Mac OS X 10.4 'Tiger' to ship April 29

Macworld - Apple Computer Inc. today announced the ship date for its next-generation operating system, Mac OS X 10.4, which is known as "Tiger." The operating system, which the company said includes hundreds of enhancements, will be available to customers on April 29 at special events held at the company's retail locations and authorized retailers. Preorders for Tiger are being taken today at the online Apple Store. Tiger will cost $129.
Apple also announced that Mac OS X Server version of Tiger will be available the same day. It will cost $499 for a 10-client edition and $999 for an unlimited client edition.
In addition to the single-client license for the operating system, Apple is also offering a Mac OS X Tiger Family Pack, a single-residence, five-user license that will be available for $199. The Mac OS Up-To-Date upgrade package is available for a shipping and handling fee of $9.95 to all customers who purchase a qualifying new Mac system on or after April 12.
Tiger requires a minimum of 256MB of memory and is designed to run on any Macintosh computer with a PowerPC G5, G4 or G3 processor and built-in FireWire.
The most talked-about new feature of Mac OS X Tiger is, without a doubt, Apple's desktop search technology, Spotlight. The new tool allows a user to search files, e-mail, contacts, images, calendars and applications and any other file on the hard drive. Search results are displayed as the user types, and they change dynamically as new documents are added to the hard drive.
Spotlight doesn't just search the file names; it also searches the metadata, including the kind of content, the author, edit history, format, size and other details. Most documents, images and e-mails already contain rich metadata. Spotlight also indexes the content of a document, displaying results based on what appears inside a file or document, not just its title.
Using a separate Spotlight window, it's possible to sort results by date or category. Searching for a particular person in Spotlight will bring up not only their contact information, but also documents they authored or edited, images they e-mailed, messages they wrote and messages sent to them.
Dashboard
Billed as the "Exposé for widgets," the new Dashboard feature contains miniapplications, or widgets, that provide dedicated functions. Widgets also take advantage of OpenGL-based graphics and effects, giving smooth transitions when adding a widget or changing options.
For example, widgets that have been demonstrated by Apple CEO Steve Jobs include a currency conversion tool, yellow pages, eBay auction trackers and weather reports. Other widgets include a tool for accessing