300+ New Features! That's Not an OS … It's a Space Station

Like Jaguar, Panther and Tiger before it, Leopard will be “the best upgrade to Mac OS X that Apple’s ever released.” This according to CEO Steve Jobs, who today said Leopard will arrive at market Oct. 26, as expected.

Priced at $129 for a single-user license, Leopard offers some 300 new features–“Even Leopard innovations have innovations,” says Apple–among them, a solution to the “Fix the F-ing Finder” problem, a significant update to Mail, a virtual desktop application called “Spaces” and Apple’s eagerly awaited backup solution, “Time Machine.”

Looks to be an impressive release. Certainly, Wall Street expects it to be. Just last week Piper Jaffray & Co.’s Gene Munster predicted Leopard would add $240 million to Apple’s next quarter, nearly double the $125 million in revenues that Tiger brought in during its opening quarter.

Chris Swenson of the NPD Group, too, figures Leopard will outperform its predecessor. “Tiger was the best launch of Mac OS X ever according to our data,” he told ComputerWorld, “and I expect Leopard to do even better.”