I can hear the complaints. Mac OS 10.5 Leopard, so far at least, offers nothing really new, just warmer and fuzzier versions of products long available from third parties, Windows or on Linux. So what’s so innovative about that and why all this nonsense about withholding other features so Microsoft won’t copy them too?

But there is one big thing that some of the commentators and bloggers are forgetting, which is that a product doesn’t have to be original to be innovative. Take the iPod. There were plenty of music players around before it came to be, but Apple succeeded by finding a way to deliver a better product, and integrate it almost seamlessly with an online music store that catered to both Mac and PC users.

So, of all the features Apple has demonstrated so far in Leopard, what’s the real scene stealer? Well, it may not seem a terribly sexy subject, but it’s Time Machine, Leopard’s backup application.

You see, Apple’s executives have delivered some extremely frightening statistics about backups. Only 26% of Mac users perform backups, and only 4% use dedicated software to perform the task. Can you believe it?

At its core, backing up your data is a very simple task. Just copy your stuff to a CD, DVD or another hard drive, and that’s it, at least for the basics. This is nothing new, as there have been backup techniques on the Mac almost from the very beginning, so why are most people avoiding it as if it were some sort of contagious disease?

Now this may be getting boring for some of you, but I’ve been preaching the backup religion for years. What’s more, just consider the consequences if you fail to back up a document and lose it. If that document contains your Quicken financial records, your tax return, or that novel you worked on for the past five years, what would happen if you lost it — forever?

You may argue that Apple is just spinning its wheels with Time Machine. There are already programs that’ll help you undelete lost files, and there are certainly plenty of backup options. So what’s the point?

Again, it’s the fact that 74% of you never back up at all. Not once! Not ever!

Even worse, consider that you are depending on a single device, a hard drive that contains complicated mechanical bits and pieces, to store your stuff. Drives fail all too frequently, and fail hard! Yes, there may be a warranty, but that warranty will only replace a defective drive. It won’t bring your files back, and the recovery services that are capable of performing such deeds charge an arm and a leg with no guarantee they’ll be even partly successful.

Of course, I can’t say that Time Machine is the best solution. I’ve been using dedicated backup programs for years. When Leopard comes out, I’ll probably be one of the early adopters, because I have to write about such things. I’ll even put Time Machine through its paces on one of my three backup drives, but I won’t switch completely until I’m assured it’s as reliable and trouble-free as it seemed to be at the recent WWDC demonstration.

On the other hand, if even 10% of the people who find excuses not to back up change their tune after Leopard arrives, that’ll be a huge success for Apple. You can then forget the excuses the naysayers deliver.

In the meantime, please don’t sit back and wait for the spring of 2007, assuming Leopard arrives on schedule. I cannot overemphasize the importance of having a backup routine now! If your needs are a little more sophisticated than just copying an occasional file or two every few days to an external drive, I’d like to recommend a e-book that’ll help get you towards the best backup strategy. It’s Joe Kissell’s “Take Control of Mac OS X Backups” and it’s just $10. Even better, you get free updates as Joe finds better software and techniques.

Yes, Time Machine, if it succeeds, will earn Apple a golden statue in my book. It’s a terrific idea.

Also, I’d love to have your comments, especially from the folks who never seem to find the time to perform a backup.

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It’s fair to say that a number of Mac Pros are already in user’s hands, and the reviews are coming fast and thick. I think you can get a pretty fair assessment of the product by checking at least three of them, from Ars Technica, Macworld and Bare Feats. The latter is primarily a benchmarking site, but if numbers are your game, it’s a great place to play, and this particular review is an ultimate shootout that features the 3GHz Mac Pro compared against a Power Mac G5 Quad.

Perhaps the most important element of all, however, is the fact that the Mac Pro, and the forthcoming Intel-based Xserve, mark the completion of a minor miracle in the tech world. For the second time in its history, Apple has successfully ditched a processor family and moved on, this time, in a sense, to the competing chip company it once mocked.

The Bare Feats article is the most telling of all, because of heralds a significant milestone in the advance of the Intel-based Mac. For the first time, Rosetta emulation performance approaches, and in one case surpasses, that of the fastest Power PC. This means that you can use older power-hungry applications such as Photoshop without giving up very much in the way of productivity. And wait till the Universal version comes out next year!

Being the ultimate Mac workstation, some naturally want to compare its price to a similarly equipped entrant from the PC market. Apple choose Dell as its counterpart, simply because Dell is the number one PC maker, although its sales haven’t grown quite as fast as they used to.

Although the issue is highly controversial, as usual, Charles Gaba’s System Shootouts had a unique slant on the issue. He set a price point of $3,200 for his benchmark, and was able to come up with a Mac Pro and a Dell Precision 890 tower with a fairly similar range of standard equipment for the same price. But there was one creative exception, which is that he had to add a 20-inch Apple Cinema Display to raise the Mac Pro’s price to match that of the Dell, which didn’t include a monitor.

To be sure, this sort of price shopping is a difficult chore, made all the more complicated by the fact that it seems that no two people arrive at the same price in customizing a computer at Dell. Depending on which of their online stores you visit, and whether or not you find the proper coupon somewhere, the price you pay will differ, often by several hundred dollars. You always feel like the harried customer of a car dealer, where three different people buying the very same vehicle, with the exact same options, will pay three different prices.

It is also a watershed moment, because the arrival of the Mac Pro means that the Power Mac, which bowed in 1994, is now history, except for the remainders you might find at a dealer here and there.

As with other models in its MacIntel line, Apple used a very similar case design, at least from the outside. This choice not only sped them to market, but offered the aura of continuity with their predecessors. Moreover, byy using the cooler-running Intel “Woodcrest” or Xeon chips, Apple was able to simplify the ventilation system drastically. Yes, no more liquid cooling to be concerned about. So there’s room for two more hard drives and a second optical device.

The downside to all this joy is the specially designed DDR2 FB-DIMM ECC (667 MHz) (fully buffered) RAM that Apple requires, which come with special heat sinks. They are a lot more expensive, even from the few third parties that have added them to their product rosters.

Although there are reports of speedier versions of previous entrants in the Intel-based line, the real heavy lifting is essentially over for Apple, at least for now.

The job remains undone for a number of software developers, however, who are still struggling to build Universal versions of their sprawling productivity applications. I’m sure when the likes of Adobe and Microsoft began their move to upgrade their flagship applications, they didn’t except Apple to get its work completed so soon.

By next spring, however, I fully expect to see even speedier Mac Pros, with a pair of quad processors inside. Most of the Universal applications you’ve aching for will be available, and Apple will be ready to roll out Leopard. That assumes, of course, that the schedule can be met, which seems a pretty good bet.

Though I’ve already said I’m not really that involved in the alleged Mac Versus PC wars, I have to wonder where Microsoft will be by then. Will Vista finally make it past the starting gate and in what state of completion? But will anyone, except a few Windows devotees, really care?

And, finally, on this week’s episode of The Tech Night Owl LIVE, Special Correspondent David Biedny will deliver his official eulogy for the Power Mac.

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It’s not enough that you can find conspiracy theories in what the government does, historical events of great magnitude, and even such tragedies as the Kennedy assassination. Now we see a growing trend towards finding some deep, dark conspiracy in the goings on even at Apple Computer.

Every single move the company makes is evaluated with the viewpoint that they are really trying to pull the wool over our eyes, and that they have secret motives we can only guess at, aside from being profitable of course.

The most recent rumor that had any degree of traction was influenced by the apparent behavior of Steve Jobs at the WWDC earlier this month. Now I’m not trained in medicine, and I’m not an expert at body language, but I have to wonder about the claims that he looked gaunt and sickly. I don’t recall anyone mentioning this, but I did see him talking in a perfectly normal fashion to someone in front of the stage a short time before the keynote. Minutes later, he bounded onstage with his usual flair, and I found nothing out-of-the-ordinary about his delivery, except for delegating a fair portion of the presentation to three of his corporate lieutenants.

So why did he do that if he wasn’t ill and preparing everyone for the day that he’ll be stepping down from his post as CEO? Well, this was a developer’s conference, and although there was the usual worldwide attention focused on the WWDC announcements, let’s not forget that Jobs also said that 1,000 Apple developers were on hand to participate in the various events. And how often does he thank his staff publicly for their great work? Maybe he was just being generous to allot some of them a chance to shine before an audience of the very people they were working with?
Another alleged symptom of his ill health was the fact that he wore tiny granny glasses, and was observed looking at his notes during the presentation. Now that’s nothing terribly new, since I’ve seen him do that at previous keynotes. Is anyone paying attention here?

Now I understand the concerns. After all, Jobs is a cancer survivor, and I suppose it’ll take several years before fears of the dreadful disease’s return have receded. In fact, the question of Jobs’ health got so much attention that Apple’s corporate PR people were compelled to issue a statement saying that “Steve’s health is robust and we have no idea where these rumors are coming from.”

That, however, will probably not still the concerns. Some will suggest that a corporate mouthpiece shouldn’t be believed any more than a politician.

On the other hand, I suppose it might be a good idea to use the trick celebrity tabloid newspapers, such as the National Enquirer, employ, which is to show some photos of Jobs over the past few months so everyone can observe whether he seems to have lost weight with enough close-ups to determine if his face reveals any inkling of ill health. Of course, one could then suggest that Photoshop was used to retouch the pictures, and, no, a picture of him yelling at an employee may not be sufficient to silence the skeptics.

I suppose if it wasn’t Steve Jobs, but Michael Dell, few would pay so much attention. But it is strange that so many people rely on Apple Computer for their products, but at the same time, they disbelieve every single company statement that comes their way.

In the days when Apple would do onstage bake-offs featuring a Power Mac and a Dell, even diehard Mac users would complain that the books were cooked, so to speak. The Dell was crippled, and the Mac had surreptitious performance boosters to make it come out ahead.

Is the Mac Pro nearly $1,000 cheaper than a comparably equipped Dell Precision Workstation? You don’t have to take their word for it, or mine. Do the price comparisons yourself, but match up the features as closely as you can. Right now, the numbers are correct, but vary all over the place because of Dell’s inconsistent pricing.

But, after all, just as the conspiracy theorists know that Steve Jobs really has health problems of an unknown nature, they also know that the Mac must always be more expensive. After all, can’t you build a home-brewed PC box with those new Intel Xeon chips for $1,500? It doesn’t matter if a pair of the new 2.66GHz Woodcrest chips cost more than that on the retail level. Why let a few facts get in the way?

Yes, I know some of you will write in and insist that Steve Jobs is clearly in ill health, and the pictures don’t lie. On the other hand, maybe I should take this whole strange discussion over to my paranormal radio show, The Paracast, where it will join the rest of the conspiracies in this crazy world.

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