Detroit Free Press Mike Wendland Column: New Apple System is Less Than Stupendous

Oct 27, 08:56 AM

Current Headlines: By Mike Wendland, Detroit Free Press

Oct. 27--The Leopard is loose.

Apple Computer's biggest and most sweeping upgrade to its popular OS X operating system went on sale at Apple stores Friday night, boasting more than 300 new features sure to keep Apple's notoriously fanatic user base busy all weekend.

Still, after installing it Thursday afternoon, I found it hard to get very excited about any of the features. Not that they aren't useful and even fun. But they strike me, unabashedly a big-time Apple fanboy, as mostly eye candy.

The biggest improvements are organizational. Two of them -- Stacks and Spaces -- help declutter desktops by organizing files into logical workflow icons.

But Cover Flow, a much-hyped improvement that shows graphical images of programs and files much like music albums show up in iTunes, seems more cool than convenient.

Hands down the best feature is Time Machine, an automatic way of backing up every file and application on a Macintosh computer.

Few of us back up our programs as we should. This behind-the-scenes feature will be a lifesaver when files get lost or software needs to be restored. Serious users will also appreciate Leopard's improved networking and remote access features.

Apple's Mail program has been updated, allowing users to keep to-do notes and give their outgoing e-mail a stationery look.

And Bootcamp, which lets users reboot their Macs and switch to the Windows operating system, now comes as a standard part of the operating system instead of an add-on.

Nice. All of it. Just not jump-up-and-down nice.

Should users upgrade? For $129, I think it's worth the investment. It will work on all Macs that are powered by OS X, meaning if you got your Mac within the last six years or so, Leopard will run.

MIKE WENDLAND is the Free Press convergence editor and technology columnist.

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