InfoWorld has been doing product reviews for nearly three decades. Never before has a reviewer had the temerity to award an overall score of 10 until our Test Center Chief Technologist Tom Yager put that ne-plus-ultra stamp of approval on... InfoWorld has been doing product reviews for nearly three decades. Never before has a reviewer had the temerity to award an overall score of 10 until our Test Center Chief Technologist Tom Yager put that ne-plus-ultra stamp of approval on Leopard, also known as OS X 10.5.At this historic moment, I feel a mixture of excitement and trepidation. Years ago I was a product reviews editor – and I know exactly the kind of reaction Tom’s review will get. There will be the predictable conflict-of-interest catcalls (“Is Tom Yager Steve Jobs’ ghostwriter? How much does he get paid?”). Others will simply sneer that Tom is a member in good standing of the Apple cult. So allow me to direct the attention of these hecklers to Tom’s review of the iPhone. There, when evaluating this little wonder as an enterprise device, he gave it a measly 4.9 score. (To which one reader responded: “Just wondering, whose payroll ARE you actually on? Microsoft’s?”) I’m happy to report that Tom is on InfoWorld’s payroll, period. But even I had to swallow hard when I saw that perfect 10. When I asked Tom to explain how any product could earn that rating, here’s what he said: “I’ve been writing reviews for over 25 years, and it’s never happened. As I dug around, Leopard kept looking better, which made me more skeptical of my methods and findings, which in turn caused me to dig deeper to find fault. Instead of the flaws I hoped to find, I ended up hitting a simple, lean, elegant core architecture. Working back up from there, all of the pieces came together, and ‘perfect’ came into focus.”The next obvious question was: How did Apple get the absolute maximum score for a product when no other company had succeeded? “Focus and motivation,” said Tom. “No other vendor of Apple’s size can afford to dedicate so much staff to one task. The Mac is a closed platform, so Apple doesn’t have to validate every line of code against unlimited variations of system configurations. OS X is all that distinguishes Macs from high-end PCs. Without OS X, Macs don’t fetch the margins that Apple demands.” Agree with Tom – or don’t – but you won’t find a deeper, more insightful dive into OS X 4.5 than his review. Seldom does reality exceed expectations. When it does by such a wide margin, you have to call it the way you see it. Technology Industry