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You are here: MacNN Forums > Software - Troubleshooting and Discussion > macOS > 10.3 to 10.4: Worth The Upgrade?

10.3 to 10.4: Worth The Upgrade?
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Dark Sailor
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Nov 13, 2005, 09:26 PM
 
I am wondering what others think about upgrading to Tiger. I am currently running 10.3.9 on a 1 GHz 768 MB 15" AlBook and it works fine...I have no complaints. The version is solid, I like the GUI, and Konfabulator works OK for widgets, etc. In short, I don't really feel an acute need to upgrade.

However, I have a Tiger install disk sitting here on my desk. It's kind of tempting just to try it out. For those who are currtly using Tiger, do its features outweigh the lame Mail appearance, kinks, bugs, etc.? And, if you are running 10.4 but had 10.3 install disks, would you run that instead? I know it's a funny question, but I would think that there would be a big difference between a smooth 10.3.9 and a sketchy 10.4.x...if such may happen to be the case.

Thanks in advance for any comments.
     
nbn22385
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Nov 13, 2005, 09:35 PM
 
If it was a 10.3.9 to 10.4.1 question i would say maybe. But from 10.3.9 to 10.4.3, i don't think you will regret it.
     
CharlesS
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Nov 13, 2005, 09:36 PM
 
I find 10.4.3 to be more solid with less kinks and bugs than 10.3.x. There are a lot of annoying little things in 10.3.x that were fixed in Tiger. For example, files now show up instantly in the Finder when you save or otherwise change them. Also, the UNIX tools being resource-fork safe is a definite plus as well. That's not even counting the major stuff like Spotlight...

The one issue I have with Tiger that I didn't have with Panther is that some apps (such as Mail and Terminal) refuse to auto-hide if you set them as login items.

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lookmark
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Nov 13, 2005, 09:38 PM
 
10.4.3 is a considerable advance over 10.3, in my book.
     
TheSpaz
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Nov 13, 2005, 11:33 PM
 
10.3.9 is great. I wouldn't waste my time and effort installing Tiger unless you really really need Spotlight cause that's like the only good feature I have experienced with Tiger. The rest is *yawn* and some aspects of Tiger feel a little slower to me (I'm not gonna say it, don't worry).

I'd stick with Panther for as long as you can. It's a good OS. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it"
     
production_coordinator
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Nov 14, 2005, 12:54 AM
 
10.4.3 is amazing and I wouldn't think twice about upgrading. There are numerous little upgrades over 10.3.9
     
Tesseract
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Nov 14, 2005, 01:09 AM
 
Worth it for Cmd-Ctrl-D alone.


There are lots of little features like this that you will come to love, if you decide to upgrade.
     
miacomet
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Nov 14, 2005, 01:07 PM
 
I say YES. Spotlight is worth the upgrade all by itself.
     
Azzgunther
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Nov 14, 2005, 01:17 PM
 
If I had a PB and NO external hard drive to do an easy backup I would not install 10.4.

If you DO have an external drive and can easily back up all of your data, go ahead and do it. It's 15% better than Panther That said- Spotlight isn't very special nor is Dashboard. Tiger's not that much more teh snappy™ than Panther.

However, if you've been sitting on a 10.3 installation for a year now and have done 10.3.x to 10.3.x+1 upgrades, doing a fresh install of the OSX would do your computer's performance a whole lot of good. That's always something to consider.
     
TheTraveller
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Nov 14, 2005, 01:35 PM
 
10.4 isn't all that, IMHO. If 10.3.9 works great for you, you might as well stick with it, I do not think you are missing much.
     
CharlesS
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Nov 14, 2005, 02:31 PM
 
Originally Posted by Azzgunther
If I had a PB and NO external hard drive to do an easy backup I would not install 10.4.

If you DO have an external drive and can easily back up all of your data, go ahead and do it. It's 15% better than Panther That said- Spotlight isn't very special nor is Dashboard. Tiger's not that much more teh snappy™ than Panther.

However, if you've been sitting on a 10.3 installation for a year now and have done 10.3.x to 10.3.x+1 upgrades, doing a fresh install of the OSX would do your computer's performance a whole lot of good. That's always something to consider.
Meh, reformatting the hard disk really isn't necessary. An Archive and Install will give you every bit as much benefit as a reformat would.

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TheSpaz
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Nov 14, 2005, 09:28 PM
 
Originally Posted by CharlesS
Meh, reformatting the hard disk really isn't necessary. An Archive and Install will give you every bit as much benefit as a reformat would.
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha. No.
     
CharlesS
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Nov 15, 2005, 02:58 AM
 
Originally Posted by TheSpaz
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha. No.


Really now.

Archive and Install moves all system files into the Previous Systems folder, and installs all new files from scratch. Unless the hard disk's catalog is so messed up that DiskWarrior can't repair it, I defy you to name one reason why doing a reformat would provide any benefit over this, other than causing a huge pain in having to restore all your data and applications from backup.

Some people don't seem to realize that OS X is not Windows. You don't need to reformat your drive every time you breath on it.

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Anubis IV
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Nov 15, 2005, 05:31 AM
 
Originally Posted by CharlesS
Archive and Install moves all system files into the Previous Systems folder, and installs all new files from scratch. Unless the hard disk's catalog is so messed up that DiskWarrior can't repair it, I defy you to name one reason why doing a reformat would provide any benefit over this, other than causing a huge pain in having to restore all your data and applications from backup.
Anecdotal evidence does suggest that things can go wrong with Archive and Install. I did a clean install when I upgraded the OS, and it worked great. No problems. Others that I know have not been so lucky with their upgrade installs and archive and installs. The same happens with almost all of the major releases...with Tiger though, that problem seemed to be more pronounced. If you'll recall, when Tiger was released one of the first questions asked when troubleshooting someone on this forum was "what kind of install did you do" and almost invariably the answer was either "upgrade" or "archive and install" (quite often Upgrade, of course, but there were Archive and Installs out there). I don't recall seeing a single thread about a bad upgrade to Tiger where the user did a clean install, but there were plenty of people who had problems with the others ones.

Getting back to the topic, compared to the upgrade from Jaguar to Panther, Tiger doesn't seem to be as feature-rich with useful things for the consumer. Spotlight and Dashboard are great, but I haven't seen people taking advantage of them in the way that they were all planning to before the OS launched (myself included...I had thought I'd be using Spotlight and Dashboard a lot, but they're just too slow for me on my old 800MHz PB). Exposé really changed the way that I work. The Sidebar did as well. Spotlight and Dashboard haven't. At the same time though, I look at things like Safari RSS and smile since they are so much better than the Panther versions.

Tiger was a big release for developers since it introduced a lot of new functionality and features that they can take advantage of. It's allowed them to work more easily, but that should be mostly transparent to the end user. Long story short, it's good for them, but it doesn't change much for you if you're not getting anything new out of it.

So, unless you're seeing a load of new applications coming out that are Tiger-specific (which may be the case, I don't know) you don't really need to upgrade to Tiger, but it is noticeably faster than Panther for the most part, and many of the new features are very nice. Even if you don't end up using them all, the few touches here and there that you do notice and use will be well worth it. I'd suggest you take the plunge, but if you're satisified with Panther you might want to take the earlier advice and make sure you can do a full backup and clean install. You can always roll back that way should something go horribly wrong.
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Profanity is the tool of the illiterate.
     
CharlesS
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Nov 15, 2005, 06:11 AM
 
Originally Posted by Anubis IV
Anecdotal evidence does suggest that things can go wrong with Archive and Install. I did a clean install when I upgraded the OS, and it worked great. No problems. Others that I know have not been so lucky with their upgrade installs and archive and installs. The same happens with almost all of the major releases...with Tiger though, that problem seemed to be more pronounced. If you'll recall, when Tiger was released one of the first questions asked when troubleshooting someone on this forum was "what kind of install did you do" and almost invariably the answer was either "upgrade" or "archive and install" (quite often Upgrade, of course, but there were Archive and Installs out there). I don't recall seeing a single thread about a bad upgrade to Tiger where the user did a clean install, but there were plenty of people who had problems with the others ones.
"Anecdotal evidence" also often suggests that every single point update of the OS makes the OS "snappier" even when they contain no significant speed optimizations. Either that, or it causes a computer to spontaneously explode, causing the user's skin to turn green and his balls to fall off. "Anecdotal evidence" quite often prescribes Repair Permissions to solve problems that are not related to permissions. Seriously, if you sweep all the current OS files aside and put all brand new files in, as far as the OS is concerned, you just did the same thing as you do when you reformat (barring, of course, the disk being damaged). The only thing I can think of that would cause an Archive and Install to have any problems an Erase and Install wouldn't have would be to have one of those stupid haxies in your home folder or your Library, and then the haxie conflicts with the new OS version and does something weird. But you know what? You can just delete the haxies, which is a lot less trouble than reformatting and restoring. Or, if you're really paranoid, you can just chuck your whole /Library folder and rename the /Users folder before doing the Archive and Install, and it's still a hell of a lot less wasted time than reformatting.

You want anecdotal evidence? I've reformatted my hard drive once when installing a new version of OS X, and that was when I installed 10.0 for the first time over OS 9. Other than that, it's been archive and install each time (and the only reason for this over Upgrade and Install was to get rid of crufty old kernel extensions that certain programs dumped in my /System), and you know how many problems I've had? Zero, except for the time I accidentally left one of those third-party menu extras in (you know, the kind that crack SystemUIServer to get around Apple's code that blocks non-Apple menu extras from running) because I forgot it was there, so it made SystemUIServer crash. But guess what? Tracking down and deleting that menu extra solved the problem. Total time spent: maybe 5 minutes. And I have had zero problems other than that. So if you've been having problems with an upgrade, just delete all the haxies, fake input managers, etc. and I'll bet your problems will just go away...

Ticking sound coming from a .pkg package? Don't let the .bom go off! Inspect it first with Pacifist. Macworld - five mice!
     
CaptainHaddock
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Nov 15, 2005, 07:00 AM
 
I don't even archive and install; I just upgrade. Simply upgrading is the best for keeping your applications and settings intact.
     
P
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Nov 15, 2005, 08:28 AM
 
Originally Posted by Anubis IV
Anecdotal evidence does suggest that things can go wrong with Archive and Install. I did a clean install when I upgraded the OS, and it worked great. No problems. Others that I know have not been so lucky with their upgrade installs and archive and installs.
I just made a regular upgrade, and it worked out fine. Ergo, anecdotal evidence suggests that the best and most stable way to ugrade is to just using Upgrade and don't bother with Archive and Install or reformatting business. I also recommend running all red lights everywhere, because I heard of a guy that did and he didn't have any problems. Also try betting all your savings on one hand of blackjack, because there are guys that do that and go away rich.

YMMV. What can happen with Archive and Install is that you might have autostarting background programs that are incompatible with the new OS. Archive and Install doesn't remove them, so it might look like a problem with the installation. It can easily be cured by making a new user and then adding back programs (and haxies, btw) to the new setup, and it's still less work than a complete wipe.
     
Eriamjh
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Nov 15, 2005, 08:30 AM
 
As a 10.3.9 user, ask yourself if this upgrade is going to significantly change what you do and how you do it? Don't upgrade simply because you can, but because there is something missing or flawed with what you are doing now that you KNOW Tiger will add, improve, or solve.

I'm still using 10.3.9 and I am very happy with it. I'm planning on upgrading/replacing my machine soon and when that happens, I will move to Tiger. Until then, I'm in stable Panther-land.

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gadster
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Nov 15, 2005, 10:55 AM
 
A no-brainer, really. Go for it.
e-gads
     
Jerommeke
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Nov 15, 2005, 11:17 AM
 
I have a location where I need to use 10.3.9, and I must say, I really miss Spotlight because I'm really using it every time all day long. Stability overhere is not significantly different from 10.3.9.
iMac G5 2.0 Ghz 20", 2 GB RAM, 400 GB, OS X 10.4.5, iPod with color screen 60 GB
     
Adam Betts
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Nov 15, 2005, 02:21 PM
 
Originally Posted by Tesseract
Worth it for Cmd-Ctrl-D alone.


There are lots of little features like this that you will come to love, if you decide to upgrade.
Ditto. Worth $120 for that feature alone.
     
CharlesS
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Nov 15, 2005, 04:37 PM
 
Originally Posted by P
What can happen with Archive and Install is that you might have autostarting background programs that are incompatible with the new OS. Archive and Install doesn't remove them, so it might look like a problem with the installation. It can easily be cured by making a new user and then adding back programs (and haxies, btw) to the new setup, and it's still less work than a complete wipe.
Or... you could just go into System Preferences and delete your login items. Since, you know, they're all listed in there...

Ticking sound coming from a .pkg package? Don't let the .bom go off! Inspect it first with Pacifist. Macworld - five mice!
     
kcmac
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Nov 15, 2005, 05:44 PM
 
Walt Mossberg now thinks that Tiger dot three is ready for the leap.
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory...weekly/3461087

And the dictionary feature is a good one. I just read this article
http://www.macworld.com/weblogs/maco...php?lsrc=mwrss
and changed my activation key to F7 instead of using 3 keys to bring up the dictionary. What a great tip. Give it a try!
     
cryer
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Apr 15, 2006, 09:23 PM
 
*edit* sorry, old thread, didnt mean to post. please ignore
( Last edited by cryer; Apr 15, 2006 at 09:37 PM. )
     
   
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