Mac OS X version 10.4 Tiger, is a scheduled next major upgrade to Mac OS X for Apple's Macintosh computers, due for release in the first half of 2005.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs previewed Tiger in his keynote speech at the Worldwide Developers Conference on June 28, 2004. The previewed features include:

• Spotlight, a powerful full-text and metadata search engine, which can search everything from files to iCal calendars, as well as any text within a PDF file. The feature is also used to build the concept of "Smart folders" into the Finder.
• iChat AV that supports up to 4 participants in a video conference and 10 participants in an audio conference.
• Reader for RSS and Atom web syndication feeds built into the Safari web browser.
• A new mini-applications layer based on HTML, Cascading Style Sheets, and JavaScript called Dashboard, which returns desk accessories to the OS, and has been widely compared to a third party product called Konfabulator.
• A scripting tool called Automator to link applications together to form complex automated workflows (written in AppleScript and/or Cocoa)
• VoiceOver, a spoken interface allowing the OS to read from the screen, and to permit operation of the OS by voice command.
• Improved .Mac syncing features
• An upgraded kernel with optimized kernel resource locking, support for 64-bit memory pointers and access control lists.
• New versions of cp, mv, and rsync which will support files with resource forks. Command-line support for features like the above-mentioned Spotlight are also planned.
• Xcode 2.0, including visual modeling, an integrated apple reference library and a graphical debug remote.
• Full 64-bit architecture, with backward support for 32-bit programs.
• A new graphics processing API, Core Image, leveraging the power of the available accelerated graphics cards.
• A new data processing API, Core Data, that makes it easier for developers to handle structured data in their applications.
• QuickTime support for H.264/AVC which offers better quality and scalability than other video technologies.

Tiger is said to possess features to make Mac OS X competitive to the also long-rumored Microsoft Windows project Longhorn. Apple made fun of this at the WWDC presentation, with large posters with slogans such as "Introducing Longhorn", "Redmond, start your photocopiers", "Redmond, we have a problem", and "This should keep Redmond busy". Konfabulator (the aforementioned third-party product threatened by Dashboard) mimicked this campaign by prominently saying on their homepage, "Cupertino, start your photocopiers."

Other recent Mac OS development code names have been Jaguar and Panther.

External links

• Official Tiger 'Sneak Preview' (http://www.apple.com/macosx/tiger/)
• Tiger 'Developer' Overview (http://developer.apple.com/macosx/tiger/)
• Spoken Interface (http://www.apple.com/accessibility/spokeninterface/)