So, I - along with quite a few other hacks - went out to a press demo of Apple's OS X Tiger as promised earlier. Brian Croll, senior director of software product marketing, was over from Cupertino to show us all what to expect.
And he started off with a strong statement of belief: "We think it's the most innovative and secure operating system ever built."
Well, I'll take that with a pinch of salt, but first impressions are good. Macheads will most likely be very familiar with the enhancements, and there wasn't much that I hadn't seen when Steve Jobs did his keynote speech at Macworld in January.
Essentially, the big hitters are Spotlight (desktop search) and Dashboard (desktop widgets), which both promise a lot. Spotlight does searching simply and easily, and Dashboard could be handy for normal users - though I suspect some of the functionality might be cranky if you're not on a good web connection.
Brian also extolled the virtues of iChat's four-way video conferencing and the system's High Definition support, but one of the demos that interested me most was Automator, which essentially looks like a very user-friendly way to build macros and automate boring workflow processes.
As usual, there's been a lot of attention paid to how things look, and some of the flourishes are certainly there to help carry a bit of a wow factor.
There's a certain Apple evangelism that grates on the weary enthusiast (for example if I heard the phrase "it's super simple!" again, I think I'd explode) and there are some big claims in there too - "Anyone who can create a website will be able to create a Dashboard widget"...
But the proof of this pudding will be in the eating.
