Really nice write-up, and the screencasts are sharp! thanks!

This'll be an interesting release (to discuss and to have), so much focus on usability and 'editorial' ui decisions. And the OS keeps evolving.

Maybe I missed something, but the title implies there was new features to the Dock, but nothing is said about it.

One thing this means is that all new Macs will ship with some sort of trackpad/mouse, like the laptops have. Apple's committing big to gestures now, it's officially part of the user interface.

Am I the only one who thinks that dumbing down a system for people who don't want to learn how to use their computer is bad? AppleInsider, stop sucking off Apple. There are no "complex key commands" for Spaces, it's ctrl+arrow keys. Apparently, because I still use a keyboard, I am no longer part of Apple's target audience. Similarly, there is absolutely nothing hard about "Macintosh HD --> Applications" to find all of my programs. The only problem with this is that OS X hides mounted disks on the desktop by default, which is idiotic anyway.
My 50 year old mother, who clicks and drags scroll bars because she doesn't know how to use a scroll wheel, can use Spotlight to find anything because it is literally that easy.

Also, I bought a MacBook Pro with a 17" display for a reason. Making things like iTunes, iCal, and Mail be full-screen apps is fucking stupid, and a waste of the 2.3 million pixels on my screen. I love Apple, but they need to get it together,

And finally, fuck gestures. Keyboard shortcuts are faster and easier, and require less movement.

By default now the dock doesn't show the lights for running apps, although you can turn these back on.

Mission Control is really very, very nice, especially if you're a heavy Spaces user

Here's a tip: each Space can now have it's own desktop picture. It's a little cumbersome to set them, as you have to open, or drag, the System Preferences on each Space separately. Worth it tough, as it makes it easy to tell them apart.

It does seem now that Spaces are just in a linear order, instead of being in a grid, which could make navigation lots of spaces a bit harder, although it also makes things a lot easier to understand for the majority of users

@ AppleInsider,

Thank you for not requiring the Flash plug-in for watching videos.

Either a million people are watching those videos or your server is running on an iBook. It shouldn't take 5 minutes to load a 30 second video.