It'd be nice if the garbage collector is already as usable as Java's, after all it's the first revision. And the question remains, if users can expect their developers to code better applications using it.
Have you identified a specific problem with GC under the ObjC 2.0 runtime? I haven't. And since it's opt-in, developers can still choose manual memory management in cases where it may be needed.
64 bit is nice if you need it. How many applications can you list, that could definitely take advantage of 64 bit on a desktop?
I already said any application that needs to work with a data set larger than 4GB in size. I'm not saying a lot of these applications exist on the desktop today - at least not outside the scientific community - because the industry is just now making the transition to 64-bit operating systems running on commodity 64-bit hardware. But I also won't presume to guess what may become available as this transition progresses.
I can work with Ruby (on Rails) and Python on Tiger already.
But in Leopard, PyObjC, RubyCocoa, and RoR are installed out of the box, which greatly simplifies deployment and opens the platform to a broader range of developers.
Sun's DTrace is also nice, but it's not that most of this wouldn't already have existed long before Leopard.
It seems you're arguing that Leopard isn't a great leap for developers because many of its features already existed elsewhere. I'm arguing that Leopard is a great leap for developers because Apple has made a lot of useful technology an officially-supported part of the OS X platform.
I would make me MUCH happier if Apple finally would get their act together delivering proper Java support, instead of adding candy. The release schedule is lagging years behind the rest of the world and intransparent. After all Java 6 is really great on all platforms for quite some time, except OS-X.
Can't argue there. Apple is way behind on Java 6.
I'm afraid that Ruby and Python support wont be much better. So sorry if I don't jump on every feature train you offer yelling "yeah!". Proper long term maintenance of these platforms is much more important to me than bleeding edge features. It's on Apple's side to prove this. There is no established track record regarding anything else than ObjC.
It's too soon to tell, but I believe the scripting bridges will have a very bright future on OS X. RubyCocoa alone has advanced tremendously since Apple has thrown some resources at it. Plus it's easy to establish that both Python and especially Ruby have object models that will permit a much better bridge to Cocoa than Java ever could.
Tell me one "bigger" application suite besides Apples own that could benefit from Core Animation.
Just about anything with a UI can utilize Core Animation to better convey change-of-state, so I think it's useful for applications large and small.
I'd agree though that there will be much room for creativity at a smaller scale for multimedia and presentation application developers.
See above. Core Animation is not just about eye candy. It also makes it possible to enrich the UI in useful ways.
I thought that the next Microsoft Office is going to be Cocoa btw..?
I don't believe that's true, but my employment at Microsoft ended in 2005, so what do I know?
So long speech, short sense (German saying): 64 is the way to go for the future, but in 2007's and 2008's improvements just because of this are going to be sparse.
Agreed. But since commodity, 64-bit desktop hardware is already here, it makes sense that we begin the transition in software. Microsoft and the Linux distros are doing it by offering separate 32 and 64-bit versions of the OS. Apple is doing it better by bringing 32 and 64-bit together as one.