I know all of you have those "more popular" computers, but because of that Windows Vista thing that Avistar2 brought up I thought I'd update you...

Some of you may be interested. I know Lee is. He's considering switching because of his music applications. You can turn any Mac easily into a professional music studio by adding software and your instruments for less than $1,000. Lee says it costs thousands to do it on his PC.

So yesterday I installed my latest operating system, Mac OS X v.10.5 Leopard. One hour after I stuck the install disc in it was all done! :thumbup:

Then I installed the iLife upgrade, a suite of five programs (iPhoto, my electronic photo album, 13,000 photos), iMovie (to make professional movies from camcorder video), iDVD (to create professional DVDs with menus, etc.), iWeb (Web design and related stuff), and Garageband (to make music without knowing how to write music. And it WILL write what you created, in the form of sheet music, title and all!) :o
These five programs come standard with any new Mac. Twenty minutes after I stuck the disc in the install was successfully completed. :thumbup:

After it rebooted, ALL my other older programs worked: iTunes, of course. I've got 600 music CDs in there, around 15,500 songs...
So did Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Even my older Mac OS 9.3 programs work, because that old operating system is run within Leopard like just another program.
And that's how Microsoft Windows XP and Vista are run on this iMac too. I COULD run that Reflex RC flight simulator... Hmm... Nah... Not yet... Cool, eh?

Looks like I have a new and improved computer! :thumbup:

I wuv it! :wub:

Hmmmm.. ya got me convinced..... If this Laptop i have ever wears out, i think i'll get a Mac.. :) Actually, tho, based on the number of hours i have on this ole Compaq... i've gotten MORE than my money's worth...Guesss i can't complain.

I might be able to afford a MAC one day! ;)

So what exactly does Leopard do that the old OS didn't? As in, what is new (as in it never existed before) and improved (wait, that must mean it existed before) about it? :D

Apple claims many dozens of "improvements", but we all know that many probably have to do with making the Mac look even snazzier and cuter than it already was.
From what I had gathered from reviews, there were no earthshaking improvements for me to jump on the upgrade wagon, except perhaps that new automatic backup utility Time Machine (see farther down).
I have only backed up my stuff (to CDs) about four times in the last 12 years (yeah, TWELVE). I know... My face is red...) :embarrassed:

I was going to wait for another year and then buy a new iMac, which would have Leopard pre-installed for free. My current iMac is about three years old. But I bought my granddaughter an iPod last Christmas, and I found out it doesn't talk to my older OS! :angry: So... I basically plunked down another $109.00 for the Leopard upgrade to make her iPod work!

First off, all Macs run on the extremely stable and crash-proof UNIX architecture. Leopard has been written to fully support 64-bit applications and at the same time run older 32-bit apps. All without emulation, taking advantage of their native architecture. :thumbup:

Here are SOME of the Leopard features. The ones listed below are ALL NEW to me, Mike... I am just now exploring some of them.
It may very well be that Windows Vista has similar features, under different names, of course.
Apple provides brief online video tutorials for almost all features mentioned here.
Will I use all these new-fangled features? I doubt it! I question the practical value of some of them...

The Sidebar feature gives everything the look and feel of the simple-to-use iTunes interface and controls. It also shows all attached Firewire and USB devices, making them easy to access. I like it! :thumbup:

Dates that appear in ANY document can now be linked to iCal, the calendar program that comes with every Mac. So a date in a Word or Excel document can be made to show up in the calendar as a To-Do item with constraints, or an Appointment with alarms, etc. :thumbup:

The Dictionary utility has added support for the online Wikipedia as an additional information source, and it’s nicely integrated into the applications' interface. As a matter of fact, get this, after installing Leopard, my Forum posts (like this one), are now automatically spell-checked AS I'M TYPING! Hooray! :thumbup:

Dashboard is a program that runs useful mini apps called Widgets. A user-oriented feature in Dashboard is called Web Clip. Now anyone can "clip" any part of a Web page and turn it into a widget on his desktop. For instance, you can use Web Clip to make a small automatically updating stock market ticker, a weather chart, a comic strip panel, view an eBay auction, and more, and position it on the desktop. :thumbup:

Spaces lays your application windows out across four virtual desktops that you can quickly switch between. You can zoom out to see all four, then drag files and applications between each virtual desktop. BTW, this has been around for a long time in Linux machines.

Cover Flow allows you to look through files (documents, spreadsheets, movies or photos) in a folder, by scrolling sideways through them. They show up the way they actually look in their native programs. You view them the same way the iPhone flips through pictures and email pages, and the iPods flip through music CD covers. When you find what you want you open it!

Quick Look is a technology that lets users quickly preview the contents of documents without opening the program that was used to create them. Click on a Microsoft Word file and press space, and the entire file will appear before you, ready to be read (but not edited). Select a movie and press space, and the movie will expand and begin to play.

Spotlight is a desktop search engine that indexes the contents of all your documents and makes them instantly accessible. Spotlight searches support Boolean operators (and, or, and not). Spotlight even expands the search engine's scope to other Macs on a network — with users' permission, of course.

Time Machine was developed to help users back up their systems effortlessly. Time Machine takes "snapshots" of your entire system on the hour and backs up EVERYTHING that has been changed every hour. It stores it all on an external hard disk (required). That means you can restore everything. Once set, you don't mess with it until you need to restore a file.
I haven't set it up yet. But I WILL. :wub:

iChat works with the built-in camera that comes with all iMacs. It's not new. iChat Theater (is new) lets you show a slide show as you're talking. For instance, as you are playing and narrating an iPhoto slide show, a PowerPoint presentation or a video for the person at the other computer located in Timbuktu, your image will slide to the left, while the adjacent larger area on the screen displays the slide show, presentation or video. With the screen-sharing feature in iChat you can now not only "look" at your buddy's computer screen, you can also take it over (with his permission) and show him how to do something.

Front Row, which replaces the Mac interface with a remote-control driven menu system for navigating iTunes content, has been updated to use essentially the same software as the Apple TV hardware device, meaning any Mac with an infrared sensor and Leopard can play back music, movies and videos on their TV in the family room using the Apple TV wireless interface. You leave the computer where it is! — With the many pictures that I take I really want that Apple TV...

Improved security. Leopard includes a large number of new features that specifically address security concerns. Leopard now uses a shifting system of assigning memory spaces in order to make it impossible for hackers to bank on the presence of specific code in a specific area of a Mac’s memory. Apple has done a good job of making its security messages more understandable to regular users, which is good, since most users will simply click through a dialog box that makes no sense. :thumbup:

There you have it, Mike.
I'm fairly impressed... :yes: