Mac OS X 10.4

Mac OS X 10.4 "Tiger" is the fifth major release of OS X, an operating system made by Apple Inc. It was released on April 29, 2005 for US$129.95 as the successor to Mac OS X 10.3 "Panther" and the predecessor to Mac OS X 10.5 "Leopard".

Features
Spotlight, a full-text and metadata search engine that can search everything on one's Mac including Microsoft Word documents, iCal calendars, and Address Book contacts, was added.

A new version of iChat AV supports a maximum of four participants in a video conference and ten participants in an audio conference, as well as communication using the XMPP protocol.

The Safari web browser now features a built-in RSS and Atom feed reader and can now pass the Acid2 web standards test.

The Mail.app email client features an updated innterface, "Smart Mailboxes" which utlize the Spotlight search system, parental controls, as well as other features.

The Dashboard is a new mini-applications layer based on HTML, CSS, and JavaScript which returns the desk accesories concept to the original Mac OS, now known as "widgets".

Automator, a scripting tool to link applications together to form complex automated workflows, was added.

VoiceOver was introduced, which is a screen reader interface that offers the blind and visually impaired user keyboard control and spoken English descriptions of what is happening on-screen.

A complete built-in Dictionary/Thesaurus accessible through the Dictionary dashboard widget and based on the New Oxford American Dictionary, Second Edition was added.

.Mac syncing is much improved over Panther, with the synchronization of task in Tiger now accomplished through the .Mac system preferences pane rather than the iSync application.

QuickTime 7, a new version of Apple's multimedia software, now includes support for the new H.264/AVC codecs. The new QuickTime 7 player application bundled with Mac OS X Tiger includes more advanced video and audio controls as well as a more detailed information dialog.

New versions of certain Unix commands which support files with resource forks were added. Command-line support for features like Spotlight are also included.

Grapher, a new application capable of creating 2D and 3D graphs similar to that of the Graphing Calculator software.

Development applications introduced and improved upon in Mac OS X Tiger include: Xcode 2.0, Apple's Cocoa development tool, now includes visual modelling, an integrated Apple Reference Library and graphical remote debugging; Quartz Composer, a new development tool for processing and rendering graphical data; and AU Lab, a developer application for testing and mixing Audio Units.

An upgraded kernel, an update libSystem, faster boot times, an improved printing dialog, and minor shell improvements and several APIs were also introduced.