A lot of folks are coming to the conclusion that the latest Leopard feature complete preview revealed at WWDC 2007 today, shows some resemblance to Microsoft’s Windows Vista. But, honestly, I don’t see it, yes the global menu bar has transparency built in, but that’s about it. If Leopard is ripping off anything its probably SUN’s Project Looking Glass, the new Dock bares a striking resemblance to the open application holder in that user interface.
Project Looking Glass
Feature complete Mac OS 10.5 "Leopard"
Windows Vista
Yes, they do share some similarities in terms of a unified interface and photo realistic icons. But Leopard’s new stack feature is quite interesting, and makes accessibility in the Dock much easier. The Dock still suffer’s from the simplicity that is available with the Windows taskbar. You can’t tell the difference between open and closed applications easily, its still cluttered and uses too much real estate. Overall, a lot of the functionality in Leopard is a catch up in terms of organizing and managing your files, its just Apple has used a lot of pizzazz to present that data. I still don’t see any features in this new features this release that blow me away or would have me switching, especially for an existing Mac user running Tiger, its probably more of a worthy upgrade for some on Panther or older versions of the Mac OS.
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