Fish Out of Water

Catching a Leopard by the toe

So far I've been pretty content to blather on regarding special ed issues, but I'm going to switch gears today to talk about something else that I like to ruminate about: The Macintosh.

 I'm a big fan of Apple computers. Have been ever since I was a teenager in the 80s -- talked my mother into getting me a Mac when I was a sophomore in high school, and have been using them off and on ever since. I used to do IT for a newspaper company, but for the past eight-plus years, I've written about Macs for Macworld magazine.

 Anyway, the Friday before Halloween, Apple released a new operating system called Leopard -- Mac OS X v10.5, really. It's out in the world now and I recently  upgraded my "daily driver," a MacBook Pro laptop, to the new version. It's gone swimmingly well.

 A few third party applications I've installed on my Mac over the years have broken. Most notably for me, The Missing Sync for BlackBerry, a tool that enables me to synchronize the address book and calendar information between my Mac and a RIM BlackBerry cell phone I also use. I've read and written quite a few articles about other apps that aren't working quite right in Leopard, but like any major operating system upgrade, that comes with time -- developers are working hard to get everything working.

What impresses me most about Leopard is not just the new features, like "Spaces" (which lets me have multiple virtual desktops I can shift to with the press of a command key) or "Time Machine" (a built-in, persistent backup system that makes sure I can always restore files I might accidentally delete or overwrite). It's the general speed and usability of Leopard.

A lot of times, when you upgrade an operating system -- say, from Windows 95 to XP, or from XP to Vista, you see a dramatic slowdown. Sometimes you have to add memory or a new video card to your computer just to get it to run right. My MacBook Pro is actually running smoother and faster, if anything, with Leopard installed, than it did before, when it was running Tiger (Mac OS X v10.4, for the uninitiated).

I admit that my experience may not be reflective of everyone's -- as a MacBook Pro owner, I'm lucky enough to be using a newer Mac that sports an Intel chip inside. I got it just last year. The cut-off for Leopard is older, much slower "G4"-era Macs (systems that were state of the art, say, five years ago). I don't expect they run Leopard nearly as well as my laptop does.

The interesting thing is how much positive press Leopard is generating from corners of the tech world you wouldn't expect to see it from. Computerworld, which often emphasizes the Windows end of the computing experience, said that Leopard "spanks" Microsoft's Windows Vista. Network Computing, another IT pub that can sometimes overlook Apple, calls Leopard "sleek and fast." And the plaudits keep coming in. It's good news for Apple, a company whose fortunes have risen dramatically since the advent of the iPod.

There was a time years ago, when Apple was beleaguered, that if you had cut me, I'd bleed Apple colors. I was one of those Mac users -- those guys who vainly attempted to convert everyone he knew to the Apple way. I gave that up a long time ago, but I still love my Mac, and I still tell friends and family who have trouble with their PCs to consider replacing them with Macs. There are definitely upsides, like the lack of viruses and "malware" that afflict PCs -- very few Mac users run any virus protection on their systems, because they just don't need to.

 There's a practical reason, too -- in the past eight years of writing about the Mac, I've let my Windows diagnostic skills atrophy. I can't help folks too much with Windows problems anymore. So if you're looking for help with your Mac, feel free to drop me a line. And if you need help with Windows, well, sorry I can't be of more assistance.