Well, Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) has finally landed in Vietnam. I'm pretty sure I have the first legitimate copy of the OS in the country and since we bought the "Family Pack", Emma probably has the second.
I ordered the family pack of the O/S, which provides five licenses. Not that Apple has ever applied serial numbers to their operating systems, but it's nice to be legit.
I ended up getting the software from FPT distribution about 2 weeks after the release in the states so I can't complain too much. Well I was complaining too much, Emma can attest to that, but the complaining has stopped now.
I was informed that the software had arrived at customs but would take a while to clear the customs inspection. Apparently a box of "software" is scrutinised to a degree that hardware is not. Strange, given that a box of hardware can have many gigs of software installed on it. Well I've learnt my lesson; my next software purchase will come packaged in a nice new Powerbook!
This is a great upgrade, no doubt about that. The cosmetic improvements are nice to be sure but the under the hood improvements have enhanced the reputation of this OS as the choice of cool geeks everywhere. For a thorough review of under the hood enhancements check out the review at ars technica at:
http://arstechnica.com/reviews/os/macosx-10.4.ars
From a usability point of view I can't believe how much I use "dashboard"! I must admit I thought it a bit of a gimmick but I use it all the time. There are new useful widgets being released all the time. My favourite is the CIDR calculator widget, which can be found at:
http://macvaerk.dtu.dk/
Just the thing for double-checking netmask calculations!
...which is probably of no interest to most readers of this blog whatsoever but I'm a CCIE Mac Geek and make no apologies for it.
