsoft speaks volumes.

With Apple releasing it’s fourth major upgrade to Mac OS X, ahead of schedule once again, you have to wonder what it is doing right and what Microsoft is doing wrong. The last major upgrade to Windows came out in 2001, not long after Mac OS X 10.1 appeared. Sure, there have been updates to Windows XP, but they are just maintenance updates, such as SP2, which improves security from perfectly awful to mediocre.

Oh yes, there is that 64-bit version, and Microsoft loves to boast about the support for the new, speedier chips from the Dark Side. You do recall, though, that Mac OS X 10.3 Panther, released in October, 2003, also had 64-bit support to help fuel the Power Mac G5 and the iMac G5. Well, better late than never.

Now Microsoft is hoping to release its next great thing, Longhorn, some time in 2006, and I expect it will appear by then or shortly thereafter. Why so late? One excuse is that a large number of software engineers were diverted to fixing the security lapses of Windows XP. Well, I suppose there’s some credibility in that, but even when Longhorn appears, it won’t be quite the product it was originally intended to be. Far from it.

Along the way, features have been shed or modified in an effort to get back on schedule. Of course, this isn’t entirely unique to Microsoft and many other software companies, but it’s an embarrassing failure. For example, WinFS, the new file system for Windows, won’t be ready, except, perhaps, in beta form. Avalon, the fancy graphics engine that smacks of a Quartz Extreme imitator, will appear first as an update to Windows XP. It’s starting to look as if Longhorn, rather than being a major overhaul of Windows, will be just an ordinary upgrade, probably not much more significant than the move from Windows 98 to Windows XP. Well, perhaps a little more, but it’s going to be a hard sell.

While those who buy new PC’s will get Longhorn, or whatever the shipping version is called, after its release, how many will actually pay cold, hard cash or use a major credit card to buy the upgrade? Do you really expect Windows users to line up in front of a CompUSA at the appointed hour in 2006 or later to buy the latest and greatest? If they even show up to buy a copy, maybe they will just feel relieved. Or apprehensive.

To add insult to injury, Apple continues to boast that the best of Longhorn is already available in Mac OS X. “Start your copy machines,” was the playful pronouncement at the 2004 Apple WWDC. That’s where the book was first opened in Tiger.

But it’s not the first time that Microsoft is facing difficulties selling upgrades. What’s the last version of Office for Windows, for example? Ah yes, Office 2003. Does anyone remember? And how many upgrade boxes did Microsoft sell, and how did that compare with the previous Windows version of Office? All right, a decent number of computers ship with Office, so that’s still a sale, even if it’s just a bundled product. To that extent, you can probably rate the sale of a new consumer Mac as a sale for AppleWorks, right?

The real problem for Microsoft is that most businesses don’t see the benefit of the last Office upgrade. Why pay for features that few people will ever use? Here’s an example: “AutoCorrect options smart tag. When auto-corrections are made, you can undo or modify a correction or specify that the correction not be made again in the future.”

I bet you can’t live without it!

Now it may come as a surprise to Microsoft, but most Office users are adept at a few clearly defined tasks, and the benefits of all those new features to a company’s bottom line are questionable. We’re not talking about gee-whiz features for graphic artists here, but email, word processor and spreadsheet applications. What’s so sexy about that?

Compare, for example, to the simple elegance of Apple’s iWork. The problem with Microsoft all along is that it can’t get past picking up the crumbs from Apple, and it’s having a harder and harder time forcing customers to spend those upgrade dollars. That is except for customers who are on software subscription plans, thus making them eligible for getting all those “wonderful” upgrades automatically.

When it comes to Windows and Office, it does appear Microsoft’s best days are behind it. It’s still struggling to move beyond its core operating system and office suite base into other industries. Unfortunately, it’s partnership with NBC, the cable channel MSNBC, continues to get lousy ratings. The MSN online service has gone nowhere. Music? Well, Microsoft’s own music download service has been upstaged not just by Apple, but Napster and Real as well.

Oh yes, perhaps the Xbox is the exception.

As I said, Microsoft isn’t on life support. Far from it. But as the market share of Internet Explorer dips, and as more and more people buy iPods and new Macs, Bill Gates can’t feel quite as smug as he used to be. Maybe he should just retire and become a philanthropist, giving away the rest of his fortune to those in need rather than worry about his heirs fighting over it.

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