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That’s right, folks, Leopard is here! I had it yesterday! Matter of fact, I was the first person in Utah to walk out of the Apple Store with box in hand! Everything about it is incredible…from the very packaging, to the beautiful new (but familiar) User Interface. It makes my computer SCREAM, presumably from the jump to 64-bit and an even tighter coding standard.

Excusing a few third-party applications that haven’t updated their apps to the “Leopard-look”, everything is very beautifully integrated. The shadows are subtler than before, and yet they do their job of showing you which window is active even better. The Finder bar’s transparency isn’t distracting, as I was slightly worried it might. The Dock is just simply amazing.

Spaces is even more incredible than I thought from the demos. It so so perfectly smooth. Even when my computer is under load, I am able to switch Spaces quickly and elegantly, with no to very little lag. One of my favorite things about Spaces is that it allows me to organize my screens in a way that there are only 2 or 3 open windows in any given Space. That means I get to see my desktop wallpaper a lot more frequently now, which is always a welcome sight. Before, it was rarely seen.

Time Machine is also incredible. The interface is so sleek and beautiful. It makes backing up your computer easy and automatic. The only gripe I have with Time Machine is that it has caused my hard drives to near-constantly emit that incessant clicking noise that means they’re moving files around. That said, I believe the main cause for this is that I have been installing apps and moving files to their new homes all night yesterday, so files were changing more drastically hour-to-hour than during normal use. The problem shouldn’t occur very much when I’m done settling in.

Safari 3 is so much better now. It’s faster, it’s more stable, it fixes all the bugs and gripes I had with Safari 3 Beta. It’s a beautiful, efficient browser, and among your choices: Firefox, Camino, Opera, Safari, at least for me, Safari is by far the best.

But I saved my absolute favorite thing about Leopard for last. I haven’t seen much buzz about this anywhere, which quite surprises me as I find it to be a very useful feature. You see, when your Mac recognizes a Windows server on your network, it shows you in the Finder sidebar. And if you get info on that, you will find that the default icon for a Windows computer on the network is a beige monitor showing the infamous Blue Screen of Death.

So can we expect Vista Service Pack 1 to show Macs on the network as Spinning Beachballs of Doom? But hey, I’d take a psychedelic spinning cursor over an ugly blue screen any day. That’s just me.

Video of the launch, unboxing, and install will come. Peace out.