System requirements

• Macintosh computer (eg. Macbook Pro) with Intel or PowerPC G3, G4 or G5 family processor
  
• Built-in FireWire
• DVD drive for installation (or external DVD)
• 256MB of RAM
• 3GB of available hard disk space (4GB if the user installs the developer tools)

Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger has over 150 new and improved features, including:

• Spotlight — Spotlight is a full-text and metadata search engine that can search everything on one's Mac, including Microsoft Word documents, iCal calendars and Address Book contact cards. The feature is also used to build the concept of 'smart folders' into the Finder. Spotlight will index files as they are saved, so they can be quickly and easily found through a search-as-you-type box in the menu bar.
• iChat AV — The new iChat AV 3.0 in Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger supports up to four participants in a video conference and ten participants in an audio conference. It also now supports communication using the XMPP protocol.
• Safari RSS — The new Safari web browser in Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger featured a built-in reader for RSS and Atom web syndication that can be accessed easily from an RSS button in the address bar of the web browser window. An updated version of Safari, included as part of the free Mac OS X 10.4.3 Tiger update, can also pass the Acid2 web standards test.
• Mail 2 — The new version of Mail.app email client included in Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger featured an updated interface, "Smart Mailboxes", which utilizes the Spotlight search system, parental controls
• Automator — A scripting tool to link applications together to form complex automated workflows (written in AppleScript, Cocoa, or both). Automator came with a complete library of actions for several applications that can be used together to make a Workflow.
• VoiceOver — screen reader interface similar to Jaws for Windows and other Windows screen readers that offers the blind and visually impaired user keyboard control and spoken English descriptions of what is happening on screen. VoiceOver enables users with visual impairment to use applications via keyboard commands. VoiceOver is capable of reading aloud the contents of files including web pages, mail messages and word processing files. Complete keyboard navigation lets the user control the computer with the keyboard rather than the mouse, a menu is displayed in a window showing all the available keyboard commands that can be used.
• Dictionary — Complete built-in Dictionary/Thesaurus based on New Oxford American Dictionary, Second Edition, accessible through an application, Dictionary, a Dashboard widget, and as a system-wide command.  It has a fast GUI for displaying the Dictionary, and allows users to search dictionary with Spotlight, print definitions, and copy and paste text into documents. Dictionary also provides a Dictionary service in the Application menu, and Cocoa and WebKit provide a global keyboard shortcut (ctrl-⌘-D by default) for all applications that display text with them. Its use was furthered in the next version of OS X by providing definitions from Wikipedia. The Dictionary application is a more feature-filled version of the Dictionary widget.
• .Mac syncing — Though this was not a new feature, .Mac syncing in Tiger is much improved over Panther. Syncing tasks in Tiger are now accomplished through the .Mac system preferences pane rather than the iSync application.
• QuickTime 7 — A new version of Apple's multimedia software has support for the new H.264/AVC codec, which offers better quality and scalability than other video codecs. This new codec is used by iChat AV for clearer video conferencing. New classes within Cocoa provide full access to QuickTime for Cocoa application developers. The new QuickTime 7 player application bundled with Tiger now includes more advanced audio and video controls as well as a more detailed Information dialog, and the new player has been rebuilt using Apple's Cocoa API to take advantage of new technologies.
• New Unix features — New versions of cp, mv, and rsync that support files with resource forks. Command-line support for features such as the above-mentioned Spotlight is also included.
• Xcode 2.0 — Xcode 2.0, Apple's Cocoa development tool now includes visual modelling, an integrated Apple Reference Library and graphical remote debugging.

New applications in Tiger

• Dashboard — The Dashboard is a new mini-applications layer based on HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, which returns the desk accessories concept to Mac OS. These accessories are known as widgets. It comes with several widgets such as Weather, World Clock, Unit Converter, Dictionary/Thesaurus, and others. More are available to download for free online.
• Grapher — Grapher is a new application capable of creating 2D and 3D graphs similar to those of Graphing Calculator.
• Quartz Composer — Quartz Composer is a development tool for processing and rendering graphical data.
• AU Lab — AU Lab is a developer application for testing and mixing Audio Units.