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The author makes several interesting points; I thought I'd go over some of those points in more detail.

The Dashboard: Desktop Widgets

The first and most important thing to remember about Dashboard is that it does directly compete with changes to the Microsoft desktop; both systems now include a principle for inclusion of desktop widgets, which both companies are referring to as a dashboard. In the Longhorn designs shown to date, as in the included comparison image, the dashboard is a menu bar attached to one side of the screen, user's preference as to where and how many, which either fly out to show widgets or stay put and do so. In the Apple designs, the widgets are on a 'flyover' layer that, like Exposé, will offer the ability to use a 'flying' layer to show the content, which will then be removed once the user is no longer interested in viewing them.

One of the arguments levied against Apple is that they've basically nicked Konfabulator. Konfabulator is yet another implementation of desktop widgets, which have been around for, what, ten years or more. What makes Konfabulator unusual (in comparison to lots of other equivalent software) is the choice of JavaScript as the programming language. The truth is that they have indeed nicked a great deal more than people think, and also a great deal less...

In its own design, Apple has written its desktop widgets using the technology from its web browser.

But where's the revolution, here? Apple already had a hefty investment into a JavaScript runtime; they already have a hefty investment in their browser. Sooner or later, someone had to expect that the way forward, for Apple, was to find new ways to use this technology, in a way that turns ordinary people into 'application developers', or at least widget developers; Dashboard widgets are HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Plain and simple, you can develop using Dreamweaver as your IDE, and anybody can do it. That's a big change, both in terms of the intended developer audience and the capabilities of the platform - and under the hood, there's nothing remotely similar there to Konfabulator.

Despite the comments made in the review, developers know exactly what to expect.

Spotlight: New Search Technology

There are three arguments worth noting: First and foremost, that yes, this is nicked from Microsoft. Apple, get your photocopier on; having said that, it's hard to say you're copying a feature in Longhorn when Microsoft won't be delivering that functionality until somewhere between 2007 and 2009. Apple beat Microsoft to the punch; that's their point, and they're dead right.

Microsoft's Longhorn search capabilities are a more comprehensive, root and branch modification to the system to get equivalent and more powerful functionality; Apple's design is a more traditional search engine, a core search engine with import plugins for specific file formats; but they're doing it several years ahead of Microsoft. It's tough to argue that Apple isn't making the smarter move - they get to start simple, evolve the UI, and make time to market years ahead of its competitor, on a core implementation which is, quite frankly, written for them by the Open Source community.

Automator: Desktop Scripting

For years, Apple users have been able to script actions in their applications; developer tools ship with a script authoring environment that allows individuals to record a set of desktop actions and play them back, but I wouldn't go so far as to say it's a user tool.

That ends with Automator; an attempt to push this kind of functionality, a historical differentiator on the mac platform, into the mainstream. Unlike the search engine, which is Apple trying to beat Microsoft to the punch, this is almost entirely unique to the Mac; an attempt to force Microsoft's hand, to say the least.

iChat AV, Tiger Edition: Multi-Party Videoconferencing

This remains one of those rather beautiful things - unique to the mac, nobody else does it as well, and yet it's such a niche feature that while it looks good I can't see it being a product-definer. Sure, I've used videoconferencing; I've even used it in iChat AV. And it is good. But it's not universally useful; at least not yet. Sure, MSN looks crap in comparison, but does everyone reallly need all this stuff?

There are a host of other changes as well; but those are the biggies that people will immediately notice. Things like the synchronization SDK will make it possible for any application to integrate itself into multi-computer synchronization - the power of this is really going to be based on how good developers are at integrating stuff, and that's the differentiator; Microsoft is a long way from this kind of capability, and it is a strong point on Apple's side, albeit two years late.

Apple's real ace-up-the-sleeve for acceptance is it's VoiceOver project - a hefty boost to visual impairment usability. Getting this working on PCs is going to set you back a large amount of money; Apple is giving it away. Partially spurred by having been recently informed that commercial vendors of this kind of software will no longer be supporting their platform, Apple has taken the step of pushing the functionality into the core and giving it away to everyone.

And as for 64-bit? The FAT binary capability has been there since NeXTStep; it's as old as time. Apple gets the ability to ship a combination 32-and-64-bit version of an application for free because they're built on an operating system that did all that work for them in 1991. Great to see it happening, but it's not a huge issue. Good to see, important to have, vital to support of they're going to continue selling to the hardcore computing market, but it's pure dev time, and it's something that they've been able to get a lot of for free just by updating themselves to FreeBSD current.

The biggest thing, the most important thing to note about Tiger is that more and more, Apple is finding new and interesting ways to use open source software in their operating system to give them an advantage; whether it's desktop search, 64-bit computing, their dashboard widget engine, or a host of other things shipping in Panther and Tiger, more and more of the core of all of the applications Apple are shipping are based on open source frameworks. That committment - to the open source projects, and the work they'll put into those projects, as well as to the future of Open Source, is the single and most important thing to walk away from Tiger with. Apple isn't just betting it's future on Open Source, it's beating Microsoft to market with it.