Apple's upcoming operating system Leopard wouldn't be available until October this year but even this early, we've been hearing a lot about its features and how it differs from the current OS Tiger. And just like in previous OS updates, some consumers are wondering how to emulate those features on Tiger.

Online site AppleTell has an interesting article about the above mentioned "problem" and divulged that there are a couple of existing third party applications that provide users some solution. For starters, here are some of the features that you can add to your Tiger and give it some "spots" so to speak to make it look like Leopard:

• Time Machine: Unfortunately, no current application truly lives up to Time Machine, but an app called SuperDuper seems to do the trick pretty well.
• Spaces: Although Virtual Desktops have been around for a while, Spaces brings them to a whole new level. Fortunately, we don't have to wait until October to use virtual desktops, as two current apps do the job already, VirtueDesktops and Desktop Manager
• Stacks: Even though LeopardÂ?s stacks cannot truly be emulated with an app, thereÂ?s a simple trick to getting a piece of stacks in Tiger.
• UI: You can modify Tiger's UI to look like Leopard's with a theme called Liger. Just install ShapeShifter and ClearDock from Unsanity, and download Liger.
• Finder: here are such things as "Finder replacements" that will give your current file browsing experience a boost. Some of these Finder replacements include Path Finder, Macintosh Explorer, and Forklift
• iChat: ChatFX brings many Photo Booth-like effects and the famed blue screen effect over to iChat on Tiger. Although a bit unstable at times, ChatFX gives you a taste of iChat on Leopard.
• Dashboard: With Leopard, you can now clip parts of web pages and put them in Dashboard, thanks to a new feature called Web Clip. Tiger users can clip web pages as well with a widget.

    

Looks like chatting isn't what it used to be. Before all it took was a webcam, a face and things to say, but that's not good enough anymore. Hot on the heels of Logitech's hugely successful video cam effects, Chatfx presents visual effects for iChat using QuickTime, Quartz and Quartz Composer (provided by Apple to developers in Mac OS 10.4).

According to Chatfx "Normal teleconferences are plain. Talking and seeing people in offices and cubicles is ordinary." Why settle for "normal" and "plain" when you can get insane and creepy with special effects like those seen in movies and PhotoShop.

Included in its bluescreen lib are twirl, comic book, alien, interrogation, pencil, vortex, dent, bump, bodyart, facepaint, fisheye, gloom, mercury, on fire, ogre, sepia, sorbel, xray, thermal, and an infinite number of additional special video effects that can be created by using Quartz Composer.

Anyone can do it, according to the company. "Like the special effects in movies anything is now possible to add to iChat," they claim. For example you can make your normally filthy room look like it has been straigthened by the Queer guys. Or make your shoebox office look more Trump-esque.  Or you can make it look like you're on mars, the moon, inside a rainforest, or under the sea.

"Keep video conferences interesting by simulating TV news and weather reports." Weather reports are interesting? There is a practical side to this fun little program. Although Chatfx didn't name even one. Going back to the keeping conferences interesting using visual sfx... whatever happened to smart and witty conversations?