While some might argue that this is really apples and oranges. Others in the tech field seem to feel that the new Tiger (OS X) from Apple is going to take a pretty fair sized chunk of glamour from Microsoft’s Longhorn OS, still being developed.

Today, Apple releases the latest version of its Macintosh operating system, OSX 10.4 (pronounced O-S-10 version ten-point-four) — known to beta-testers and industry insiders as Tiger. It’s a major step forward for Macintosh users and a bigger step forward for system administrators and programmers. Yet, on the surface, users of Microsoft Windows may ask why there’s so much fuss.

For the end user, Apple is concentrating its magic in two areas — finding files easily through Tiger’s new Spotlight feature, and on user interface touches, collectively known as Dashboard.

Spotlight focuses the user on what he needs to find on the system — not on what it is named. It allows the user to search everything in his system, from files and e-mails to contacts to images and movies. Then the user can save his results in a Smart Folder that automatically updates itself. You can create Smart Folders for almost anything on your system, such as smart groups of contacts or songs that you’ve downloaded from Apple’s iTunes music store. [Read the rest]