Your son is astute!
Nice detail catches! Although, I doubt that the option to show hard drives, CD/DVD's, etc. on the desktop has been removed completely from Leopard. It's more likely that to emphasize the clean, uncluttered desktop enabled by stacks, Jobs simply had the Finder preference to "Show these items on the Desktop" turned off.
I agree with Martin. In fact, one has been able to turn off "show Harddrive" since at least 10.1.
Sometimes I feel the old OS 9 UI was less cluttered. It bugs me some that so much clutter is going into Finder Windows. No, I don't feel much nostalgia for OS 9, in general.
BTW: I like to see my HD. I think, it is because in earlier years, NOT seeing your HD (or worse-- seeing the blinking question mark) was such a dire occurrence.
Also, when Steve moused over the Help menu a "Spotlight"-esque text field appeared. So you can type stuff in there I suppose and Help will take you to the right page.
Since the introduction of the sidebar in Panther I've been able to banish HD icons from my Desktop.
Think of your computer as a room. It has storage spaces (volumes) and equipment (applications). Removable storage only differs from fixed storage in the sense that it belongs in another room. A network volume is something your neighbor is lending you (books, tools, furniture, etc.).
To me the Desktop is a real desk so it shouldn't show the filing cabinets, photocopier or paint brushes.
How do I see what I've got then? I open my eyes (a Finder window). Some applications like a pencil or calculator fit on my desk while others obscure it completely. When I get up to change a light bulb I shouldn't expect to be able to see my desk except maybe in my peripheral vision.
This way of making bits and bytes into real tangible objects helped me when I was a newbie back in the early 1980's and it still makes sense today.
Regarding the Leopard Finder knowing details about the computer type, old fogies who remember System 7.5 and earlier will recall that it had a system gesalt ID such that doing an About this Macintosh would also show details about the computer type/icon. That was removed when Apple renamed System Software to Mac OS with 7.6 (for the clone licensing).
Based on Leopard betas so far, some old Finder "behaviors" seems to be making its way back (Finder view options work just like pre-OS X for example), grid spacing, row shading in list view, etc.
Commenting by HaloScan
