“(…) For years, we have unquestioningly followed numerous unwritten rules when buying a Mac. Like many customs, these rules were once based on a foundation of facts and reason. But in the past few years, many longstanding Mac truths have been upended. All Macs run on multiple-core Intel processors now. iMacs are no longer hobbled by crippling feature limitations. And speedy external peripherals have drastically lessened the need for add-on cards.

In other words, the old rules no longer apply. If you’re planning on buying a new Mac, you need facts about the modern lineup—so you can choose the computer that’s right for you.”

“It was a late morning in the fall of 2006. Almost a year earlier, Steve Jobs had tasked about 200 of Apple’s top engineers with creating the iPhone. Yet here, in Apple’s boardroom, it was clear that the prototype was still a disaster. It wasn’t just buggy, it flat-out didn’t work. The phone dropped calls constantly, the battery stopped charging before it was full, data and applications routinely became corrupted and unusable. The list of problems seemed endless. At the end of the demo, Jobs fixed the dozen or so people in the room with a level stare and said, “We don’t have a product yet.”

The effect was even more terrifying than one of Jobs’ trademark tantrums. When the Apple chief screamed at his staff, it was scary but familiar. This time, his relative calm was unnerving. “It was one of the few times at Apple when I got a chill,” says someone who was in the meeting.”

“I started this review talking about expectations. As I’ve learned more about Leopard, it’s become increasingly clear where, exactly, those two-and-a-half years of development time went. Leopard is absolutely packed with improvements. It seems that not a corner of the OS has gone untouched.

Perhaps that’s not as clear to the casual user who just sees the surface changes and the major new features in Leopard. But even in that case, there’s more than enough to recommend it. if you’re wondering whether you should upgrade to Leopard, the answer, as it’s been for every major revision of Mac OS X, is yes.”

Mac OS X Leopard

Dave Winer:

“There isn’t much you can do, after the Mac has been around for 23 years, that hasn’t already been done.”

John Gruber:

‘The most significant new feature in Leopard is Time Machine.’

Jason Snell:

“As with every OS X update since version 10.1, there’s no single feature in Leopard that will force Mac users to upgrade immediately. Instead, it’s the sheer deluge of new features that’s likely to persuade most active Mac users to upgrade, especially since this is the longest gap between OS X upgrades — two and a half years — since the product was introduced.”

Leo Laporte:

“Leopard is not a revolutionary release – I wouldn’t expect it to be, it’s a mature operating system – but it is easily the best OS X ever, the culmination of a decade of UI research and OS refinement.”

Andy Ihnatko:

“No matter how you work the numbers, though, it’s pretty clear that Apple has yet again crammed way more than $129 worth of value into its latest OS update.”

“I don’t understand this continuing obsession with buying things that you need to break before they do what you want. (…) My current theory is that it’s some twisted form of wish fulfillment.”

Vergelijk nu het aandeel Apple versus de aandelen van handheldmakers Palm en RIM (Blackberry) ten tijde van Jobs keynote. (Live quote.)

De iPhone is helaas pas in het vierde kwartaal van 2007 in Europa verkrijgbaar. De eveneens vandaag gepresenteerde Apple Tv is gelukkig al in februari te koop, bestellingen worden vanaf heden geaccepteerd.

Steve Jobs’ keynote is hier te bekijken.