I really like almost everything about it. (The Leopard site is a bit big.)

It's got just the right amount of interactivity to it (like the showcases on the top of the product sections). And not a year too soon, they threw out the .Mac and QuickTime tabs and inserted a Mac tab. Finally.

I. Want. iPhone. Specs. And. JavaScript. Extensions. Now.
Or how can I be ready at launch?

:)

Why, oh why does it look so much like Vista? Is this really what Leopard will look like? *face-palm*

Sorry, I was being serious. That wasn't intended to be troll-bait.

Why, oh why does it look so much like Vista?
I'm not sure what you mean by this.

I'm not sure what you mean by this.
I don't know what they call it, but the interface of the redesigned apple.com looks very much like the bubbly-gray that is the default interface of vista home premium. That is my observation and opinion. Feel free to disagree.

My question, then: is this redesigned apple.com based on The Look (tm) which will ship in 10.5?

I don't know what they call it, but the interface of the redesigned apple.com looks very much like the bubbly-gray that is the default interface of vista home premium
I'm really try to understand what you're saying, but I'm just not seeing it. Perhaps you have some specific examples? Certainly Aqua predates Vista by years, so maybe that's what you mean?

is this redesigned apple.com based on The Look (tm) which will ship in 10.5
Leopard screenshots are up on Apple.com, so see what you think.

I'm not sure what you mean by this.

I've not looked very carefully at the Leopard screen-shots yet, so I'll refrain from commenting in that direction. All I'm saying is both my wife and myself found the redesigned UI on the apple.com website, specifically the nav bar across the top, to look rather similar to vista.

I hope that clarifies; please don't loose sleep over this observation if it doesn't jump out at you.

The nav bar across the top is based on the grey gradient used in the latest iTunes (which will be applied to all windows in Leopard). It doesn't remind me of Vista at all. Vista tends to use black (taskbar, sidebar) or blue (window titlebars, toolbars, etc.).

Unified indeed. I like it. It could be seen as boring, but it also clearly distances itself from the ad-hoc MySpace-inspired mess that is Vista.

Check out Safari's new Find feature. It's like Firefox's, but Done Right: great highlighting, subtle yet useful animations, intuitive. If we see this sort of thing in Leopard's Mail.app, I'll be happy.

Except for its icon, Time Machine still looks awful.

Apple seem to be marketing "Desktop" as the "Finder" now, with both terms seemingly interchangeable. I'd be very happy with losing "Finder" altogether. Or just losing the application altogether.

Apple seem to be marketing "Desktop" as the "Finder" now, with both terms seemingly interchangeable
Why do you say that? The Leopard page calls them out separately.

Why do you say that? The Leopard page calls them out separately.

I should have been clearer. Yes, Apple (sort of) distinguishes between Desktop and Finder in terms of providing their own pages and movies, but to the average Mac user, these features look as though they are relating to the same thing.

Which, they are, looking at it from a users's pov, not a development team's pov. The Dock and the Desktop metaphor and launching and searching for apps are absolutely attached to the Finder workings.

Preferred: get rid of "Finder". Just have a "Desktop".

Semi-related:

While we are at it, Leopard really needs to fix the ongoing problems with downloading and installing apps. There are huge numbers of Mac users for whom Disk Images and/or zip files are voodoo. As developers it's easy to forget, unless you do customer support, just how baffling these issues are to the average user.

Possible solution: display a Dashboard-style prompt "You are attempting to download an application. Install it in your Applications folder and launch the application?" (Adjust for grammar.)

Possible solution #2: a common Framework, ala Sparkle, for the copying of an app on a locked volume, to the Applications folder, and subsequent launching of the installed app.

@David: There are huge numbers of Mac users for whom Disk Images and/or zip files are voodoo

I agree. There actually is a spec of some sort for disk images that, when downloaded, turn into just an application and remove the archive. The theory is that it's then reasonably clear that the single application icon sitting on the desktop can be dragged to the Applications folder.

Personally, I don't like this approach because I want the archive to stay around. Something along the lines of what you suggest may be good.

Some apps (eg. Quicksilver) already check if they're running from a disk image, and then prompt the user to install themselves.

David, Apple did try to rename the Finder to Desktop once. It was back in one of the weird preview releases before Mac OS X Beta, I think.

I always look at the apple website for inspiration.