Leopard looks like ג€¦ Vista

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Jobs told WWDC keynoters that he would show ten of the best of the 300 new features coming in Leopard when it ships in October this year. Hereג€™s what Jobsג€™ hit list looked like to this Windows user:

1. New Leopard Desktop: Not a whole lot different from Vistaג€™s Aero and Sidebar.

2. New Finder: Many of the same capabilities as the integrated ג€œInstant Searchג€ in Vista (the subsystem that Google is trying to get the Department of Justice to rule as being anti-competitive). The new Leopard Coverflow viewing capability looked almost identical to Vistaג€™s Flip 3D to me.

3. QuickLook: Live file previews ג€” just like the thumbnail preview capability available in Vista.

4. 64-bitness: Leopard is the first 64-bit only version of a desktop client. Vista comes in 32-bit and 64-bit varieties. And most expect Windows Seven will still be available in 32-bit flavors. Until 32-bit machines go away, it seems like a good idea to offer 32-bit operating systems.

5. Core animation: Not sure what the Vista comparison is here. The demo reminded me of Microsoft Max photo-sharing application. The WWDC developers attending the Jobs keynote didnג€™t seem wowed with this functionality.

6. Boot Camp. You can run Vista on your Mac. Apple showed Vista running Solitaire in its WWDC demo. But I bet those downloading the 2.5 million copies of Boot Camp available since last year are running a lot of other Windows business apps and games.

7. Spaces: A feature allowing users to group applications into separate spaces. I havenג€™t seen anything like in in Vista, but the audience didnג€™t seem overly impressed by it.

8. Dashboard with widgets. Isnג€™t this like the Vista Sidebar with gadgets?

9. iChat gets a bunch of fun add-ons (photo-booth effects, backrops, etc.) to make it a more fully-featured videoconferencing product. The ג€œiChat Theaterג€ capability Jobs showed off reminded me of Vistaג€™s Meeting Space and/or the new Microsoft ג€œShared Viewג€ (code-named ג€œTahitiג€) document-sharing/conferencing subsystems.

10. Time Machine automatic backup. Vista has built-in automatic backup (Volume Shadow Copy). It doesnג€™t look anywhere near as cool as Time Machine. But it seems to provide a lot of the same functionality.

Granted, I am not an Apple user. So Iג€™m sure Iג€™m glossing over some subtleties regarding whatג€™s new and cool in Leopard. But given how often I hear the ג€œRedmond, Start Your Photocopiersג€ message, I was thinking that Leopard would be light years ahead of Vista.

So, Apple folks: What am I missing? Iג€™m not trying to pull a Dvorak here and use this blog post for click bait. Why is Leopard so superior to Vista ג€” other than the non-trivial fact that there will be just one version of Leopard that will be priced at $129 (as opposed to six-plus versions of Vista at a variety of price points well in excess of that amount)?

Update: And before you flame me for saying Apple copied Microsoft (which I didnג€™t, if you go back and reread this post), you might want to check up my second attempt to get Mac users to submit some features in Leopard that you believe will leapfrog those found in Vista.