Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger
Ars Technica - Reviews - Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger
What would you expect from a review of a point release of a operating system? About the same as you would expect from the point release itself.
This one had much more then I exected. First of all the changes are reviewed on a very deep level starting from the kernel level changes and their implications to lack or appearance of a one pixel line in the interface.
I must say that this article showed me a lot of new and interesting ideas from the Tiger (and some from the old releases), what Spotlight is and isn't, how extended attributes work and what they do or could do, Quarz engine, Finder changes and a lot of new stuff.
Best of all this is not another "whoo whoo" review - mistakes are shown, old unsolved issues are brought up, potential further improvements are shown. But also the most important of 200+ improvements are reviewed.
I must say that this is a must-read for all developers starting from kernel and filesystem writers to interface designers.