These are the features Microsoft claims Windows Vista:

Visualizations
Working with Windows Vista is all about seeing, finding, organizing,
and confidently controlling your information and your computer desktop.
Together, the new Windows Vista user interface is streamlined, useful,
and efficient to work with.

Windows Vista provides a solid visual experience, free of flicker,
redrawing, hesitation, latency, and visual artifacts. New productivity
tools bring clarity to information you're your computer-you can see
what your files contain without opening them, find applications and
files instantly, navigate efficiently among open windows, and traverse
wizards and dialog boxes more confidently and surely. And the visual
sophistication of the Windows Vista environment streamlines the
experience across the board by minimizing and refining common visual
elements to minimize distracting interface and focus on content,
information, messages, and choices.

Glass and Animations
Windows Vista includes refinements that make your experience smooth and
sophisticated. In computers that can use the new Windows Vista Display
Driver Model (WVDDM), windows are translucent, meaning that it's easier
to focus on the content of a window rather than the window itself. This
feature (along with other window design enhancements on all Windows
Vista computers) reduces distraction and streamlines your work while
making windows easier to manage.

Overall, the Windows Vista experience is more polished, smooth, and
refined on all computers. Even details such as how windows move when
they are minimized have been improved-when minimized, a window now
clearly minimizes to the spot on the taskbar where it resides, making
it easier to locate later.

Flip 3D
Windows Vista provides an entirely new way to manage windows called
Flip 3D. Using Flip 3D, you can use the scroll wheel on a mouse to flip
through open windows in a stack, and quickly locate and select the one
you want to work with. The Flip 3D feature is even handier when you use
it with the new Flip 3D key that manufacturers are adding to many
keyboards.

Thumbnails
New scalable thumbnails are used throughout Windows to show you the
actual first page for documents, the actual photo for photos, a screen
capture for videos, and album art for individual songs. By previewing
the actual contents of a file at a glance, you'll find what you want
more quickly without the trial-and-error of opening files to preview
them.

You'll find thumbnails in the Explorers as live icons; when you rest
the mouse pointer over a minimized window on the Task Bar; and when you
flip through open windows using Alt+Tab or the new Flip 3D

Well i dont know about the rest features but in looks Microsoft has
given it a Mac type of look.