Apple announced the availability of Mac OS X v10.4 Tiger Tuesday and is now accepting pre-orders. The product is to be in stores on Friday, April 29 (beginning at 6PM?) and will sell for $129, or $199 for the Mac OS X v10.4 Tiger Family Pack, a five seat household license. Amazon is offering Tiger for $95, after rebate, though the rebate doesn’t appear to apply to the family pack.

Apple’s been selling family packs for a while, but it’s added some new family features to the OS that surprised me. Parents can do more than limit what applications their kids use, now they can limit who they communicate with. Mail and iChat can be locked down so that kids can only communicate with pre-approved addresses/buddy names. Safari can be locked too, to limit browsing among a set of websites (URLs) approved by a parent (or somebody else with the right access, I suppose). There’s a built-in system for kids to ask permission to add new contacts or Safari bookmarks. To me, it’s an interesting way of involving both kits and parents in a child’s computer use and creating opportunity for discussion.

Of course, the big features are Dashboard, Spotlight, Automator, and RSS support in Safari, but Apple isn’t shy about the dozens of other features, including a few we already enjoy.

Of course I want it, but I’ll be traveling on its release day. Do I dare install it while at a conference where I’m doing two presentations?

[update:] Fly A Kite OS X.

Posted April 12, 2005 by Casey Bisson
Categories: Technology. .

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