I don’t know why people complain about the keynote as non-eventful. I am excited about all the announcements. I guess people are fantasizing some crazy hardware that Steve reveal in his speech. I wasn’t looking for any hardware announcement, and I wasn’t expecting any. The truth is I already have two macs and with iPhone on the horizon, I don’t want another expensive toy dangling in front of me! All I want is to take another glimpse on a brand new OS that will improve my day-to-day interaction with my shiny machines! And that was pretty much what I got from the keynote. That’s why I am satisfied. If I really need to pick a needle out of a haystack, it would be about iWork and iLife….where are the update on these two suites? Other than that, there really is no complains.

Let’s address the two bombshell announcements from the keynote, first, gaming on Mac. Gaming is pretty much the only big consumer area that Apple isn’t good for, now that with the biggest game publisher EA back on the Mac platform and promises simultaneous releases…looks like it’s the step in the right direction to address gaming on Mac. EA owns Maxis, which means all the non mainstream games I love like Simcity and Sims and such would definitely be on Mac without waiting for months or years before the titles are release on Mac. The second big surprise announcement was Safari on Windows! I did not see that coming! Do we need another browser on Windows? will people use it? The more people using non IE browsers, the better websites will be built with cross-platform multi-browsers in mind, which let to better standard compliance websites – it’s good for everybody! Personally I would love to see a fast ugly death for IE6! so hopefully with Safari join the battle, that’s gonna happen sooner rather than later. But don’t go download the beta for you people’s XP just yet, it wasn’t as stable as Apple would hope, it crashes a few times while I was using it at work. It’s after all a beta. When it works it does seems a lot faster than IE6 on XP, but when compare to Firefox, the different isn’t much. It will be very interesting to see what the browsers stats in the next few months to see if Safari gain any fans in the Windows world.

As for the main dish of the keynote – the tasty Leopard – I like the new stuff! Stacks on Dock is definitely a good improvement! I do clean the downloads off my desktop a lot (well obsessively) but if it’s automatic, it’s way better. The new Finder looks awesome! Right now I can browse other computers in my network, but the steps isn’t simple, I need to click on Network, find the computer then connect. The new Finder make it a lot easier by just simply be there on the sidebar. I am especially excited at the Back to My Mac feature for .Mac user (finally another feature to boost the value of .Mac – they need to do more of these nifty features for .Mac to justify me keep on paying for it!) – one click access to your remote computers (ex. from my powerbook on the road can browse my home iMac) – that’s totally awesome! Coverflow for Finder and Quicklook are equally cool improvements that makes it a lot easier to find things.

At first I wasn’t too sure about Time Machine but now with more details emerged I think I can use it well. I have two Macs, so I was annoyed that I might need two external hard drive to do backup, keep on plugging and unplugging from my Powerbook would be annoying as well. But now we know it can backup wirelessly with multiple computers! That’s awesome! Spaces is another welcomed feature – I am in the middle of my Blog project where I constantly has the following Apps opened – Safari, Camino, Firefox, Mail, iTunes, Photoshop, CSSEdit, Smultron, sometimes with iChat and Adium as well. A virtual desktop switching between would definitely help my work flow.

And the feature I most looking forward to is the improvement on iChat – the iChat Theater feature where you can show slide show and presentation through chat and the funny photobooth blue screen effects! I can’t wait to do those Conan talking head video! hehe~

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