10 Things We Love About Apple

True, we're a little miffed that we have to wait until October to get our hands on Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard); blame the iPhone. But if Leopard is anything like Tiger ( Mac OS X 10.4), it'll make Windows users jealous. Its Time Machine instant backup might be what finally gets people to back up their files. Its Spaces window management could work better than the already excellent Expose technology and the form-over-function Windows Flip 3D. Apple's Spotlight Desktop Search will search network volumes, and the nifty Dashboard widget engine will get new features. Apple being Apple, it's also entirely possible that it has some more surprises up its sleeve that it won't tell us until the moment before it springs Leopard on the world.

In the meantime, OS X 10.4 "Tiger," more than two years old now, is nearing the end of its life. Yet in most ways that matter, it's still a more pleasing, pleasingly consistent environment to work in than its newer (and arguably glitzier) competitor from Redmond. Aging Apple, in other words, is entirely capable of beating brand-new Microsoft.

What good is a cool computer or music player if it doesn't keep going and going? Apple makes some of the most reliable products on the market--from its MacBook to its iPod digital audio players. In our most recent survey of reliability and service, the company scored higher than all other notebook manufacturers except for Lenovo, in part thanks to a better-than-average score for "satisfaction with reliability" and for overall reliability. Its digital audio players topped our list, earning the only better-than-average score for "satisfaction with reliability" (though its mark for overall reliability was only average).

Of course, Apple's track record isn't perfect, as owners of defective MacBooks will tell you. But the fact that you can get a reliable product that looks nice too makes its overall record pretty impressive.

Amidst the record industry's panic over illegal music downloads, Apple unveiled the 99-cent single-song download, an easy-to-use software music store for buying them, and a catalog that included indie and unsigned artists when most competitors stuck to the catalogs of the big labels. The iTunes Store later raised the profile of television show and movie downloads, and Jobs even called for the end of music digital rights management (DRM). Soon after, EMI said it would introduce DRM-free (albeit higher-priced) versions of its songs. (It remains to be seen if this ends up being a good move for the financially struggling big-four music company.)

We're still not happy about most songs in the iTunes library requiring you to use an iPod for portable-device playback, but we admire Apple's deal-making finesse. It shook up the entire industry, which, left to itself, would have you buying six crappy filler tracks for every three you actually wanted. Who knows where music might be if Steve Jobs had decided to spend his time making cartoons at Pixar rather than reinventing the consumer electronics industry?

5. Macs Run Windows

While most people still consider the Windows and Mac operating systems either/or options, a growing number are choosing to run both on one machine--an Intel-based Mac.

It all happened so fast. In January 2006, Apple shipped the first Intel-based Mac (the iMac). In March 2006, hackers Narf and Blanka hacked it to run Windows. Less than a month later, Apple released the public beta of Boot Camp, which dual-boots Mac and Windows operating systems. And now, there are at least three other ways to run Windows (even Vista) on your Mac, including the slick and easy-to-use Parallels Desktop for Mac, which makes the integration of OS X and Windows nearly seamless.

Unless Apple decides to let other computer manufacturers make OS X-ready computers, it'll be the only company that makes machines that can be a Mac and a PC. We don't see Steve Jobs letting the rest of the industry make Macs; then again, we never thought he'd be willingly involved with Windows-capable systems, either.