[aelfes]

I absolutely agree with you. I think Apple spends
far too much effort on trivial stuff (ex: "genie effect") and far too little on really providing a superior product. There are hundreds of small examples, here just a few typical irritants:
1. iCal should have a sliding window of days (see Meeting Maker); I can only achieve that by going
into Preferences every time and changing the week
start day
2. the Finder fonts (menu bar, window titles) on my new MacBook Pro 17" are way too small, and there does not seem to be a way of increasing the size;
it looks as if they are defined font sizes in pixels, rather than points, and the small font size problem propagates to other tools (Thunderbird, etc.)
3. the Mac "help" function seems to have less info, rather than more, from one OSX version to the next;
4. the Finder gets confused with snapping files/folders to the grid, and selecting view formats for folders does not carry through consistently when opening subsequent folders
5. the Finder also gets confused and jumbles up the
folder arrangements on screen when I connect to
a larger display and then disconnect
6. it also sometimes gets confused or takes a long time to recognize external drives
7. it often gets confused when I close the laptop without switching it off, and then open it again (say, going from one meeting to the next), so that I frequently have to reboot; I also often get two login screens
in a row after I open the laptop
8. the Finder hangs when there is a problem copying files to another drive, and has to be restarted
9. it also gets confused with X11 windows when switching between monitors: if the X11 window is
minimized, the Finder leaves a black window on the
screen and forgets about it;
10. etc, etc ad nauseam.
What I find particularly
worrying is that 15-10 years ago there was a big
technology/quality gap between Macs and PCs. Now
there is more a styling gap than a significant
technology/paradigm gap, and for most people that is
not enough to justify paying twice or more the price of a PC for a Mac. If Apple is only interested
in investing real effort in iPods and iPhones
(since they bring in the money), they should let
us longtime Mac users know and we'll go buy a PC
(shudder!).

[XSemperIdem5]

You can use TimeMachineEditor to change the time interval of backups. It should be an option provided by 10.5 but at least there is a free option for now.
http://www.macobserv...8/09/17.5.shtml