(AP) -- Tired of waiting while your computer slowly scours its hard drive for a document you stashed somewhere six months ago?
Sick of having to change how you work to conform with the computer's rigid way of organizing files?
Bored with the flat look of the desktop's graphics?
If you have a Macintosh computer, or plan to buy one, those issues have been tackled. They're addressed in the latest update of Mac OS X, dubbed "Tiger," which goes on sale Friday.
Despite a much smaller user base, Mac OS X has been steps ahead of Microsoft's Windows on key fronts since its first release in 2001.
It's got more advanced and polished graphics. It's less prone to malicious attacks. And Macs look better than nearly all Windows PCs....
Spotlight doesn't just search filenames.
It also looks inside files -- into a document's text, a picture caption or tags linked to a music file, for instance.
And Spotlight's speed is impressive.
Like the desktop search tools available on Windows PCs from Yahoo, Google and MSN, Spotlight relies on an index that's created when it's first installed.
Instead of having to scour an entire drive in search of something, it just looks it up in the database.
Indexing with Windows add-ons is a more computer-intensive process.
Most are smart enough to do their work only when you're not working on something, but that means new information isn't always available.
