I’ve finally gotten a good chance to play with Tiger at home, and I’m in love. (Peter, can I pretty please have a Mac as my desktop at work? )

Mail – smart mailboxes are the world’s best idea. iTunes has had these for a while, but now your mail (and your file folders) can have it. As an example, I do consulting work, and we have multiple clients. I can automatically create a “mailbox” which contains all messages from a specific client (based on sender having clientsdomain.com in their e-mail address). I learned how to add partial support for multiple identities to each account, so I’m happy on that score. I can’t get my “real name” different for each, but A friend suggested a work around – set up dummy accounts with those addresses and just tell them not to check their mail.

iCal/iSync/Palm – My Treo can actually sync without getting into a reboot cycle! I’m happy, because now I can sync both at home and at work. I still use the sync cable at home, but once my bluetooth base station arrives, I’ll be using it for syncing.

Spotlight – Defintely cool being able to search contents, and so many more file types than Google’s Windows desktop. I can also configure it to not index encrypted mails (another feature that Google’s Desktop is lacking – at least in their Outlook plugin.)

X509 support – completely under the hood, but something I’m very interested in as my line of work involves a lot of X509. Mail, AddressBook and KeyChainAccess all work together to make S/MIME mail seamless – now we just need support for PGP/GnuPG (you hear that Apple?). <geekmode>Only the administrator can change the X509Anchors keychain (the list of trustroots), which is infinitely better than MS’s CAPI. I had no problems importing my certificates and using them. You can set the X509 subsystem to use OCSP, CRL, Both, Neither, or “Whatever the certificate calls for”. You can also prefer OCSP over CRLs. This is nice. Some of the certificates I use will have an OCSP server soon, then I can play with it more. Almost no one uses OCSP at the moment, so it’s not that big of a deal to anyone but PKI geeks.</geekmode> Also interesting is that Apple finally has support for X509 based authentication for IPSEC (VPN). Panther didn’t have this, while Windows and Linux have had it for quite a while. Major improvement.

VoiceOver – I know it’s for “accessibility”, but it’s freaking cool to have your computer read your mail to you You can even program common pronunciations into it, like SQL will be pronounced as sequel. I haven’t played with all the options yet, and I’m hoping that I can set something up where it activates only when I tell it to.

Safari – still sucks other than the RSS view, but Firefox has had that for a while, and well, I like Firefox better…

Bluetooth – I’m in the process of becoming a bluetooth whore. I’ve used bluetooth to sync my Treo with my PC at work, and I have a bluetooth headset for it, but now I’m all for wireless everywhere! I got the bluetooth barcode scanner from Delicious Library, and I’m hooked. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work with my little USB keyfob, but the bluetooth base station I ordered from them should be here soon. Now, I’m looking at the Logitech MX900 (Mouse, but it comes with a USB charger/Bluetooth basestation), and the Apple bluetooth keyboard. And I found a bluetooth adapter for my old Laserjet – HP claims it works with my model (a trusty old HP 4L), but I’m not sure… Not quite ready to plunk down the $150 for it yet.

Other cool things: Dashboard – especially the yellow pages widget. iChat supports Jabber (now add MSN, Yahoo and ICQ please!), umm.. WoW still runs just fine, and Toast, and Quicken and all the other tools I use on my Mac.

elwing swoons over Tiger