Apple computer corp

Apple's latest operating system release is free, easy to install and so far seems quite stable

Apple typically makes its most significant announcements at major trade shows. The MacWorld Boston show is July 21-23 and since my crystal ball for forecasting new products is a little fuzzy right now, here's my take on Apple's latest OS upgrade.

Mac OS 8.6 upgrade was announced at the annual Worldwide Developer Conference in May. Apple bills it as a "must-have" release. Perhaps, but as I see it, it's a "must have" mainly because it's free, easy to install, and my experience to date suggests that it is quite stable.

That's not to say there aren't new features in 8.6 - it's just that you may have trouble finding them. And, since Apple's OS documentation (in hardcopy form) is always somewhere between sparse and nonexistent, you may have to go to Apple's Web site for a specification sheet for the details.

OS 8.6 improvements to Sherlock include more third-party plug-ins, so you can do more targeted Web searches and content searches (on your own hard disk) within HTML and PDF fries.

Road warriors will be happy to hear G3 PowerBook battery life has been extended through new power management software. Other advances include improved support for mobile phones, USB, FireWire, games and DVD-RAM discs.

There's also a new runtime version of Java and the latest release of AppleScript (v 1.3.7). Java support will become increasingly important as more Java applications appear; but, for now, it will be of little interest to most Mac owners. The AppleScript enhancements should be more compelling; but, I doubt if there is a large user base with AppleScript experience. Nonetheless, AppleScript (like Sherlock) is another one of those Mac OS treasures that needs to be experienced to be appreciated. And since Apple won't provide you with hardcopy documentation, you'll have to go out and buy a book on AppleScript to use it effectively.

In part I can appreciate Apple's "who needs manuals?" approach as a way of emphasizing Mac's ease-of-use. But many users are missing out on great features they'd find useful if they only knew about them.

Take something like Contextual Menus - you can hold down the Control key and click on any icon to see a menu of things you can do with that file. It's an invisible feature with lots of potential. One such possibility is pointing at a text document icon with your cursor and (with Contextual Menus enabled) selecting "Summarize File to Clipboard." This OS function creates an abstract of the document for you. Talk about reducing information overload} I used this feature on a 10,000 word digest of income tax tips. The original was reduced to a 500 word abstract. The synopsis I extracted through this method was exactly the kind of point-form condensation that I otherwise would have had to prepare manually with pen and paper while reading the full document.

Combine this with the enhanced Sherlock in OS 8.6, and you have a powerful tool to not only find, but also summarize, material that you've found on the Web.

As for other Mac OS 8.6 features, you'll find a bit more detail at Apple's Web site, but most of the material there is a rehash of 8.5 features. That's not necessarily bad, since 8.5 really was (and still

Charles Whaley is president of Information Technology Enterprises, a Toronto-based market research and consulting firm. He can be reached via his Web site, www.ITEnterprises.com, or via e-mail at cwhaley@ITEnterprises.com.