Tags: Apple, Microsoft

Jobs claim Tiger is their biggest leap forward in decades

Apple has announced their plans to release the next version of their Operating System Tiger on April 29. The company claims that their new Operating System would impress both the advanced and the novice users. The Operating System would be indirectly competing with the upcoming offering from the world’s largest software maker Microsoft for a totally different computer platform. Longhorn is under development since a long time and should arrive in stores sometime next year unless Microsoft delays the launch yet again.

Apple on the other hand has surprised their fans by announcing this release date. Apple Chief Executive Steven Jobs spoke to a leading business magazine and said: “This is one of those rare occasions when a major software release is actually early. It has turned out just wonderfully. It’s our biggest leap forward since the original Macintosh in 1984.”

The Macintosh makers are claiming that this Operating System comes with around 200 new features, which makes it well worthy of the price of USD 129. The timely release of this Operating System is a good enough proof that the company is not relying on the success of their hugely popular iPod music device and iTunes digital music store.

The operating system comes with support for handling high-definition video. Spotlight is another revolutionary feature, which allows the user to search their hard disk extremely efficiently. It searches the files by references instead by old-age methods of finding files on the disk. It is expected to be better than market add-ons (such as desktop search application from Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft for the PC Platform) considering Apple has built the technology into the Operating System.

Apple is also highlighting the feature called Dashboard. It comes with a collection of small programs nicknamed ‘widgets’ which can be enabled and disabled with single clicks. For starters, it offer services like calculators and weather alerts. Third party application developers are being welcomed to develop additional utilities for users.

However, the question remains that whether Apple can grow out of its recently developed image of a digital entertainment company. Today, it is more recognized for its iPods and iTunes rather than a computer maker. With miniscule share in the Personal Computers market, it is about time that they attack the Wintel platform back to gain more market share. And Tiger is their weapon to do so.