But these are just the wheezings of a woman fixed in her ways; change, I must recall, is good. And certainly the Apple OS has been crying out for an overhaul for years. As a Mac-identified computer user first and foremost (though I have crossed over to the dark side in recent years, and now consider myself ambi-computerous), a creeping suspicion that perhaps the Mac OS could benefit from being a little bit more like Windows has long been my secret shame. OK, Apple would never give me a two-button mouse, but couldn't it at least do something to make it easier to access all my open documents?

Fortunately, the user interface in the beta version of Mac OS X -- now available for $29.95 -- proves that Apple has been thinking in a Windows kind of way. It has also been thinking in a Unix kind of way, incorporating the open-source BSD operating system into the core of its software. But that's something that nongeeks like myself can hear and just smile about, knowing that it's probably a good thing, before promptly forgetting about its existence.

For me, the important elements of an operating system are the user interface, the navigation system and (more vaguely) the hope that the computer will do more things in less time. On these levels, despite the aforementioned minor disgruntlements, OS X succeeds. The system looks great and offers a million new ways to find the things you need. And judged on a purely observational level, it does indeed seem to be much better at allocating memory and multitasking. That doesn't mean that the system is perfect; keeping in mind that what I tested was only a beta version of the software, and thus by definition prone to bugs and glitches, there are still some places in the interface and navigation where Apple has missed the boat. More on that later.

OS X (with an interface called "Aqua") is the first major overhaul Apple has given its Macintosh operating system in more than 16 years. Although successive operating systems in the years since the first Macintosh have added more gadgets and widgets -- nicer tool bars and better graphics, the Sherlock search and so on -- the main navigational and organizational systems have never truly been revised. That's no longer the case.

The first thing you'll notice with the new desktop is a marvelous little thing called the "dock," a small, semitranslucent tool bar that perches at the bottom of the desktop and never disappears (unless you want it to). In the dock are icons for all your favorite applications, open documents, basic system preferences and search functions. It is difficult to exaggerate how useful this little navigational bar is -- much like the Windows tool bar that tracks open documents, the dock lets you know what windows are open and which applications are running, helps you access everything with one click and even tells you the number of e-mail messages currently awaiting you in your mailbox. It is probably the greatest thing to come to the Mac interface since the mouse.

The Free Software Project
Read Andrew Leonard's book-in-progress on Linux and open source -- and post your comments.