Now maybe the stories that Apple had declared Tiger Golden Master on March 31 were true after all. Apple has announced that its next generation operating system, also known as 10.4, will ship on April 29, so it all begins to make sense. I’m not going to begin to cover the new features, since you’ve read about them before. Just check out Apple’s Mac OS X pages for the particulars. Just a few points, though. First of all, system requirements are a mite stiffer than previous versions of Mac OS X. It requires a minimum of 256MB of RAM and built-in FireWire. So if you have, say, an early generation iMac or iBook, you’re out of luck. But any Mac less than five years old should qualify. The shipping box comes with an installer DVD. If your Mac doesn’t have a DVD drive, you can get CDs for an extra $9.95 direct from Apple. Further, the window of opportunity for an almost free upgrade to the new operating system has been cut to the bone. If you bought a new Mac as of April 12th, you can get Tiger for $9.95. Otherwise, forget about it. The retail price, as before, is $129; the Family Pack is $199. But you won’t stop paying there. Version 7 of QuickTime Pro won’t work with older Pro keys. You have to buy a new upgrade for $29.95 if you want to unlock all of QuickTime’s features. Oh, and one more thing. We no longer have a zero configuration networking feature called Rendezvous. It’s now called Bonjour, apparently due to trademark considerations. Oh well.

This article was posted on Saturday, April 16th, 2005 at 1:16 AM and is filed under News and tagged with: Firewire, Free Upgrade, Generation Imac, Mac Os X, New Features, New Mac, Os X, Particulars, Previous Versions, Quicktime, Retail Price, Shipping Box, System Requirements, Window Of Opportunity.