Reviewing Apple's Tiger Release

Mail: Beyond the new interface, Smart Mailboxes and Spotlight searching I wrote about, Mail in Tiger is also much smarter about attached photos. You click a button to launch a full-screen slideshow of them, then click once more to import those shots into your iPhoto library.

Safari: This version of Apple's Web browser adds three overdue features: It can import and export bookmarks files; it can save a Web page, graphics and all, as a single archive file; it can display PDFs inline without needing a separate plug-in.

iSync: I've had a love-hate relationship with Apple's synchronization utility over the years. With Tiger, it finally feels like it's growing up. ISync is much faster at copying contacts lists and calendars to a Palm handheld and a cell phone. Apple also says that iSync's device support can be expanded by other developers, not just Apple's own. That's especially good to hear, considering how weak iSync's Palm support still is.

VoiceOver: Tiger adds this new "accessibility" option for users with impaired vision. VoiceOver will speak aloud, in a synthesized voice, whatever's on the screen: The label on a button, the title of a menu, the text of a Web page. I'm not exactly qualified to say if this really works for a blind person, but, having read complaints about Apple's accessibility support before, I can at least applaud the company for doing something about this.

Other bundled software: In every Mac OS X review I've done, I've found myself unexpectedly pleased by the little additions at the margins -- small but valuable changes to the many small programs bundled with this operating system. Here's a short list:

* The Preview program now also takes screen grabs and can handle pretty much every PDF task imaginable; I can't think of any reason to keep Adobe's much bigger, slower Adobe Reader program on hand.

* The iCal datebook program can now automatically add birthdays, as noted in the Address Book, to your appointments as their own calendar category (complete with a little birthday-cake icon).

* If a program crashes, Tiger, like Panther, pops up a box inviting you to send a bug report to Apple -- but its default choice is now simply to reopen the program in question.

* The System Profiler utility provides much more info about what hardware and software makes up your system and groups this data in a cleaner fashion.

* Both the Print & Fax system-preferences pane and every print dialog box now includes a link to order more ink for your printer from Apple's online store. (However, Apple apparently has yet to learn of my own HP model's existence.)

* With an external monitor connected, the Displays control panel includes an option to rotate the monitor image by 90, 180 and 270 degrees. This must be for the specialized monitors that can pivot from portrait to landscape modes (many graphic designers employ them), but I can also see this being used to play pranks on co-workers.

Finally, I've been reading some distinctly enthused commentary from programmers on various blogs about two foundation-level technologies incorporated into Tiger. One, Core Image, speeds up the display and processing of graphics. The other, Core Data, makes it easier to add powerful data-handling functions to programs. These are the sort of things that may have zero effect on a person's use of a computer today, but in a year or two could wind up making a notable difference.

If my column and this newsletter aren't enough Tiger talk for you, I'll point you to a pair of reviews so comprehensive that I haven't even had time to read them yet (as of Friday evening). One is by Ars Technica's John Siracusa. The other comes from MacInTouch's Robert Mohns.