After reading some of the online comments and a few of my own articles on the subject in recent weeks, I bet you’re wondering whether the Tiger upgrade is really worth it. In fact, I’ve gotten more than a few letters from you readers on the subject. I mean, with all those horrible bugs, how could you possibly get any work done? Maybe you should just stick with Panther, right? Of course, that assumes you aren’t saddled with a Mac that shipped with Tiger and requires it, of course.

It is true that there have been some serious bumps along the way, particularly if you want to network with computers with that other operating system, or access a corporate network remotely. Apple made some major changes to the guts of Mac OS X that, I presume, are designed for better compatibility and performance, but at the same time, some things didn’t work as planned. Third party developers were sent scrambling, although it seems things have settled down somewhat.

In light of the ongoing Tiger troubles, I’ve even resurrected my “War Stories” feature to address some of the issues. But when you look at the entire picture, except for the networking-related issues and some oddball behavior, the overall picture is actually quite good. Most of the existing bugs are largely annoyances rather than show-stoppers. What do I mean by a show-stopper? Well, if an application crashes or freezes, or key features cease to function, that’s enough to put a crimp in your style. But if it’s just the Finder failing to line up icons properly, it’s simply cosmetic. Of course that doesn’t mean Apple should have let such a bug fester through five major releases of Mac OS X, but they’ve got to set priorities.

Besides, when touting over 200 new features, would listing accurate positioning of icons in the Finder be a good thing from a marketing standpoint? What about a reliable fax feature? Imagine bulleted item number 221, “Faxing now works correctly.” Has a ring to it, right?

At the same time, living with the release version of Tiger, and the updates to 10.4.1 and 10.4.2, I find that it works quite well in nearly every respect. I don’t use icon view, so I’m not concerned if the things seem to have a mind of their own. My faxing efforts largely consist of sending a few from my Mac, and using the multifunction printer for the rest, so I’m not overly upset if the feature remains somewhat broken. From a practical standpoint, it should be repaired once and for all, but Apple’s developers just haven’t gotten around to it yet, apparently.

What about the inconsistent features? Aqua and brushed metal, with somewhat different window behaviors. It can be downright annoying if you cherish order in your life. Isn’t the Mac supposed to be the platform where everything is consistent, predictable? Don’t the interface oddities work against that concept? I suppose, but at the same time, maybe Apple is assuming that most of you know the fundamentals of using computers with graphical user interfaces. Does it really matter if windows have different color schemes and whether you can drag the bottom of a window in some applications but not others? You’ll get used to it, right?

Perhaps Apple has come to believe that we want a little spice in our lives. Why should everything be Aqua, and act the same? It can get dull real fast, although most of you no doubt believe that the operating system should get out of the way and give you space to get some work done. Or maybe that’s an obsolete concept.

On the positive side of the ledger Tiger seems snappier, even on equipment where Panther seemed pretty fast. Ignoring the quirks, it is pretty stable, and I’ve not had any situations in recent weeks where I’ve been forced to restart my Mac other than as a consequence of installing some new software. The incompatibilities that annoy some of you do not affect me, since I don’t spend all that much time dealing with cross-platform corporate networks. Yes, I do bring in a PC box from time to time, but in those situations, I haven’t encountered any problems worth talking about.

At the end of the day, as my Power Mac G5 slips into sleep mode, I find that if I failed to finish any work, it’s really my fault and not the operating system or any particular application. I can walk into the bedroom, turn on the TV, watch a few shows, or just read a book or online article printouts, confident that Mac OS X Tiger will be ready to do its thing the next morning, reliably, predictably. And isn’t that all you should really expect from a computer operating system?

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Although recent reports indicate that Firefox’s growth on the Windows platform may have stalled, that hasn’t stopped the Mozilla Organization from pushing out new versions. Yes, Firefox 1.5 beta 1 is somewhat late. At this point in time, we expected the final version, if the original promises were to be taken seriously, but it’s nonetheless an auspicious beginning for a fairly major update.

Although it looks pretty much the same on the surface, there are a number of notable under-the-hood changes. There’s an automated update feature that smoothes the progress of upgrading to the newest version of the application and its extensions. It may not be so big a deal for Mac users with a broadband connection, since installation is a simple matter of drag and drop. But if you have dial-up, or use the Windows version of Firefox, it’s a feature you’ll appreciate.

There are slight improvements in performance and compatibility with Web standards, and you’ll welcome the addition of a Report Broken Web Site feature, similar to the one in Safari, so you can alert the Mozilla developers if one of your favorite online watering holes doesn’t look right. Another feature that’s cribbed from Safari is Clear Private Data, which does what the name implies. So much for expanding the frontiers of browsing, but these new capabilities are welcome nonetheless, even if not wholly original.

Popup blocking is said to be enhanced, and you can reorder browser tabs via drag and drop. In response to complaints that Firefox, because of its cross platform origins, isn’t totally Mac like, there’s supposed to be improved support for Mac OS X. The major change appears to be preference panels that are more Mac like, and initial launch performance seems a tad better, but there appears to be work left to do in this area.

Since it is beta 1, I’m not expecting miracles. Firefox 1.5 seems stable enough, and I did notice some speedups in browser rendering speed when moving back and forward through sites. During the course of testing a number of sites, I ran across one, Consumer Guide magazine, where rendering issues were identical to those in Safari, with overlapping text in article captions. I reported the “broken” site and noticed that the version of Firefox I used was reported as version 1.4. Oh well.

Although recent reports indicate that Firefox’s growth on the Windows platform may have stalled, that hasn’t stopped the Mozilla Organization from pushing out new versions. Yes, Firefox 1.5 beta 1 is somewhat late. At this point in time, we expected the final version, if the original promises were to be taken seriously, but it’s nonetheless an auspicious beginning for a fairly major update.

There’s a lot to be said about using the same browser on multiple platforms, since you don’t have to alter your work habits. I’m on the fence, though, about whether Firefox is really any better than Safari. I don’t see much of a performance difference between the two, although that depends on which sites you use for comparisons. A couple of seconds one way or the other may be important for bragging rights, but not to me. I don’t sit in front of my Mac with stopwatch in hand.

In some ways, in fact, I prefer Safari, although it is somewhat more enthusiastic about caching older versions of a site. Take its History menu, for example, where a simple submenu provides immediate access to the sites you visited earlier today and the previous day. In contrast, Firefox requires that you invoke a sidebar to get to the sites beyond the previous ten, and I don’t regard that as especially convenient.

I also wonder why Firefox doesn’t display browser icons in its Bookmarks menu, since it can manage the function in the address bar, but I suppose that’s a minor quibble in the scheme of things.

In any case, a second beta is expected in a few weeks, and the final version should be out before the end of the year. Maybe there will be a few more changes to address my minor concerns. But even if it’s just more of the same with improved performance, I won’t be disappointed. Firefox remains the sole compelling competitor to Internet Explorer on the Windows platform and Mac users should appreciate the somewhat improved support for Mac OS X.

Now what about Mozilla’s Mac-only browser, Camino, which exists in an almost eternal beta form? Isn’t it about time we see a true version 1.0 release? Just asking.

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When you have a product that dominates a market big time, competitors are constantly nipping at your heels. The skeptics who never believed you’d ever succeed are hoping and praying for the day you’ll fail. Even when the things you do are smashing successes, potential downsides are eagerly sought. On the one hand, we celebrate success, and on the other, we tell the companies that failed that it served them right.

Every single move taken by Apple Computer since it achieved unexpected success with the iPod has been placed under the microscope. The slightest misstep, or perceived misstep, is assumed to be the first of many, the inevitable fall from grace. Subscription music services? Well, some Wall Street analysts tell us that Apple is missing the boat not following the crowd. Even though Steve Jobs tells us that we really do want to own our music, there are some compelling aspects to renting. And, after all, we do rent movies, right? Consider that you can have access to hundreds of thousands of tunes for just a few dollars a month. Now they seem to forget that some of the music available from those services can only be sold, not rented. If you forget to pay your bill that month, and perhaps all you’ve done is cancel a credit card with a high interest rate because you got a better deal with another bank, kiss your music library goodbye.

Realistically, maybe renting is just a way to sample a large number of songs before you buy them, and, eventually, Apple might consider subscriptions as an alternative. But when it has over 80% of the legal music download market, what’s the rush? Besides, Apple has just ten million music customers. That’s a drop in the bucket. There’s a huge untapped market out there, and as long as existing customers keep buying, and lots of new ones sign up, the pressure remains on the competition to find a way to catch up.

Music players? Well, so-called experts tell us that Apple can’t continue to maintain a nearly 75% market share indefinitely. All right, so Rio won’t be around to challenge the status quo much longer. All right, so Creative Labs can’t mount a credible challenge, and may have to resort to attempting to enforce its alleged patents on music player interface design to extract a few dollars per unit from Apple.

Sony? How can it miss? Didn’t Sony invent the Walkman, the first successful portable player? Didn’t its dominance eventually erode? What about Sony’s latest attempts to mount a credible digital music competitor after a few tragic failures? Isn’t Sony a design-oriented company like Apple? So Sony must be destined to regain its rightful place in the sun. But wasn’t it embarrassing to discover that Apple is now selling three iPods for every Sony PlayStation? Just asking?

What about a video iPod? Isn’t including a feature that lets you view your photo library kind of a half-hearted effort at the real thing? Besides, doesn’t the competition offer video players? Well, they’re not exactly flying off the shelves, right? If Apple does do video, it’ll try to find a way to make it work. The models available out there right now clearly haven’t captured the public’s imagination, so why imitate failure?

Now consider the iPod nano? It replaces Apple’s best-selling model, the mini. So does it really make sense for a company to discontinue its most popular model and take a chance? Are you planning to rush to your favorite electronics emporium in the hope that there will be a few minis left, perhaps one in your favorite color? After all, the nano costs more for less capacity. Does that make any sense? All right, it is “impossibly small” and downright cute. And you can take it jogging without fear of skipping or perhaps damaging the delicate mechanism of a tiny hard drive.

You know, I could see the wisdom of a Flash-based music player when my son phoned the other day and asked me if I knew someone who could fix a friend’s iPod–whose hard drive didn’t survive a fall–at an affordable price. This isn’t to say that hard drives are destined to soon disappear from the iPod line. It will probably be several years before Flash memory is cheap enough and has sufficient capacity to completely supplant drive-based music players, but it’s inevitable.

Now as to mobile phones with music players, the reaction to the Motorola ROKR seems decidedly mixed so far. It isn’t near as slim and sleek as the RAZR and it’s almost a half ounce heavier. But there it is, iTunes on a cell phone. All right, it’s a little awkward to use. You have to tether it to a USB cable to retrieve your tunes from your computer. You can’t just pair it via the phone’s built-in Bluetooth feature. That would be too easy. Buying songs online? Maybe some day, when Cingular’s network is upgraded.

While all this is happening, some folks still say that Apple ought to open the iPod to other music services, or allow other players to work with iTunes. I have but one question: Why?

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