We’re just about 1 day and 16 hours away from the launch of Apple’s new OS X 10.5 “Leopard” – obviously quite a few reviewers and VIPs have it in their hands already and the reviews are starting to come in. The consensus? It’s beautiful, more evolutionary than revolutionary, and pushes Apple’s OS even farther ahead of Windows.

The Wall Street Journal’s Wal Mossberg is the one who notes OS X Leopard is more evolutionary than revolutionary, but makes sure to note that it’s far ahead of what Vista is doing both is speed and ease of use. He couldn’t find one compatibility problem even with an old printer and switching to his previously Boot Camp-installed version of Vista.

The New York Time’s David Pogue likewise seems to think Leopard is just polishing an already great system. He likes Time Machine, love Quick Look, doesn’t really like Stacks, and notes how right out of the box Leopard is already running great with hardly any bugs.

Edward Baig of USA Today echoes much of the same. He loved the new iChat features such as sharing documents and sharing screens, liked Time Machine and Cover Flow views for documents, had trouble with the .Mac remote feature but expects that to be fixed.

So it seems that if you’re looking for Leopard to be a game-changing OS you’re going to be a little let down – but when you consider the fact that OS X was already so far ahead of anything from Windows to begin with, it’s hard to be negative about OS X.

The fact of the matter is that Windows needs a revolutionary change because it’s bad and getting worse. OS X on the other hand is wise to stick the old ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ mentality.

For some reason this reminds me of the Goldeneye Bond videogame for Nintendo 64 – the game was nearly flawless, and I would have loved a sequel that was simply the exact same thing with new levels. Instead the Bond game license switched hands and another completely different team was brought in and made a completely different game and its never been the same since. Apple is wise to simply give us new “levels”.