I agree with Michael's statement in the comments, that this is very similar to Tiger in that it's not a major user release, but there are some exciting evolutionary things (like the Finder/desktop improvements, which seem so integrated I am not sure why they are treated as two sep things... it's all UI, and for me the Finder, which includes the desktop going back to Mac OS 1. But, as he said, there's a ton of new stuff to build off here.

I will have to comment on the Finder after some serious use, but I think it's still missing some true advancements that could have made it stand out more technologically, feature wise, rather than so much eye candy. For example, though not pretty, Path Finder is a true workhorse and could have inspired in itself a ton of improvements to the standard Finder. Most obvious, are tabbed windows, though that might start looking a little crazy with iTunes cover flow taking over (I suppose you wouldn't use tabs in that mode though). I am still holding out hope that Tabs make it into list and column view, the way tabs made a last minute appearance in Safari 1.0.

People are ranting about how Apple has been putting too many resources on the iPhone, but I think they are missing what's really going on here. OS X development during the last two + years has been more than Leopard --it's been OS X iPhone, OS X Mac, (and OS X ATV to a lesser degree, since that runs 10.4.7 I think), and it looks like Safari for Windows as well. We can't get inside Steve's head, but it looks like there is a broader thing going on here, and it's cross platform. At the end of the day, all this stuff has to work together. It's not one big Trojan Horse--some point to iTunes, or Win Safari, or the iPhone as Trojan Horses, but I actually think it's a broader collective strategy. Sure they may be writing as they go, but at least it's a strategy.

Michael, Addicted--SPOD and AutoFS: I think this is one of the biggest improvements for users. No glitter here, just pure usability improvements. How many of us have to suffer through infinite spinning beachballs when trying to mount a new volume, find a volume, disconnect a volume, or, and here is the big one... a volume disconnects itself for some reason, unannounced, and OS X sputters around with the spinning beach ball, locking up the entire machine (and what's the deal here, maybe someone can explain, what happened to protected memory)?

I am hoping to hear about more surprises like AutoFS. Little incremental changes like this, and some that were mentioned like better sharing across Windows and Unix (how many times will we here that?), now with Spotlight. These things add up. I mean Tiger itself is still considered a worthy (if not better by some accounts) Vista alternative. Leopard continues the evolution we've been watching since 10.0 came out. None of these were as revolutionary new as 10.0, XP or Vista (well I probably shouldn't include Vista), but collectively, these evolutionary releases have resulted in a better OS.

On Safari Windows--Good strategic move to put Apple in everyone's face a little more and get some more web dev mind share. Even a marginal uptake by Windows users could help push Safari up to 10+%, and make it required testing for web sites. Additionally, it will help with the iPhone, because the more sites that work well for Safari, the better the iPhone experience. Oh, and I have been testing this heavily the last two days on my ThinkPad/XP machine, which runs heavy web aps 90% of the time (much more than desktop aps at this company). I have only seen one problem on one web ap. But what's more interesting, is that out of the gate, it runs many web aps better than IE and FF, and the aps were all optimized for IE. It looks like others' experience with Win Safari has been mixed, but I think I may be able to put IE to bed on that machine.

UI: I know this is only cosmetics, but considering that design and the visual "ahh" factor is so important to Apple, the new conforming UI is one of the most pleasant things about this release. This puts Apple back to where they started, and I hope developers follow suit. Mac users will already be in better shape when Leopard comes out, with this UI, and the lack of the "anything goes" mentality of Win developers.

Timemachine...maybe, but back up doesn't do me much good if it's on the same disk I'm working from in the event of a drive failure. I'll have to see how that works before I'd use it.

Back to My Mac...can't say that I'd use it. Besides, even at LAN speeds remote access to Macs via VNC is clunky at best. Over DSL it's gotta suck.

And "cover flow" for Finder? No thanks. It works with iTunes but that's not how I want to look for data on my disk. If they finally fixed Finder's behavior with network shares, I'll be happy.

In an case, it seems that Back to My Mac is establishing a VPN and doing UDP punching via .Mac, so there should be fewer NAT worries.

http://davidcann.com/iphone/

Even if not, I have noticed in my network pref pane that I have an IPv6 address... could Back to My Mac be using that as a unique identifier? (either by itself or by tunneling through IPv4)