Longhorn and the Tiger

Scoble is pretty excited about the upcoming release of Longhorn (although he did acknowledge that Tiger on a Powerbook would be pretty cool):

As for myself, yeah, I’ve seen Longhorn and, yeah, I’m very excited
to be working at Microsoft because of it (and other things). But, I’m
going to keep my own personal hype knob down at one until you have
bits. I hear that’ll be soon, but I’d rather wait until then.

I can’t wait to talk with you about it, though.

All that having been said, I am not too sure what is so amazing about Longhorn (relative to XP).  I know there was something about a new file system (which was subsequently yanked) and all sorts of improvements to things like desktop search and suchlike (I have seen a little bit about Tiger and that is one gnarly OS).

I did a little reading and found some stuff on CNET News.com about Longhorn:

As with Windows XP Service Pack 2, security remains at the
forefront of Microsoft’s development efforts. With Longhorn, Microsoft
isn’t focusing as much on building in antivirus software as it is
changing the behaviors that leave computer systems vulnerable to
attack. For example, most computers today are run in administrator
mode, making it easy to add new programs and make other changes, but
also allowing major fundamental changes to a computer to be made by
malicious software.

With Longhorn, Microsoft is trying to change that so a computer
runs with the least possible permission level. Only those programs that
truly need administrator privileges would run at that level. Microsoft
plans a similar change to Internet Explorer that would reduce the level
of access given to external Web sites in an attempt to lessen the
possibility of malicious attacks.

Microsoft also has focused on improving the experience
when using a laptop computer. A fast-start option, combined with
support for external displays, will make it easier to create computers
that can display calendar information or play music without having to
start up the whole PC, including the OS. Another change will make it
easier for a person’s PC to join a network at work or at home, while
remaining invisible to other machines when getting Wi-Fi at a coffee
shop.

In the category of making sure things "just work," Allchin
cited enhancements such as making sure that a laptop that connects to a
projector displays correctly without having to press any keys. In
addition, he said, are settings tailored for specific tasks, such as
watching a DVD. The computer will just assume that the user doesn’t
want the movie muted and probably wants to watch it full-screen.

There doesn’t seem to be anything groundbreaking about Longhorn so far, at least not from a user’s perspective.  I would be interested in a comparison between Longhorn (when it is finally released) and Tiger.  I am sure there are Mac OS users who are still rolling their eyes and saying that the ‘new’ features offered by Longhorn are already in place in OS X.  Or are they?