I picked up Tiger on Friday. I went to a non-prime Apple Store (the one in Southcenter Mall, to be precise) because I figured that I would be able to park (parking is IMPOSSIBLE at the University Village Apple Store), and I figured that everyone would be elsewhere.

It was packed, but very few people were actually buying, so I was able to walk right up to the counter and walk out with my new copy of Tiger.

Random observations:

They moved the "Archive and Install" option -- the first install I did was an upgrade. I subsequently went back and did the "archive and install" method on Sunday.

My powerbook loses its wireless connection and has to be manually reconnected after it goes to sleep. Fix this one fast, Apple!!!

After the inital scan, Spotlight is cool. It's not going to replace QuickSilver or LaunchBar -- they are much faster -- but it's going to be very useful. I've already gotten addicted to it.

Automator is not as initially cool as I thought it was going to be. Right off, I hate the icon. I think it has too much detail and looks cluttered. My initial attempts to automate some processes didn't work, but I'm sure the full power of this tool will reveal itself to me through time.

I've played with Smart Folders in both the Finder and in Mail, and they do the job. I'm sure I'm going to be using them more and more.

I like the fact that network errors in Safari now result in error pages rather than error sheets. It was annoying to have to close a dialog everytime a link failed.

Core Data:

I've seen complaints that the features that Apple has been touting are somewhat superficial, but my thought is that Tiger is much more about the developer technologies, especially things like Core Data.

By day, I'm a corporate developer. I write applications that move and process very large amounts of data. To be able to design and produce applications to handle this data, we use expensive tools and packages that perform almost exactly the same service that Core Data is now baking into the Operating System.

This is exciting. This means that if someone has the flexibility to consider platforms other than Windows when it comes to business development, Mac OS X starts to look very inviting.

To me, the most exciting thing about Tiger is the sort of applications that Core Data makes possible. I think we're going to see an explosion of applications utilizing Core Data. Most of them will be bad, like the plethora of RealBasic applications out there (there are some VERY GOOD RealBasic applications, but there are a lot of "metal windows with many buttons" ugly-ass apps out there as well) but there will also be some shining star applications that will illustrate the sheer power we now have in our hands.

Oh, and as a side note, I'm very pleased that they added NSTreeController.

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