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Apple knows how to do eye candy. Its new operating system, Mac OS X Leopard, is a veritable feast of shiny, pretty graphics that makes Windows Vista, the rival from Microsoft, look very last decade.
Apple knows how to do eye candy. Its new operating system, Mac OS X Leopard, is a veritable feast of shiny, pretty graphics that makes Windows Vista, the rival from Microsoft, look very last decade. The reflective 3D Dock (Apple's version of the Windows Taskbar) is simply stunning.
But people - most, anyway - don't buy a computer for the eye candy. Fortunately, Leopard has more than just a pretty face. The under-the-hood tweaking that has happened since Tiger, its predecessor, is impressive. Boot time has been improved dramatically - an Apple MacBook Pro boots Leopard quicker than it takes for a Nokia E61i smartphone to start up!
Leopard's most impressive new feature, Time Machine, is a cleverly designed back-up tool which by default keeps six months of user data. Simply plug in an external drive and the operating system takes care of the rest, backing up every instance of a saved document. Lose a file? Fire up Time Machine and retrieve it - simple as that. On a corporate network, the software can be told to back up data automatically to a file server instead of an external drive.
Other important changes include:
A new version of Spotlight, the desktop search tool. Start typing an application name in Spotlight, such as Safari, and the program will guess you want to run the Mac OS X Web browser. Hitting the enter key opens it. This does away with the need to search the dock or dig through the applications folder.
Stacks helps to reduce Dock and desktop clutter. Similar files - pictures or videos, say - can be grouped together in stacks on the Dock. When a stack is clicked, the files within jump up in a fan or a grid.
Quick Look, which allows users to preview the content of documents - from spreadsheets to videos - without first opening the applications in which they were created.
The Finder, the Mac equivalent of Windows Explorer, which now allows users to flip through documents using Cover Flow, the same 3D file browsing technology incorporated into the iPhone and the new iPod Touch.
Webclip in the Safari Web browser, which allows users to select an area on a website and turn it into a widget in Dashboard. It's a very simple way of creating new Dashboard widgets to complement the widgets - weather, news, stock prices - that come with Leopard.
Many of the changes in Leopard are small tweaks and improvements to what was already a stable and mature operating system. Taken together, they add up to the most impressive version yet of Mac OS X.
Apple knows how to do eye candy. Its new operating system, Mac OS X Leopard, is a veritable feast of shiny, pretty graphics that makes Windows Vista, the rival from Microsoft, look very last decade. The reflective 3D Dock (Apple's version of the Windows Taskbar) is simply stunning.
But people - most, anyway - don't buy a computer for the eye candy. Fortunately, Leopard has more than just a pretty face. The under-the-hood tweaking that has happened since Tiger, its predecessor, is impressive. Boot time has been improved dramatically - an Apple MacBook Pro boots Leopard quicker than it takes for a Nokia E61i smartphone to start up!
Leopard's most impressive new feature, Time Machine, is a cleverly designed back-up tool which by default keeps six months of user data. Simply plug in an external drive and the operating system takes care of the rest, backing up every instance of a saved document. Lose a file? Fire up Time Machine and retrieve it - simple as that. On a corporate network, the software can be told to back up data automatically to a file server instead of an external drive.
Other important changes include:
A new version of Spotlight, the desktop search tool. Start typing an application name in Spotlight, such as Safari, and the program will guess you want to run the Mac OS X Web browser. Hitting the enter key opens it. This does away with the need to search the dock or dig through the applications folder.
Stacks helps to reduce Dock and desktop clutter. Similar files - pictures or videos, say - can be grouped together in stacks on the Dock. When a stack is clicked, the files within jump up in a fan or a grid.
Quick Look, which allows users to preview the content of documents - from spreadsheets to videos - without first opening the applications in which they were created.
The Finder, the Mac equivalent of Windows Explorer, which now allows users to flip through documents using Cover Flow, the same 3D file browsing technology incorporated into the iPhone and the new iPod Touch.
Webclip in the Safari Web browser, which allows users to select an area on a website and turn it into a widget in Dashboard. It's a very simple way of creating new Dashboard widgets to complement the widgets - weather, news, stock prices - that come with Leopard.
Many of the changes in Leopard are small tweaks and improvements to what was already a stable and mature operating system. Taken together, they add up to the most impressive version yet of Mac OS X.