First Chris Pirillo broke up with Vista and reverted to Windows XP. Given Pirillo is a longtime Windows advocate, that wasn't exactly a positive omen for Microsoft's flagship OS. Now Pirillo has all but switched entirely (he claims he hasn't, but his bent is certainly evident) to Mac OSX, and he even has gone so far as to list his top 50 reasons to make the switch. (He even challenges the Windows diehards among us to come up with their own list of why one should switch to Windows from the Mac. That's what we can an unenviable task down in the 'hood.) Pirillo's first reason is something I've noticed some time ago, and I think it's a dangerous thing for MS to let bubble into the conscience of the general geek population. Or, more accurately, to bubble any further into the conscience; the trend has already begun.

Seems that the future of Windows development is happening largely for corporate environments and customers. I don’t take issue with this other than being someone who doesn’t live or work inside a corporate environment at home.

Indeed: since when do corporate wonks who need 'legacy application support' more than anything set the bar for innovation and consumer trends? Since never, unless you count really strong WebEx support as hot innovation. You can slice and dice stats to your liking, but it's undeniable that there is a Mac movement afoot that's stronger than anyone could have reasonably anticipated. It's an amazing thing for the platform.

AppleInsider:

"It comes as no surprise that Apple sets the standard in terms of customer satisfaction," said Tobin Smith, founder of ChangeWave Research, "but there’s a new twist on why they’re outperforming the rest of the industry -- it’s the amazing customer satisfaction rating on Apple’s new Leopard OS." Smith said that more than four-in-five Apple buyers (81 percent) said they were Very Satisfied with Leopard, which is "an exceptionally high rating" for a new operating system. This compares to 53 percent and 51 percent for Windows XP, and just 27 percent and 15 percent, respectively, for the Microsoft Vista systems. The high customer satisfaction in Leopard not only dwarfs its competitors, but is also having a direct impact on consumer intentions to purchase an Apple Mac, Smith added. The study revealed that more than one-in-four consumers (26 percent) say the Leopard OS is making them more likely to buy a Mac in the future.

I love Leopard and it's literally been flawless for me, but I have to say this: I'm using Vista Ultimate daily at work, and it isn't a bad operating system. I've had my share of issues (primarily one where my ability to print craps out every few days; this seems to be a problem with my machine authenticating against the domain), but overall, Vista is considerably better than XP. If I were buying a new Windows PC today, I would unquestionably configure it with Vista Ultimate. Maybe I just got lucky, but I really don't understand the Vista hate. I think for most users who are used to Windows XP, the wide swath of changes in Vista presents usability/navigation problems for them, and general users don't cope with that well. That and the still-rough-around-the-edges driver issues, which I understand are being worked out slowly. A brand-new OS will present brand-new problems. And for a computing populace that's largely technically incompetent (that's the majority of America), tolerance for fine-tuning a new OS is nearly nonexistent. Nobody wants to see something becoming, they want to see something arrived. And in the software business, especially as it relates to operating systems, that's simply not always possible. Vista needs some work, and from what I hear SP1 will make things considerably better. But in my experience -- and I'm only one datapoint -- Vista isn't all that bad. (For the record, I'm running it on a Dell Latitude D630 with 2 GB RAM. Nothing special.) Is it OSX? No, not even close, despite its best efforts. However, I don't view it as horrible as others are letting on. Overall, I absolutely think OSX remains a far more polished operating system, and I understand the massive satisfaction score. In the end, Vista is just a more modern Windows. And OSX is a more modern Mac. Preferences for either will continue to fall along this line of opinion delineation. Okay. Done. /Editorial.

Well, that didn't take long. Update details Will be installing on MacBook Pro as soon as I post this.

In fact, he considers using Leopard akin to the Windows experience:

I've given Leopard a chance, but it's pretty clear, this is not a good operating system release. I've been out of the Mac loop for most of the last decade, just got back in a bit over 2 years ago. I don't know if early OS releases are generally as crappy as this one, but I wasn't prepared for where we're at now. If I had known, I would have waited, instead of upgrading most of my Macs to the new system. Talking with a friend a few days ago, he asked what I thought of Leopard. He had installed the new version, like me, the first day it came out. “I'm not liking it,” I said. He said something that was simple, profound and revealing: “It's like Windows.” It is. It's that unpleasant to use. It disappears for long periods of time. Systems that didn't used to crash now crash regularly. On one system three hard disks were rendered unusable, and I lost a couple of full days restoring them (luckily I had good backups). The user interface is quirky. The new networking interface is a big step backward. The firewall moved and lost features! That's simply never done, you don't charge customers to remove features, esp security features. I think Apple doesn't understand how many people depend seriously on their Macs. To Apple, I left Windows because it held my time and work in low regard. I was happy with the Mac because it seemed reliable. Now it seems my friend was right, I'm using Windows again, and I'm not happy about it.

I don't know what the story is here. From my angle, Leopard has been flawless. The only thing that doesn't work are some Adobe CS3 apps, a situation that has been well documented. Other than that nit, everything works perfectly. I've not had a single lockup or crash, and no data has been lost. My firewire drives are fine. Most everything in the OS is quite noticeably faster than it was under Tiger, and nothing is slower. It boots quicker. Apps launch faster. Overall, I couldn't be happier with my Leopard install experience. It's been that smooth. As a matter of note, I performed an Archive and Install. Others do a straight upgrade, and while that seems like that'd be the most tested migration path, that's the scenario that seems to be generating most of the bugs. So, you have stories of of bad experiences and impressions, and you have good ones, like mine. It's anecdote versus anecdote. I've been pounding on Leopard pretty hard, and it's yet to hiccup on me. I wonder, however, if unreasonable expectations have something to do with this. And I don't mean just with respect to Apple and OSX.

I've been out of town for the past few days, and I just now upgraded to Leopard. So far, so good. Utterly flawless install. I chose the Archive and Install option. (Despite John Gruber's advice that most users should simply opt for the standard upgrade installation, I can't do it. I still think the Archive and Install option is somehow a bit cleaner. It might be seeing ghosts on my part, but that's what I do.) More thoughts to follow. For now, let me just give my first impressions:

• I like the new look quite a bit. The translucent menu bar doesn't bug me in the least, and since my dock is on the side, it retains a relatively sane look.
• Leopard is faster than Tiger, at least using completely unscientific gut-feel testing.
• Sub-pixel font rendering seems improved. Text looks very, very good under Leopard.
• Mouse movement seems more Windows-like, which I prefer. Is it just me or has this changed, especially insofar as the gradual acceleration curve is concerned?

More to follow.

Chances are you're bored with the standard fare we've been hearing for about a year now, so here's a full list of all 300 features that Leopard will introduce. Among the most notable from a quick glance:

• Google Map Addresses. View a detailed map of any address in Address Book. Just hold down the Control key while clicking any address and select “Map of” and Safari will show you its location in Google Maps.

• Read/Write Property Lists. Create and edit Mac OS X property lists. Support is built into Leopard.

• Copy Files Between Mac OS X and Windows. Copy, open, modify, or delete files in Mac OS X that you saved to your Windows partition. Leopard understands the Windows FAT32 disk format.
• Restore to Mac-Only Partition. Easily delete Windows and restore the disk space being used by the Windows partition back to Mac OS X.
• Wikipedia in Dictionary. Harness the power of Wikipedia when you're connected to the Internet — built right into it’s Dictionary. You get a great Mac OS X user interface with super-fast searching and beautifully laid out-results.
• Icon Preview. See files for what they really are. Leopard displays icons that are actual thumbnail previews of the documents themselves.
• Path Bar. See the path of a file when you view it in the Finder. Just choose Show Path Bar from the View menu and the path is visible at the bottom of the Finder window. You can also drag files to any location in the Path Bar.

So all the rumors were correct and Leopard will go GA on Friday, Oct 26th, at 6 PM. Check out the new Apple homepage. AppleInsider has all the details, which, to be frank, aren't all that new. Question: are you getting Leopard the minute it comes out, or are you going to wait to see how initial installs go?