During some of the Christmas downtime, when weather made indoors more enticing than outdoors, I finally got around to installing Leopard on my PowerBook. I've been running it at work for a couple of months, so I knew what to expect, but I installed it anyway. I'm not sure why. I guess because since I had bought it, I might as well use it. Or maybe I've just drunk too much of the Apple Kool-Aid, and can't resist the urge to keep up with their latest glitzy offering (although I have resisted the iPhone so far).

Before installing it at work, I looked at the list of text" Target="Offsite">300 new features, and tried to figure out how many of them I would actually use. I couldn't find many that really justified the installation. Some of the most impressive enhancements are in applications that I never use anyway. But since I wasn't paying for the work system, I figured I might as well waste some time installing it.

And after using Leopard for a couple of months at work, and barely noticing any difference between it and Tiger, I decided to install it at home anyway. And so far, I haven't noticed much difference at home either. I have started using Time Machine, which might justify the upgrade price by itself. Backup is always good, especially on a laptop where disk failures are more likely. The Time Machine automated incremental system is nice, since backups that reply on manual action usually don't get done. But the fancy interface for displaying and selecting backups is just a waste. Just give me list of available backups and let me choose one, and spend the design time wasted on that gorgeous 3-D interface on something really useful.

Maybe I'm just getting to that stage of life where I'm resistant to change. The systems I've been using suit me just fine, and I don't want to be bothered with learning how to use all this razzle-dazzle new technology, even if it is better. On the other hand, maybe it is a lot of flash and no substance, packaged to sell to today's market that likes anything shiny and new without the time to see if it's really offering anything useful. That certainly seems to be a successful strategy recently. It even worked in Iowa.