But the biggest “secret” feature (which was never actually secret) is Core Animation. You’re going to see some spectacular new user interfaces coming down the pipe soon from Apple and others. Think Time Machine, Cover Flow and Front Row-style 3D motion throughout.

I have waited for updates to come out before installing OS X on my production machine in the past. I will NOT be doing that in Leopard. Next friday that sucker is going to be in my hands and on my Mac Pro, and I will be happier and more productive for it! I used to loathe Jaguar after using Tiger. Now I loathe Tiger after using Leopard. It’s so… clumsy and inelegant. Clunky almost.

Yes, it’s nice and all, but is backing up your whole hard drive to a remote network volume even close to feasible for anyone with less than a T1?

Even the fastest consumer-level broadband solutions are still going to take hours and hours to back up and restore 100 GBs. Hell, 10 GB isn’t going to happen too quick either.

Time Machine not pointing to remote network locations is a positive, not a negative. Why? because it’s not going to be reliable in the real world except for a small percentage of users while the majority of users would see high failure rates and frustration.

Get a second drive, its cheaper than a T1 and faster. You want offsite storage, get a safe deposit box.

Online storage is okay for supplementing your existing back up strategy, but is not a good idea as a primary back up tool. first, many online backup alternatives are slow (like .Mac), have limited storage space, and require Internet access.

I’m not at a point yet where I want to trust my data to someone else at a nameless data center in who knows where.

…which is mostly just a redesign and eyecandy

(emphasis mine)
actually, that is the least of it – that is just what you, as a user, see. Under the hood it is SIGNIFICANTLY changed. Believe me, it does not take 2.5 years to add eyecandy and redesign…
As I said before, the features that enable new classes of applications are phenomenal…

I am still waiting for the holy secret features (if exsist). But sooner or later i will upgrade all my Macs at office.

What i really need is unexpired BOOTCAMP!

Spend a paragraph talking about the improved iChat, but only talk about the slideshow feature? What about screen sharing? What about share-anywhere screen or files via .Mac?

Time Machine is “a good idea” and then on to criticize it, without mentioning any of it’s cool implementation or how it’s different from old-fashioned backups? Spaces is simply a rehashed virtual desktop, which Microsoft already did years ago?

Yes, I think “silly” is actually a kind way of putting it. It goes way beyond a different viewpoint, into something so idiosyncratic as to be, well, silly.

Reading your comment about silly reviews of Leopard, I must wonder–do you feel a review must cover every single new aspect of a piece of software or hardware for the review to be “not silly”? The reviewer may not have addressed some new features you found to be impressive, or was less impressed with a feature you liked, such as Spaces, but that doesn’t make the review silly. Even products rated highly by CNET or PCMAG, for example, have reviews that don’t necessarily cover EVERY feature, nor do they focus entirely on everything they love about the product. Any good review, even one titled “In defense of..”, would not be credible unless it provides a discussion of some negatives. I’d rather read an article that gives me the good with some bad rather than one that tries to make me feel all warm and fuzzy by telling me that every aspect of the product is “great” or “spectacular”.