Ready for Tomorrow's Tiger

This blog comes to you through a Macintosh, the computer whose demise has been continuously predicted — much like our errant forecasts noted yesterday — since I started using the Mac in 1987. So many tomorrows have dawned for Mac users since then. The company's stock split this year and it trumped its profit estimates six-fold in the last quarter. Clearly, Apple is selling us things we covet. Tomorrow us Mac lovers can put a Tiger in our tanks, when the latest operating system, code-named Tiger, ships from Amazon.com and elsewhere. (This morning Tiger's No. 2 on the Amazon software best-seller list, right behind Microsoft's Encarta digital encylopedia.)

In a brilliant column on the NY Times Web site, David Pogue details Tiger's stripes. He warns us that reading about operating systems "is about as much fun as a seminar on tax policy." But then he goes on to show us the fun of using Spotlight (shown left), the new search-and-find program inside Tiger that tracks down whatever you're looking for without opening a single folder. Tiger has better security, too, something that should interest the virus-and-spyware-weary Windows users. Somehow, the Mac's new OS can now make your computer too stealthy for bad guys to enslave it in the service of sending spam to others.

Pogue is a treasure for us in the Mac community, but he's genuinely entertaining in his latest outing. Pogue, a former Broadway conductor, wraps up his summary of Tiger's new stripes by putting them down in song, to the beat of "The First Lord's Song" from HMS Pinafore

The rest of the 200 features don't fall into any one visionary category; they're an assortment of tweaks and upgrades that pile up like something out of Gilbert and Sullivan:

The Safari browser now subscribes to R.S.S. news feeds,

And its "private browsing" mode conceals the tracks of online deeds.

There are archives now, and log files, when you send or get a fax;

You can make the pointer bigger on those Jumbotron-screened Macs.

You can start a full-screen slide show from some photos on demand;

And the voice that reads the screen aloud can lend the blind a hand.

There's a password-phrase suggestor meant to make yours more secure,

And the Grapher module draws equations simple and obscure.

Then the Automator program is a geeky software clerk -

You just choose the steps you want performed, and it does all the work.

There's a lot of miscellany, lots of spit-and-polish stuff,

But it works and doesn't slow you down - and these days, that's enough.

Okay, maybe the geek in me likes tax seminars, though I'm a chronic extension filer. But I believe Apple/Amazon's got my $95 coming their way soon.