Comparing Cats: Mac OS X Leopard vs. Tiger

Last week Apple launched the new Mac OS X Leopard, calling it "the biggest system update in Mac history." What's so hot about the new Mac operating system? Here are a few things that are reportedly better about Leopard than the last Mac OS X release, Tiger... see if you agree:

1. Leopard has better Help than Tiger. The new Help menu has a search box in the menu bar. When you search for something you need help with, the search results menu lists the names of all matching menu commands. It even opens the menu for you with a large blue arrow pointing to the command you wanted, so it's easy to see.


2. Leopard has its own Time Machine. Leopard's Time Machine will automatically launch whenever you connect an external hard drive to your computer. If you choose to make that hard drive a backup drive, Time Machine will incrementally and automatically back up your hard drive and any changes to it - every hour of every day.


3. Leopard has cleaner organization - look, stacks and spaces! The new OS reduces clutter on your desktop with three stacks: applications, downloads, and documents. The stacks fan out or display in a neat grid, depending on your preference. You can also use "spaces" to organize everything on your desktop into groups. Simply toggle between different spaces to work on different groups of applications without getting confused.
   
   
4. Updated Finder with Cover Flow The new finder's sidebar groups items into categories: places, devices, shared computers, and searches. Type in a keyword into the Spotlight feature to bring back results from your hard drive. Flip through your files like flipping through music albums with cover flow.
   

Overall, Leopard has over 300 new features built into it - making it one of the hottest new software releases on the market. In the first four days of its release last week, the program sold over 2 million copies. It took Mac OS X Tiger 39 days to sell the same amount.