Apple’s new Leopard operating system has received favorable reviews from two key technology critics – Walter Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal and David Pogue of the New York Times.

Writing on Leopard in today’s NYT, Pogue notes:

Leopard is powerful, polished and carefully conceived. Happy surprises, and very few disappointments, lie around every corner. This Leopard has more than 300 new spots — and most of them are bright ones.

WSJ’s Mossberg, a fan of all things Apple, is equally enthusiastic on the latest version of Apple’s OS X:

[W]hile it is an evolutionary, not a revolutionary, release, I believe it builds on Apple’s quality advantage over Windows. In my view, Leopard is better and faster than Vista, with a set of new features that make Macs even easier to use.

Leopard will debut on Friday and come preinstalled on all new Macs. Apple fans can also buy Leopard for $129 and install it on their older Macs.

Unlike the many versions of Windows Vista, there will be only one version of Leopard.

Highlights of Leopard include a cool Time Machine automatic back up feature, new techniques called Cover Flow and Quick Look to quickly view contents of files without opening any programs, built-in Boot Camp to run Windows on the Mac and beefed up parental control capabilities.