Growing the Apple

The imminent release of Apple's new operating system - Tiger - may spur as many as 25% of the existing 10 million Apple users into an upgrade, local Apple dealers believe. Garren James, MD of C3, the local Authorised Apple Centre, says: "This assessment is based on the new features in the Apple operating system, a combination of open source and proprietary technology that is ultimately Unix-based.

"New features include a desktop search tool called Spotlight that helps Mac users find files on their machines as a standalone search tool of embedded in applications such as email. Another is Dashboard, which accesses mini applications, or widgets, that contain information such as the weather and sporting event scores."

As optimistic as analyst reports may be, growing its market share by converting PC users at the desktop level is too slow a programme for Apple. The company has added over 200 new features to its fifth major server operating system release in an effort to woo network administrators.

The operating system also supports 64-bit applications, access control lists, portable home directories and iChat Server, the server-side support application for iChat AV, which brings multi-way video and audio conferencing directly to the desktop.