Apple didn’t invent the touchscreen,” explains Lev Grossman (Time), but “Apple knew what to do with it,” creating a “whole new kind of interface, a tactile one that gives users the illusion of actually physically manipulating data with their hands—flipping through album covers, clicking links, stretching and shrinking photographs with their fingers.” It’s implementation of touchscreen technology is one of the five reasons Grossman believes that iPhone “is the best thing invented this year.” What do you think are the other four?
Delivering enhanced storage performance and data protection, the Mac Pro RAID Card and Xserve RAID Card let you add a powerful hardware RAID engine with 256MB of cache and battery backup to your Mac Pro desktop or Xserve. The cards support a variety of RAID levels, allowing you optimize your system for performance, capacity, or a combination of both. The cards, both priced at $999, are available today from the online Apple Store. (See Store for system requirements.)
After a “swift and easy” installation, Mark Kellner (Washington Times) found Mac OS X Leopard “something any Mac user will want to have.” “Offering better integration of e-mail with syndicated Internet news updates, a new backup feature likely to decrease the impact of hardware failures, and snazzy display features by the bushel, the $129 Apple Mac OS X Leopard upgrade is more than a reasonable purchase.”
In his 4.5-star (out of 5) review of Leopard, Edward Mendelson (pcmag.com) maintains that Leopard is “by far the best operating system ever written for the vast majority of consumers, with dozens of new features that have real practical value.” Mendelson “found Leopard to be startlingly fast, brilliantly streamlined, and packed with conveniences and innovations. Leopard’s rich set of built-in software runs faster than I imagined possible.”
In his in-depth review of Time Machine, Ryan Faas (computerworld.com) does some déjà-vuing of his own, conjuring up an early iMac commercial to illustrate how simple it is for customers to use Time Machine to back up the data on their Macs. Calling it “one of the most compelling new features added to Mac OS X in years,” he praises Apple engineers for creating “a backup technology that requires little or no configuration, performs backups automatically and invisibly, and makes restoring files from those backups as simple and intuitive as humanly possible.”
Troy Dreier (laptopmag.com) gives Leopard 4.5 stars (out of five). Praising Time Machine, he predicts that “Leopard will be remembered as the OS that debuted Time Machine, the backup tool that changes everything.” Equally positive about Cover Flow, Quick Look, Spaces, Mail, Boot Camp, and iChat, Dreier concludes that “Leopard is worth the price for Time Machine alone, but the sheer variety of improvements and innovation inside this OS give you much more than your money’s worth.”
Calling Leopard the “apple of my eye,” Dwight Sliverman (Houston Chronicle) tells us that as he’s played with the newest version of Mac OS X, “I’m constantly being surprised by smart, useful and convenient touches. It is a pleasure to use.” For example, he calls Spaces his “favorite Leopard feature, because it instantly multiplies your desktop real estate. Those who use portable computers will particularly appreciate it. On my MacBook it’s a godsend.”
Mac computers, according to Gregg Keizer (computerworld.com), “are the most reliable and its support the most dependable of the five top [computer] vendors. In fact, Keizer reports that in its annual report on reliability, Rescuecom, “a national chain of computer service shops,” found that Apple “blew away the competition this year by posting a score of 51% higher than next-best Lenovo.” The score, explains David Milman, CEO of Rescuecom, “takes into account not just the quality and reliability of the equipment but also the quality of service.”
“The mobile to end all mobiles pipped all the other top-name entries to earn the planet’s biggest gadget accolade,” according to the editors at Stuff. “The touchscreen device redefined how humans interact with their phones as well as offering almost every feature no self-respecting mobile should be without,” they conclude. And iPhone wasn’t the only honoree. “Sporting video playback and a scroll wheel,” iPod nano made the “Cool List” for 2007 gadgets. And Stuff readers voted iPod “the greatest gadget ever.” Cool.
Since releasing Mac OS X Leopard on Friday, Apple sold (or delivered, in the case of maintenance agreements) more than 2 million copies of the sixth major release of Mac OS X, far outpacing the first weekend sales of Mac OS X Tiger, which was previously the most successful OS release in Apple’s history. “Early indications are that Leopard will be a huge hit with customers,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “Leopard’s innovative features are getting great reviews and making more people than ever think about switching to the Mac.”
