Eighteen months after the release of Panther, Apple's Mac OS X 10.4, codenamed Tiger, is finally here, and it has been well worth the wait. Apple have concentrated on adding impressive new features, with the usual slew of small improvements, and they've done it all without sacrificing performance. In fact, much like Panther before it, Tiger actually runs faster than the previous release on the same hardware.
 
Spotlight
 
Arguably the biggest new feature in Tiger is Spotlight, a sophisticated data indexing system that borrows ideas from third-party apps like Quicksilver and Google Desktop Search.
 
Through the Spotlight icon you can run searches across your entire system, listing the top hits in a drop-down menu. Spotlight covers more than just filenames, indexing email, calendars, and contacts, and the contents of various types of file, including PDF and Word documents. Spotlight is impressively fast, returning initial results almost instantly, and filling in the rest within seconds.
 
If the drop-down menu doesn't list the file you're after, you can open a Finder-like interface that lists every matching file, sorted by category. Spotlight has also been integrated in to Finder itself, letting you search for files in any Finder window, and save searches as virtual folders that you can re-open at any time. Apple have even added UNIX tools to interface with Spotlight, so Terminal fans can make great use of it too.
 
After an initial indexing run on your first boot of Tiger, Spotlight monitors file activities and reindexes altered files immediately. This means that Spotlight always reflects the exact state of your system, and also allows search views to update automatically when new files come along that match your search criteria.
 
Spotlight has the potential to really change the way people use their Macs, giving quick access to all sorts of data without having to think too much about how you store or categorise it to begin with. If nothing else, it's a great way to launch applications without opening the Applications folder or having them on your dock – just open Spotlight and type in the name.
 
Dashboard
 
If Spotlight is Mac OS X's new engine, then Dashboard must be the shiny mag wheels. It gives you a virtual desktop that appears over the top of your display, ready to be filled with small applications called Widgets. The Widgets that ship with Tiger include a calculator and sticky notes, and web services-based tools including a weather viewer, and unit/currency converter.
 
Dashboard really shows off the power of Tiger's new Core Image features. Widgets feature shiny, attractive custom interfaces, which can be flipped over to reveal their setup options. Adding a Widget is as simple as dragging it out of the panel at the bottom of the screen, with the new Widget "splashing" in to the screen with a funky ripple effect.
 
Dashboard sounded like a bit of a show-off feature without much substance in the lead-up to Tiger, and it received more than a bit of flak from developers due to its similarity to a third-party app called Konfabulator (something that Apple are yet to acknowledge), but it's actually very handy in day-to-day usage. Widgets are based on HTML and JavaScript, making them easy to write, and there's already a wide range of third-party Widgets available for download.