These are a few views on the coming stuff in OSX Leopard, i.e. the coming version of the Apple operating system following "Tiger", which will ship come spring 2007. Loads of Windows Vista-bashing was included, which is rightfully so...

1. Time Machine

So this is Apple's coming backup-system. It seems to backup on-the-fly, scheduled and very good-looking, offering a kind of titles-from-Star-Wars-ish interface for searching files/folders one wants to restore. In essence, it means Time Machine supports restoring previous versions of files, e.g. a Word-document saved multiple times during a minute. I guess this is configurable as drat.

Do note that this works in other apps than Finder, even third-party apps; one can Star Wars-scroll through several rolls of film in iPhoto via Time Machine, for example.

2. Spaces (=Apple's term for virtual desktops)

Nice one! Looks like VirtueDesktops at first glance, but is manufactured by Apple, so it should contain more. Maybe. Teaching certain types of apps to automatically stick to certain virtual desktops shouldn't be a problem, e.g. one desktop for chat apps, one for web-browsing. You can also control your desktops in an Exposé-way.

3. Spotlight

Improved; one can now search other computers (if allowed) and servers. I don't think this will incorporate anything other than Mac-shares, though. One can now use Spotlight as a launcher; I do have trouble thinking this will run over Quicksilver, though. They're just two different apps.

4. Mail

5. Dashboard

This is old news, the loving widgets that scatter across the Dashboard; this feature will be spanking-new for users of Windows from Vista (which Microsoft refer to as gadgets), but Dashcode seem to be a nice tool for developers to quickly create new widgets. Also, users will have an easy time creating widgets!

6. iChat

Oh yeah, finally it seems bits of what chax does will go out, and this seems very cool: multiple logins, visibility, animated icons, video recording, and tabbed chats. Real-time tweaking of video like Photo Booth (which will be "next gen" in Leopard, by the way). iChat Theater: allows you to show other media (iMovies, photo slideshows, keynote presentation) during an iChat conference, opening up for more interesting ways to do presentations. And you can change the background of your iChat call, which means you can put youself in Hawaii, and this seems to mask automatically, in real-time. iChat even lets you share desktops. You got it. You can control your mate's desktop. Sweeet.

All in all: looks like a very nice improvement, although I miss a tabbed Finder. Developer edition is out today, but the golden product comes spring 2007.