‘Tis the season for upgrades: Canon 350D to 400D, Treo 680 to 750, Windows XP to Vista, and now OS X Tiger to Leopard. Well, not exactly right now because it won’t be out until October in the US, but the news alone is worthy of creating a subtle buzz in the geek community. Based on Jobs’ keynote in the recently concluded World Wide Developer’s Conference, aside from eyecandy enhancements on the desktop, the Leopard OS will feature useful programs and tools such as Time Machine, Spaces, and a built-in Boot Camp for dual operating systems.

Compared to the jump from XP to Vista, the changes in the Mac OS X might be minimal and less obvious, but considering the performance and the features of Windows XP and Tiger, I’d say that Mac just needs to fine-tune its OS while Microsoft has to really overhaul theirs and make it work this time around. So if you’re in the market for a new Mac system, you might want to wait a few months until the new models come out with Leopard built in already (or get the Tiger-operated Macs at a reduced price by then and just buy the upgrade software).