Macintosh buffs don't merely like their computers — they share a near-religious zeal, in which PC users are heathens and Bill Gates is the devil. But Mac lovers who are similarly addicted to genealogy have long suffered for their faith: Most genealogy software — including market-leading Family Tree Maker — run only on PCs (or on Macs running special PC emulation software).

So Mac-aholics may be saying hosannas at the advent of Mac Family Tree version 4, a downloadable shareware program designed to make the most of the latest Mac OS X operating system. MacFamily-Tree looks and feels like a real Mac program, not just software "ported" over from Windows. As you'd expect on a Mac, its charts and graphics are particularly attractive and flexible. You can drag and drop image files to add photos of your ancestors or even scans of your source material.

For the most part, MacFamilyTree also achieves the Mac's renowned "ease of use." Buttons switch between Edit, View and Publish modes. You input all your data in Edit, of course, while View offers options for ancestor charts (called "Heritage Chart"), descendant charts, timelines, genograms, statistical reports, simple lists and summaries. Publish lets you burn family trees to a CD, export to HTML for a Web site or — a slick feature Mac insiders will appreciate — upload to your .mac iDisk on Apple's servers. You also can export and import GEDCOM pedigree files, once you figure out that importing is Add File or Merge File.