Leopard : Snow Leopard :: Vista : Windows 7

I’m excited about the new announcements from Apple today. Can’t wait to update my iPhone to the 3.0 OS and use the bitchen ZipCar app.

But it’s amazing how thick with spin the announcements are. Paul Thurrott offers a snarky take, and he’s largely right.

Apple feels the needs to dis Windows 7 as a minor update to Vista. And yet, that’s precisely what Snow Leopard is — a minor update to Leopard, as evidenced by its upgrade pricing of $29.

Hey, as a nerd, I get plenty excited about under-the-covers refinements. Apple is doing a lot of stuff that end-users won’t see, but which improve performance and capabilities.

Apple’s support of 64-bit looks a lot like Microsoft’s: it’s there is you want it but a lot of bits still run as 32. (Which makes little difference to the end user.) Windows 64 is actually more mainstream: walk into a Best Buy and you’ll find plenty of 64-bit Vista machines.

And Apple’s new Expose refinements look like they took a few cues from Win 7’s Aero Peek.

Poor us: two big computer companies falling over themselves to make things better and cheaper.