"Moving on to the Big Cats" -- new Leopard features galore
"Now let's move on to our big cats," said Jobs -- a sly reference to Mac OS's code-names, all of which are based on wild cats -- Mac OS X v10.4 Tiger and Mac OS X v10.5 Leopard being the focus.

"Two-thirds of our users are running Tiger," said Jobs. "That's unprecedented in our industry. Ninety percent of our customers are running the current or current minus one release."

The first new feature of Leopard on exhibit during Jobs' keynote is a new desktop. The default blue pattern of old is gone, replaced with something showing grass with dew. But more to the point, a menu bar now adapts to what you put on the backdrop. The desktop is now translucent and the dock is more translucent than before.

Stacks are a new feature that let you group icons within the dock -- you click, and a collection of icons pop up from a single folder. The new feature mimics popular third-party add-ons and dock replacement software but with much more visual pizzazz with glass reflective surfaces and vertical arrangements.

Jobs also noted that a new folder has been added to the dock called Downloads. By and large, users clutter their desktops by adding downloaded files to them -- this helps clear the average desktop of much of its clutter.

Leopard's Finder has also gotten an extensive upgrade. Spotlight, for example, is now capable of being used to search other Macs and servers on the network. A new Sidebar has been cleaned up as well with devices, shared items, places, and such in groups.

"If you're a subscriber to .Mac, we have this really cool feature called 'Back to My Mac' that lets you share computers and files even when they're not on the local network," said Jobs. In a nutshell, "Back to My Mac" tells .Mac what your local Mac's IP address is so if you're on the road with a laptop, you can establish a secure, encrypted connection to that home Mac and access files from it.

Finder also features Cover Flow, a feature adapted from iTunes that enables you to view Finder windows the same way you view iTunes cover art. Applications show up in Cover Flow as giant icons; you can even play QuickTime movies in place.

"Quick Look is great," said Jobs, moving on to another new feature of Leopard. "Quick Look lets you instantly preview files without opening applications."

Quick Looks is based on a plug-in architecture, so it can be expanded to work with any file type. As it stands now, the feature provides live file previews for text, images, movies, PDF files, and Microsoft Word and Excel documents, among others. To demo the feature, Jobs found a file -- a QuickTime trailer of the forthcoming Disney/Pixar film Ratatouille. Hitting the space bar on his keyboard caused the movie to start playing, expanded on the screen. Clicking the movie caused it to go full screen.

"Number four," said Jobs. "Leopard is 64 bit from top to bottom." This is the first time that 64-bit will be mainstream in the computer world, he said -- not only does this mean Leopard's Unix underpinnings will be 64-bit, but so will Cocoa.