Tiger, Tiger, Burning Bright

Apple has finally announced a ship date for OS X 10.4 and 10.4 Server; it'll see its official release on April 29th.

It's honestly rather strange, now that we're four years into OS X, how Apple manages to keep cramming in new useful features into each major OS revision. My appreciation for Apple's engineers grows with each OS revision as they refine and enhance the interfaces I see so much over the course of a day. Just as often, my forehead wrinkles in confusion when menu items move, key commands change, and functionality disappears - but as they always say, "Adopt, Adapt, Improve".

One of the key reasons I'm both dreading and cheering on Tiger is the b40 release of Quicksilver. The developer dropped a few notes on the forum a short while ago; a synopsis:

• B40 will be released around the same time Tiger is; it will be a Tiger only build.
• B36 will be released at the same time as B40; it will be the last Panther build and have no expiration code (as all the previous betas have).
• Features in Tiger that will probably be leveraged include "Core data for the catalog storage and used in a few of the plugins (iTunes). Core image for Superflous Visual Effects once i can figure out how. New XML tools for the plugin management. Spotlight for a new catalog sources and some additional functionality. Automator for workflow actions, and (hopefully eventually) individual action"
• It will have a shiny new icon.

It speaks a lot to the power of Quicksilver that one of the key reason I'm excited for a whole new operating system is not the incredibly useful Dashboard, not the thousand-times-better Mail.app, not the wizzy services I'll get to use on 10.4 Server, not even Spotlight. No, it's that Quicksilver will again be moving forward and enhancing my day-to-day work in new and exciting ways.

(The reason I'm dreading it? Because I know I'm going to have to overhaul my tutorials for the fifth time.)