The New York Times > Technology > Apple to Start Selling New Macintosh Operating System

The New York Times > Technology > Apple to Start Selling New Macintosh Operating System: "Steven P. Jobs, the company's chief executive, has at earlier events given brief demonstrations of some of the new features. On Tuesday, the company described the software's new capabilities, including a file search feature called Spotlight; four-way videoconferencing and 10-way audio conferences; and a system called Dashboard that will display on the screen small functions like calculators, currency converters and airline flight schedule trackers.
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"This has created even more distance between us and Microsoft," said Philip W. Schiller, Apple's senior vice president for worldwide product marketing. "We're becoming a tiny dim red light in their headlights."
David Caulton, group product manager in for Microsoft's Windows client division, said "Apple is obviously doing interesting stuff within a closed solution." By contrast, Microsoft, he said, prefers "to take on the problem of platform solutions with a lot of different partners."
Both Apple and Microsoft have focused on adding file retrieval and graphics technologies to their operating systems. Analysts have said that this is partly a response to the growth of Internet search, which has transformed the way computer users hunt for information.
Apple's new Spotlight retrieval feature automatically indexes information without regard to whether the information is in a word-processing document, spreadsheet, digital image or any other file type. Microsoft has a similar feature available with its MSN service and has said it plans to integrate it into Longhorn."

Paying $129 for a minor OS revision -- how quaint...