It’s that time again, and if you’re an Apple user you know how it is. You wait around for a while, a new OS is announced, you wait some more and then when it is finally released, you know (again) how you’ve made the right choice in sticking with the guys from Cupertino.

A lot of ink is going to be spilled about Leopard and just how great it is in the next few days, so I’ll just give you the rundown on some of the tiny bits of Leopard that I’ve enjoyed. This was basically written in the first hour with the operating system, so bare with me when it comes to the excitement.

Spaces, stacks and the new UI

Stacks: Stacks are much more useful than I imagined. And they’re beautiful. Just noticed how stacks react when there are new files on the monitored folder (it just changed the stack icon when I saved this file into my Documents folder/stack).

Interface: A unified interface, finally. The new drop shadows are heavy, but I like them. I have mixed feelings about the new dock - it’s good to have a change every once in a while, but things like the new running application marks are somewhat annoying and not easily seen. Also, I personally don’t care much about it being like a shelf now - but it’s a minor change, I’ll cope.

One other thing I have mixed feelings about is the fact that they brought down the opacity of the top bar. It doesn’t look that bad, but I kinda liked the consistency it had across wallpapers (right now mine is a shade of purple because of the default Leopard wallpaper).

Spaces: Finally, proper virtual desktops on a Mac. I had been waiting for this one for a very long time after battling with releases of Virtue Desktops and earlier applications. If you run several things at once (applications that you might easily group together in different “spaces”), you’ll love it too. Each project in its own space, IM and email on another - it’s productivity bliss.

System preferences: I love the redesigns on some of the preference panes - particularly the new Bluetooth and Network panes, that were in dire need of a change. These actually make sense now - which is great.

Terminal, Utilities: The terminal being tabbed is sweet because it saves me from having to install iTerm. But more important than tabs and the terminal itself is how ruby, rails and quite a lot of ruby gems are installed by default. I knew rails was going to be one of the additions already, but some of the gems (capistrano, mongrel, redcloth, hpricot, ruby-openid, etc) they packed were a surprise. And the new Terminal has themes, too - What?

Finder: The new finder - wow, have we longed for this one. I love the new sidebar and I like how they integrate some smart searches by default to give you a sense of the possibilities. Honestly, I couldn’t care much about coverflow everywhere (in fact, it does sound a little bit like bloat), but it may be useful in a couple of cases, so we’ll see how often I use it. I guess it doesn’t really hurt to have an extra bit of eye candy if it doesn’t get in the way of work.

One small detail, not really about the Finder but Leopard itself is how there are now icons for Front Row, Exposé, the Dashboard and Spaces in your Applications folder. Makes it much easier to script interface behavior when there’s actually an icon that can be clicked.

iCal, Address Book: Took a bit of a revamp, good ol’ iCal, and it looks pretty good. I like how it packs some of the interface details we’ve seen on recent iPods and the iPhone - Apple is going for consistency and there’s definitely nothing wrong with that. Address Book looks the same, but I’m still to restore my contacts from my Tiger installation so I have nothing to look at there at this point.

Conclusions, if there are any

As with a lot of what Apple does these days, Leopard looks (and feels) great. I had almost forgotten the feeling of how snappy a fresh installation of an Apple OS is, but now I have been reminded. These guys aren’t playing around, and I definitely agree with the Wall Street Journal when they say that this thing kicks Vista in the butt. Still a fan. Sign me up for OSX 10.6 “LOLCAT”, Steve.

For those of you looking for larger screenshots of Leopard, I uploaded a few to this Flickr set. Have fun!