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Changes to the Dock are largely aesthetic, with 3D-effect icons standing up from the Dock platform. But the Dock is also the home for the new Stacks, smart folders that display their contents by fanning out or as a grid. Stacks can be used to group frequently used or related items, much like smart folders in Tiger but with a much improved interface. They could also be used an application launcher, for instance. One stack will be included with new Leopard installations: all downloads will automatically be added to this by default, rather than sprayed on the desktop.

The new Finder takes iTunes' Cover Flow interface to browse for files rather than music. And once you have located a file, QuickLook lets you preview it without having to open its application.

The Finder also adds Bonjour file sharing - no more fiddling with IP or AFP addresses to mount remote volumes, even Windows volumes - and Spotlight searching of those volumes.

And .Mac subscribers will be able to access Macs remotely direct from the Finder. Macs automatically tell .Mac their IP address, so that .Mac can enable them to talk to each other. Files and folders can then be copied from one to another within the Finder as if they were on the same local network.

QuickLook pretty much does what it says. Select a file and you can have a quick look at hat it contains, full-screen if you desire. Select a presentation and a set of controls appear for flipping through the slides; click on a video and movie files appear.

The three features of the new-look desktop - Stacks, Finder and QuickLook - were the highlight of Apple CEO Steve Jobs presentation of 10 of Leopard's 300 new features.

Feature four was Jobs' guarantee that 64-bit applications run on every copy of Leopard. Unlike Windows Vista there will not be separate 64-bit and 32-bit apps.

'Leopard really will be the first time that 64-bit goes mainstream in the PC world,' Jobs said. For users the difference will be apparent only in performance.

The

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remaining six features had already been seen in Jobs' first Leopard preview 10 months ago. These include Core Animation, Boot Camp, Spaces virtual desktops, Dashboard with point-and-click tools for building custom widgets, iChat Theatre for sharing documents in real time plus the addition of Photo Booth effects for iChat video chats, and Time Machine, which will automate backing up in 'a simple way that people actually use'.

Rumoured new features that did not materialise included a virtualisation engine for running Windows. But Jobs intimated that Apple is very happy with the 'fantastic' work in this area being done by Parallels and VM Ware.

'We have three great solutions,' Jobs said.

This disappointed Shaw Wu, analyst at American Technology Research, who described Jobs' keynote as 'underwhelming'.

'The announcements were more around user-interface changes rather than something more radical,' Wu said. 'So I think that was disappointing and investors were hoping for more.'

Investor's Business Daily said that Apple shareholders were disappointed at the lack of a 'wow' announcement, with Apple's share price falling 3.5 per cent after the keynote closed. In fact the keynote had two big surprises - third-party software for iPhones, Safari for Windows - plus considerable evidence that Leopard will be an operating system of unmatched power and functionality. Not to mention the news that the world's biggest games developer will soon begin releasing games for Mac and PC simultaneously.

OS X 10.5 will ship in October for £89 ($129). Jobs had the audience worried for a moment when he said the 'basic version of Leopard' would cost $129. But it soon cottoned on to the joke at Microsoft's expense as Jobs continued to ever-louder cheers: 'we've got a Premium version that's gonna cost $129, we have a Business version that's gonna cost $129, we have an Enterprise versionn that's gonna cost $129, and we have the Ultimate version - we're throwing everything into it - it's $129'.

Jobs' WWDC keynote can be seen in full, in QuickTime at apple.com/quicktime/qtv/keynote. Worth watching for the iChat effects alone and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer telling the audience 'I love my Mac'.