The Pacer

Issue date: 2/13/07 Section: Technology

With all the hype about the recent release of Windows Vista, no one has heard much about Apple's upcoming new operating system, 10.5.

OS X Leopard, slated for release sometime this spring, sports several new features and some major updates since its predecessor. One of Leopard's biggest new features is Time Machine. The first time 10.5 is launched, Time Machine asks to back up the entire system. After that, it takes care of everything automatically at midnight each night. Time Machine only backs up what has been changed, saving space on the backup device. All the backed-up files are stored by date, so you can browse to see how the entire system looked on any particular day, and restore everything with a single click.

Leopard's Mail application has undergone several upgrades. It boasts more than 30 professionally designed e-mail templates and includes two new features: notes and to-dos. Notes can include graphics, colored text and attachments, and can be created or accessed from anywhere. To-dos offer a connection between Mail and iCal. One click on an e-mail will add it to iCal where it can be assigned a due-date, alarm, and priority. The new version of Mail also provides RSS - Really Simple Syndication - support.

iChat, Apple's instant messenger, makes it easier than ever to talk face-to-face with friends online. iChat has new video backdrops that can be used in video chats and can be seen by Mac and PC users alike. The photo booth effects that made their debut in the last version of iChat can be used in real time with a video. Two more amazing new features are iChat Screen Sharing and iChat Theatre. Screen Sharing allows two people to view and control a single desktop while talking to each other. Theatre takes it one step further with the ability to present photos, keynotes and media from other enabled applications in full-screen mode. Another handy new idea is tabbed chatting, which works just like tabbed browsing and also alerts the user to new messages.

Spaces turns your screen into multiple desktops, which can be configured with as many rows and columns as you see fit. Application windows can be dragged and dropped into any space at any time, or locked into a specific space.

Dashboard has been tuned up a bit, and has a few great new features. With Web Clip, any Web site can be opened in Dashboard as a fully customizable widget, which is always live. Also, the Dashcode template allows even novices to design their own widgets.

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