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Thursday, October 25, 2007 Review: Apple's New Operating SystemMacOS 10.5 offers easy file recovery, effective parental controls, and a host of clever, smaller features. By Simson Garfinkel
Apple's new Macintosh operating system ships tomorrow. Visually stunning, OS 10.5--a.k.a. Leopard--is fast and stable, and it features a consistent set of powerful file-management tools familiar to anyone who has ever used iTunes. And unlike Microsoft Windows, which seems to grind slower with each successive release, OS 10.5 feels faster than 10.4 on the same hardware--provided that you have sufficient memory. As I mentioned in my May 2007 review, Leopard's centerpiece technology is Time Machine, a revolutionary backup system that lets you take your computer "back in time" to find accidentally deleted files, address-book entries, photographs, and the like. Click "Time Machine," and the desktop drops off the screen to reveal a flowing star field with a sequence of windows progressing back toward the beginning of time (or at least to when you installed Leopard). Click on the timeline, and you can travel back to before you accidentally deleted a key paragraph in that annual report. You can then copy it and bring it back with you into the present. Time Machine also has a clever disaster-recovery feature that lets you rebuild your Mac from a backup if the main hard drive fails. This feature is built into the MacOS installation process: once the operating system is installed, the computer asks you if you have a Time Machine backup to restore. Yes, Time Machine's functionality is really no different than that of a traditional incremental backup system. But Time Machine is so much prettier and easier to use! Like the rest of 10.5, Time Machine's graphics and animations are smooth and pleasing but not excessive. The program needs just a tiny bit of configuration: turn it on and specify the hard drive where you want to keep your backups. The defaults are sensible but easily customized. And Time Machine is extensible, so that developers can incorporate it into their own applications. (For example, clicking the Time Machine icon while AddressBook is active allows you to restore individual address-book entries, rather than the entire AddressBook file.) Unfortunately, Time Machine has a serious problem: when you "secure empty trash" a file on your Mac, the backup remains in Time Machine--with no indication or warning to the user that it's still there. If you want to delete the Time Machine backup, you need to enter Time Machine, find the file, and then tell Time Machine to delete all those backups as well. You'll have no clue as to whether they are "securely" deleted or just unlinked. Leopard's other big breakthrough is its Parental Controls, one of the best implementations of child-control technology I've seen. Parental Controls allows you to set time limits on your child's use of the computer (separate limits on weekdays and weekends), bedtimes, and wake-up times. The system gives a warning when bedtime is approaching; if your child is working hard on a paper for school, you can type in your username and password and lift the electronic curfew. Parental Controls also allows you to specify websites that can't be accessed, the people with whom your child can exchange e-mails and instant messages, and even which applications your child can run. I was pleased to see that restrictions on websites and the like are actually built into the operating system, rather than built into Apple's Safari Web browser: I downloaded and ran a copy of Firefox, but the blocked websites remained blocked. |
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The "New" Apple
05/01/2007
Comments
bidmead on 10/25/2007 at 3:29 AM
2
"Than" takes a pronoun in the objective case. North Americans seem often to be confused about this. They fail to distinguish between:
"She is taller than me."
"He is smarter than I am."
--
Chris
sjzack on 10/25/2007 at 7:53 AM
1
stradric on 10/25/2007 at 10:09 AM
19
jeep1104 on 10/25/2007 at 11:50 AM
5
netskip on 10/25/2007 at 5:08 PM
2
From dictionary.com:
Usage note: Whether than is to be followed by the objective or subjective case of a pronoun is much discussed in usage guides. ... When than is followed only by a pronoun or pronouns, with no verb expressed, the usual advice for determining the case is to form a clause mentally after than to see whether the pronoun would be a subject or an object. Thus, the [sentence] ... "She gave him more sympathy than I" [is to be understood] "She gave him more sympathy than I gave him." ... The use of the objective case after than (She gave him more sympathy than me) would produce a different meaning (She gave him more sympathy than she gave me). This method of determining the case of pronouns after than is generally employed in formal speech and writing.
...
In informal, especially uneducated, speech and writing, than is usually treated as a preposition and followed by the objective case of the pronoun: "He is younger than me."
bidmead on 10/27/2007 at 4:36 AM
2
The Random House gloss you quote reflects what's widely taught in US schools. It's based on a supposed parallel with another grammatical rule (that, ironically, N. Americans frequently get wrong). This is the test used to decide the case to use when two pronouns are conjoined with "and".
"He took David and I to the movies" is, as this test makes clear, incorrect. Because if you remove "David and" you see that the pronoun should be in the objective case. US speakers can often be heard using "I" in this context, although it is plainly wrong. (Perhaps my final paragraph below goes some way to explaining this phenomenon.)
A derivation of this test (remove an element to clarify the syntax) is employed in the Random House rule for "than". The derivation is: Add an element to clarify the syntax.
This is pretty self-evidently silly. If you add elements that might have been said but weren't you can permit forms like "Jefferson were the second and third Presidents of the United States" (just add "John Adams" to test for the validity of this syntax).
The final comment in netskip's response (which I can't find in Random House), referring to "informal, especially uneducated speech and writing", highlights another misunderstanding about language that seems to be rife in the USA.
This is the idea that language that differentiates itself from the demotic is somehow "refined", and is therefore to be encouraged at every opportunity. A vigorous tradition of American literature from Mark Twain through Jack London to Norman Mailer and beyond has managed to perish this thought as far as the written word is concerned, but it seems to persist strongly in the speech tradition of "educated" Americans. This makes it all the more alarming (to the European ear) when it turns up on the page.
--
Chris
carlii on 10/25/2007 at 7:03 AM
25
leo2007 on 10/25/2007 at 8:57 AM
1
Of course you can: jump in TimeMachine, select the file you want to remove and choose "Delete All Backups Of YourFile" from the menu in the Action button of the finder window toolbar.
stradric on 10/25/2007 at 10:16 AM
19
The blurb for the article boasts "...and a host of clever, smaller features". Parental controls? Smart folders? 'Back to my Mac'? That's a "host" of features? C'mon, give me more than that.
trevorj on 10/25/2007 at 1:19 PM
1
smithsomian on 10/25/2007 at 1:16 PM
18
rhansing on 10/25/2007 at 1:53 PM
11
lkrndu on 10/25/2007 at 2:09 PM
18
Americans do seem to have
trouble getting
their heads.
Around that.
phoenix on 10/26/2007 at 11:18 AM
99
kid on 10/26/2007 at 2:14 PM
1
dubliner75 on 10/28/2007 at 4:26 PM
2
ouais on 10/27/2007 at 2:40 PM
1