In this week’s “everyone knew it was coming” moment, Apple officially announced that CEO Steve Jobs and an entourage of other company executives would be on hand at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference to preview Apple’s next major upgrade to Mac OS X, nicknamed “Leopard”. The cat will be let out of the bag as the Conference opens in San Francisco on August 7th. Chances are there’ll be new hardware announcements as well – most likely a new professional desktop Mac sporting multiple multi-core Intel processors. Stay tuned here for the latest litter on the new big cat.

In other operating system news, Microsoft recently made available to the general public the second beta release of its new “Vista” operating system. The releases of the final versions (all seven of them) of Vista are scheduled for pre-Christmas for business, and post-Christmas for consumers (much to the chagrin of computer makers like Dell). This could all change, of course, as Microsoft’s Vista release timetable has been about as stable as a Malibu hillside after a “gully washer” (a technical term for “a period of heavy rain”).

Almost all who’ve put Vista through its paces say one thing: it looks like Mac OS X. Eerily. Like Mac OS X-eroxed.

While Microsoft’s initial goals for Vista were more “revolutionary”, over time (and it’s been a long time) Vista has become more like XP Service Pack 3 with a prettier face. Seems to me there’s an old saying involving a porcine creature and lipstick. But, I digress.

In a pig’s hoof, here’s what you get in Vista. A graphic interface Microsoft calls “Aero” (its called “Aqua” in Mac OS X). Aero generates opaque windows, that can float across the screen, as in Mac OS X.

Vista has a new system-level desktop search feature, similar to “Spotlight” introduced over a year ago in Mac OS X “Tiger”. Apple’s “Smart Folders” (dynamically updated folders to help organize your stuff) are called “Virtual Folders” in Vista. Guess all the good names were taken.

Vista also introduces “Gadgets”. Yep, you guessed it, they’re “Widgets” like in Mac OS X.

Let me be clear about one thing: feature imitation is a win-win proposition for all computer users, even though some independent developers can get trampled along the way. A case in point: the guy who wrote Konfabulator before Apple “modified” the idea and “created” Widgets. More on Leopard and Vista as release dates draw near.

© 2006 Peter F. Zimowski