But OS X is far more exciting because it brings a startling new look to the Macintosh desktop. A brilliant new way of displaying the computer's contents called the OS X Dock creates a bar at the bottom of the screen showing every running application and every open document, making task-switching superbly easy. Let me give one example of how both operating systems have made huge strides in simplifying how one uses a computer to deal with the plethora of pictures that get created, saved and downloaded. With ME, users finally can set the Windows operating system to display every one of the picture files in any folder as a postage stamp-size icon that is a miniaturized version of the picture itself. OS X boasts a matching feature for Mac that is a bit slicker than the Windows version because it lets you enlarge and shrink the icons by dragging a bar, thus permitting different-size thumbnails in each folder on the machine.
Upgrades take roughly an hour at best, and if things go wrong they can eat up much more time.
You just call up a display showing a calendar and pick a date in the past when all was well and return the machine to that state. Like iMovie, the Windows ME software detects digital camcorders when they are plugged into FireWire boards built into computers. My final verdict is that ME upgrades and the OS X public beta are probably a bit too much bother except for computer weenies. But soon they will be built into all PCs and Macs, and that'll be a great day for everybody regardless of how they hang their paper.