Having used up maybe a couple of years' worth of hype with its iPhone launch, Apple has received a muted response to its recent new software roll-outs, which is too bad since the "Leopard" operating system, iLife multimedia-entertainment suite, and iWork productivity bundle are interesting products in their own right.

Leopard (aka OSX 10.5) is highlighted by the substantial achievement of taking two technologies previously limited to hard-core geeks and making them a part of everyday computing.

One is automated backup, which takes place nearly invisibly in the background via Apple's Time Machine software. Designed to work with external hard drives, Time Machine practically sets itself up when you plug one in. Thereafter you need to do absolutely nothing, except of course, when you need to restore backed-up files. No more forgetting to back up, Time Machine does the remembering for you.

The second is dual booting (Apple's implementation is called Boot Camp), which allows you to take a Mac, reserve a portion of your hard drive for installing a Windows system, and then launch the OS of your choice when you start up your Mac. In other words, you can have both a Mac and a Windows PC living on one box. This lets you use Windows-only software and also helps ease the cost of transitioning from Windows to a Mac by sparing you the expense of having to immediately replace all your Windows software with Mac versions.

Other key enhancements include:

* Faster disk searching with the Spotlight tool.

* Quick Look previews the contents of files without your having to open them in their native applications.

* Finder makes accessing other computers over a network nearly seamless.

* The "cover flow" view pioneered in iTunes also is added to Finder so you can "flip" through documents in search of the one you want.

* iChat now includes the ability to show documents, presentations, slide shows, and the like during a video conference.

One warning: There have been reports of instability, crashes, and data loss with Leopard. I just haven't seen it. Usually when I write something like that, five seconds after the piece is in print, I then experience a major system meltdown. However, as of now I can report only the same kind of minor glitches that you see routinely on every system. My one major complaint: It is time for Apple and Microsoft to stop playing their stupid "my-interface-has-more-translucent-and-3D-effects-than-yours" game. Like Vista, Leopard has entirely unnecessary eye candy that often does nothing except make things harder to see.

iLife '08 is probably the most routine of Apple's new software simply because it already was the standard-setting package of its kind. The biggest change in the bundle is that iMovie has been redone both in interface and file format. Otherwise the enhancements to other components take the form of refinements such as more template designs to let your projects have a new look or some helpful new features including more ways to put your photos on the Web.

The headline news for iWork '08 is that it gains the long-rumored Numbers spreadsheet program to go with the Keynote presentation software and the Pages word processor. Numbers allows you to create visually striking spreadsheets, something that is usually considered an oxymoron on the order of "jumbo shrimp." Rather than using spreadsheet tables as the base for documents as Excel does, Numbers instead creates a container document into which tables, charts, and text are placed - leaving you with something that has visual emphasis. Typical of iWork, this first version of Numbers ships with only a few design templates. You can expect that number to grow with each subsequent release.

More templates and effects are pretty much the story with Keynote, along with a customizable presenter mode (a screen you see when giving your presentation that can include your notes, a timer, and a preview of the next slide). Pages also gets more templates and a "word processing mode" - basically a toolbar for changing fonts, alignment, type sizes, styles and the like.

Having now given birth to its final key component, the question for Apple is: What does it want iWork to be when it grows up? The suite is very strong on design, allowing users to produce extremely nice-looking documents with sophisticated graphic effects. But atypically for Apple, the ease of use leaves something to be desired. Too many functions in all three programs require you to use the Inspector, a ridiculously complicated, unfriendly dialog box. Simple, routine tasks such as changing margins or not starting page numbering on the first page take entirely too many steps.

iWork is harder to use than the current Mac version of Microsoft Office, and Office 2008 looks to be easier still and to incorporate equally good-looking designs. If Apple wants iWork to be a serious alternative to Office, it needs a big infusion of the ease-of-use thinking that made iLife such a benchmark.

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Al Gordon is a Massachusetts-based writer who specializes in technology and consumer electronics. You can read more of his articles at www.algordon.com/techblog.html and e-mail him at eagle@algordon.com.