Yesterday was a mostly a work day. I caught up with some things that needed doing and got my head in order for some new things coming up. May will be busy.

It was also a day to start getting familiar with OS X 10.4 Tiger. I was eternally mortified (not really) to not be a cool kid in the eyes of Tinderboxer Doug Miller, but then I realized that I hadn’t written much about it, other than being in line. Here are my initial impressions:

Dashboard

The first thing that I love is the Hula Jesus dashboard widget. Just one-click and things become a heck of a lot more festive. I also find the Package Tracker widget to be way useful (my CDs are on the way, with the widget up I’m not having to pull from the UPS site 4 times a day to satisfy curiosity). Moreover, the prospect of being able to make custom widgets (it’s like web design! I can do that!)

Dictionary

Dictionary.app is very nice, and while it doesn’t pass the “hirple” test (this is a simple test, if it can define hirple, it passes) it’s got a lot of words in there, and includes etymology.

Search

Search is much much better. Much. Spotlight isn’t so much of a replacement for Quicksilver as the perfect spouse. I like this.

Aggregate Audio

Robb clued me into this buried feature about aggregate audio devices, which allows you to make an abstract device containing collection of hardware devices. So you can use your line-in from the Mac, your line-out from your USB speakers, and so forth. For applications that only allow one device at a time — I’m looking at you, Logic Pro — this is worth the price of upgrade alone.

Automator

I’m still playing with this, but I already see a lot of ways to get repetitive things done faster, thus making me an even lazier human being. I’m wishing now for Transmit actions, as well as Tinderbox.

Tinderbox and Tiger

Truthfully, as the “applications play nice with each other beyond all expectations” element of Tiger sinks in, the fact that Tinderbox doesn’t seem able get into the game at all is a bit troubling. Will Tinderbox have a Spotlight module for searching within .tbx documents? Will Tinderbox ever get Applescript or Automator actions? Probably not in the near future, as Tinderbox is taking a very different path, reaching out for the Windows world; this makes good business sense and I heartily approve. Still, it’s a bit sad to see the application I go to first and use most often living on the platform, but not living in it.