It appears Mary Jo Foley of ZDNet didn't bother to look up a couple thing BEFORE writing a story on how Mac's next operating system looks like Vista... You see, many of the things she brought up have been fully in existence on the Mac platform for a couple years now, back in the days when Vista was still mysterious & called Longhorn...

Point 1 says that the new Leopard desktop looks "a lot like Vista's sidebar. Now, I have Vista, and it's desktop looks different, period. The so called "side bar" she's referring to is Mac's dock, which is directly equivalent to the Windows Task Bar, which has NOT changed in Vista... Vista does have their "gadget" sidebar, but this is equivalent to Apple's Dash Board, which exists in Mac OS 10.4 that came out 2 years ago (long before Vista)...

Point 2 talks about the instant search, which in Mac OS X known as Spotlight, which has also existed since the launch of Mac OS X 10.4, 2 years ago... How could this be copying Vista when it was publicly released 2 years before it??? Also, the cover flow was put into iTunes before Vista shipped... This was actually a technology that Apple bought from a party that developed it long before Vista had their so-called 'flip'...

Point 3 says QuickLook is equivalent to Thumbnails. This couldn't be further from the truth. Thumbnails existed in Mac since the old days. QuickLook allows you to fully view and interact with a file, including a multi-slide presentation. You can view and READ an entire file in a thumbnail view... You're just blatantly stupid here Mary...

4. Leopard is not an ONLY 64 bit version of the desktop... She has this TOTALLY WRONG HERE!!! Leopard is a combination 32bit + 64bit OS in ONE!!! In other words, you install 1 version of leopard, and it's both. I had to buy a 32bit version of Vista, which is distinctly different from the 64bit... In order to get 32bit & 64bit versions of Vista I need to purchase 2 distinctly different versions of Vista... If I don't know which one I need, then I've got a 50-50 chance of buying the right version for my PC... With Leopard, on the other hand, 1 disc & 1 install contains both, IN ONE! Mary's statement here is blatantly factually inaccurate...

Point 5 covers core animation, the ironic thing was she stated something so far from the truth here, she hasn't a clue. Core Animation has existed for a very long time on Mac OS X. It to date has been and is being used by a great deal of Mac developers. The thing is, Apple has continued to expand the capabilities here. Core Animation is taking yet another step in pulling off some unbelievable graphical feats in real time, and what Apple showed was simply another evolution in the highly used graphical tool...

Point 6 seemed pointless to even list. Apple was kidding around with the Solitaire angle, and that was evident in the guffaws of the crowed (I was chuckling myself)... Apple knows some people need Windows for some tasks... I run Parallels Desktop on my system and love having a Windows task bar at the bottom of my Mac desktop. That said 90% of the time I spend working in Windows is literally spent maintaining Windows (virus & spyware scans, windows updates, etc). I own a copy of both XP Pro & Vista Ultimate, and really rarely use either...

Point 7 is Mary declaring something she cannot factually backup. I have just as valid as an argument saying that Mary is so jealous of Mac OS X, so much so that she's willing to blatantly lie to 'defend' Vista... Spaces is not unique to Mac, and has existed in the Linux circle for many years. Apple has taken the feature and added a lot of improvements over what Linux offers, but in the end it's a tool only for those who choose to use it. Most likely I will not, but time will ultimately tell...

Point 8 is utterly retarded, Dashboard again has been around for 2 years now, wasn't Vista just recently released???

Point 9 has an interesting side note, yes Microsoft had this technology for a while, but there is one big difference. iChat is free, Microsoft Live Meeting is a professional level application that costs to use... iChat can be used by any one at any time...

The one argument against her point 10 is pretty significant, Time Machine is available in the one and only version of Leopard. Vista backup is fully inaccessible in the lower versions of Vista (while ironically these impaired versions cost more than Leopard). To get the functionality you have to pay big bucks... Time machine is also easier to use, and won't confuse any non-experienced consumers...

Welp, that's pretty much a rundown of ALL her points, most of which (as you can clearly read) are in fact blatant lies and misinformation. What are you missing Mary? A whole heck of a lot, obviously...

[update]

Apparently she posted a follow-up following her article stating that she was not trying to accuse Apple/Leopard of copying Vista, but simply trying to state the items listed are available in Vista regardless of the fact that Vista copied to get them... I think this is bull, as can be judged by her original wording of point 8:

Dashboard with widgets. Isn?t this like the Vista Sidebar with gadgets?

In essence what she is now claiming is "Didn't Vista already copy the Dashboard widgets idea, making the fact that Leopard is going to have it totally irrelevant anyway?" In a sense she's now trying to say Apple shouldn't have bothered saying it since Vista had already had it. This is STILL invalid because of the fact that Apple was primarily demoing the new feature of Dashboard allowing users to turn live sections of web pages into dynamic widgets. This is a new concept to Mac OS X and is also something Vista does not have. So even giving her the benefit of the doubt that her follow-up is truthful, the validity of the post is still fully invalid...