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Thursday, April 14, 2005

200 new features of 10.4 (aka Tiger)

Maybe this is old news but Apple has up a 200+ New Features page describing a whole whack of cool stuff that'll be coming out in Tiger, much of which isn't as flashy as Dashboard but is cool in the "of course!" kind of way:
Pocket Address Book Printing
Print a handy pocket address book to take with you anywhere.

Burnable Folders
Burn a CD or data DVD directly from the Finder by quickly creating a “burn folder” where you can drag and drop the files you want to save.

Dictionary Service
Call up a dictionary definition for any word on-screen with just one click.

Firewall Log
Keep a log of all firewall activity, such as blocked sources, blocked destinations and blocked attempts.
(Via TUAW)

posted by Chris at 7:10 AM  

2 Comments:

  • These are my favorite "bottom of the list" features. Many of them fall in the "finally!" category, stuff that seemed like low-hanging fruit but still it hung there, unplucked.

    HFS+ CLI file commands
    Use command line file commands on HFS+ items with proper results - utilities such as cp, mv, tar, rsync now use the same standard APIs as Spotlight and access control lists to handle resource forks.

    I routinely install RsyncX just to get the hfs-aware version of rsync on machines. It'll be nice to not have to do that or worry about using comfy Unix commands on my Mac.

    VPN On Demand
    Automatically establish a VPN connection when a firewall protected service is used for specific domains.

    Sounds downright nifty and convenient. I wonder how easy it is to configure, particularly for people who barely grasp what "VPN" is.

    Secure WebDAV
    Get support for the Kerberos and https protocol when accessing WebDAV volumes.

    Definitely a "finally," now we won't have to resort to Goliath for WebDAV over SSL or choose between convenience and security.

    NTLMv2 Authentication for SMB
    Enjoy even greater compatibility with Windows File Servers through support for NTLMv2 authentication.

    I thought Panther had this already but a co-worker tried it a little while ago, no dice. NTLMv2 is so much better than LM & NTLM, make those crackers work for your password!

    Target Disk Mode
    Make your Mac appear to be a hard drive on another system with just one click by using the Target Disk Mode option in the Startup Disk Preference panel.

    The feature brought to you by the letter "T," or lack thereof. Seriously, this would have come in handy last month when I tried to put an old PowerMac in Target Disk Mode but the "T" wouldn't work because it was a PS/2 keyboard connected to a KVM using a PS/2->USB converter for the Mac's sake. I have to keep a USB keyboard in the closet just for stuff like this. Since that Power Mac is basically just a web server, I'm not sure we'll upgrade to Tiger just for this feature, we'll have to see.

    p.s. Blogger has now made me grumpy for not letting me use blockquote or pre tags.

    By extra88, at 7:01 PM  

  • VPN On Demand
    Automatically establish a VPN connection when a firewall protected service is used for specific domains

    Missed this the first time through the list - it does indeed sound very cool.

    By Chris, at 5:50 PM  

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