“If you can believe what some of the online tech prognosticators tell you, Apple’s real ‘Top Secret’ plan is to have Mac OS 10.5 Leopard out by Macworld Expo in January, or perhaps shortly thereafter. If true, it would give Apple a chance to trounce Windows Vista, at least in times of mind share as opposed to market share, assuming the latter indeed comes out around the same time. I think some of the folks who expect an early release ought to reconsider what they’re smoking or drinking.”
I cant buy the Leopard and install it in my PC, but i can buy Vista and install it.
Hmmm – yeah, I guess you could buy VISTA and install it on your PC – but not the same with LEOPARD. but think about this – have you read the new EULA that comes with VISTA (rc2 at least). You cannot use the HOME version in a VM at all – right to use is limited to ONE TRANSFER – to new machine – PERIOD!!!
MS is getting bolder with their tactics of licensing.
I, unfortunatley am straddling both worlds right now – I use Mac OS X as my main laptop – use Parallez or Boot Camp to boot to XP if I need to run a Windows App or connect to my companies Exchange Server with a good native client (and do not mention… Entourage as that client).
I love the Mac OS, but need the XP OS for a lot of day to day work at my job.
OMG – talk about long winded – sorry – BUT, I do not think that Apple will rush their product to market to ‘one-up’ MS, ever.
With their licencing, I think the issue has to do more with their obsession with making money; I remember a well known CEO who said, “concentrated on the product, and the profits will follow”.
If customers want to pirate, then so be it, no use trying to trace it, those who want to and able to pay for software, will always will, irrespective of whether its a free download away, whilst in the same sentence, those who want to pirate, irrespective of the copy protection, always will.
You’re right, I don’t think they’re going to release MacOS X Tiger at the rumored date; they *might* give a fixed date at that time, they might show off the rumoured Finder replacement, but I don’t see them shipping it; they need to do alot of work not only to bring it up to standard but to also add the necessary features to make it UNIX 2003 compliant.
OMG – talk about long winded – sorry – BUT, I do not think that Apple will rush their product to market to ‘one-up’ MS, ever.
Apple has been one-upping Microsoft for most of Windows’ history as far as ease of use and user experience are concerned. NT4 and 2000 had Apple beat from a stability, technical standpoint. But since OS X 10.1, Apple has been one-upping Microsoft consistently.
I can download Linux and install it on both my PC and Mac, and have Compiz Beryl, Beagle, Inkscape, bmpx, projectM, hald/dbus (and in the future KDE4), etc… for free.
Wheeeeee.
I can download Linux and install it on both my PC and Mac, and have Compiz Beryl, Beagle, Inkscape, bmpx, projectM, hald/dbus (and in the future KDE4), etc… for free.
And that is great if you want a CLI-only system. But let’s face it, with the fragmentation of the Linux UI development, there will be no real chance of a solid and truly usable desktop Linux for some time. And when I say that, I mean for all. As a techy I can get my way around a Linux desktop but OS X and even XP have a more intuitive UI. This is not to say I am anti-Linux.. I love BSD, Unix, Linux.. I just limit them to a CLI.
>> [Linux] is great if you want a CLI-only system. But let’s face it (…) there will be no real chance of a solid and truly usable desktop Linux for some time. (…) As a techy I can get my way around a Linux desktop but OS X and even XP have a more intuitive UI. This is not to say I am anti-Linux.. I love BSD, Unix, Linux.. I just limit them to a CLI.
Should we just make it a felony to continue spreading this kind of nonsense?
This is just so wrong.
I’ve been using Linux for years (Suse, *Buntu, Fedora, Xandros, Linspire), I find Gnome extremely intuitive, and I hardly ever use the command line interface, simply because I wouldn’t have much of an idea what I should do there. I actually use the latter more on OS X (Darwin ports).
Should we just make it a felony to continue spreading this kind of nonsense?
What nonsense? Trying to find anything in their “start” menu equivalent is a painful experience. In some ways the Linux UI is pretty good but in others it is a complere shambles. And by the way, it’s merely an opinion… no more or less valid than any other. I do enjoy Linux but I do not enjoy its GUI.
There is no “Linux GUI”. There are two competing systems, GNOME and KDE. It’s crazy to use both, and there is really not much point in using anything but GNOME, which is quickly becoming the “de facto” standard.
So what’s wrong with GNOME? It’s far easier to find things in the GNOME menu than in the XP Start Menu.
>> Trying to find anything in their “start” menu equivalent is a painful experience.
Gnome does not have a ‘”start” menu equivalent’.
It has 1) a menu full of programs, all logically arranged by type; 2) a menu full of places to go (files, servers, network, the search engine); 3) a menu where you can find help, close down, log out, and configure your entire system.
Anyone who finds it a painful experience to “find anything” in this well ordered 3-menu set, should stay away from any computer.
Needless to say, I doubt you’ve ever seen Gnome. Which, if you really are a Linux user, is hard to imagine.
>> (…) I do enjoy Linux but I do not enjoy its GUI.
The impression that you give, seeming to think “Linux” has “one GUI”, makes it implausible you have ever seen it in your life.
And that is great if you want a CLI-only system.
Can I borrow your time machine?
But let’s face it, with the fragmentation of the Linux UI development, there will be no real chance of a solid and truly usable desktop Linux for some time.
Let’s see, I’m running Ubuntu using GNOME and everything is nice and consistant and it is my sole home desktop environment. The distributions around Linux select from a big ecosystem of software, the old weakness was that distributors were unwilling to choose. That has changed. My Linux desktop is now much more consistant and usable than my Windows one at work.
My wife wouldn’t be too impressed if she had to use the commandline all the time, or at all. She gets on quite happily despite being not being a computer geek at all. She used to think computers hated her and crashed whenever she touched them until I introduced her to Linux.
Linux is not inconsistant because different desktop environments exist. A lot of those environments aren’t just for Linux, but also for BSD, Solaris and even Windows.
Most distributions plump for a default, and most people will stick to the default. Those who know enough to go shopping for window managers/desktop environment should also be sufficiently knowledgeable not to be confused by their existence.
you are completely correct, in fact, you can also get blackbox window manager for winblows (and other shell replacements), so now winblows must be inconsistent (only that it actually is, if you look through its different dialogs and settings dialogs.)
edit:
this is a response to “unapersson”
Edited 2006-10-14 20:25
Most distributions plump for a default, and most people will stick to the default. Those who know enough to go shopping for window managers/desktop environment should also be sufficiently knowledgeable not to be confused by their existence.
That’s all very nice but the fact that you have to hunt around makes Linux not a good desktop OS. It’s funny how the Linux zealots will attack a fellow Linux user for not agreeing that it’s the end-all be-all platform. It’s not.. neither is OS X or Windows. There is no perfect platform.
That’s all very nice but the fact that you have to hunt around makes Linux not a good desktop OS.
Who said you have to go hunting around? It’s for the experimental who like doing that kind of thing. Like the people who install Litestep on Windows. In fact in Linux it’s easy to explore the alternatives, just fire up your software installation tool.
Why does the fact these alternatives exist suddenly make it not a good desktop OS? It is a good desktop OS. What I find bizarre is those who expend so much energy trying to claim it isn’t. But no, not a perfect one, there is not a perfect one. But you can’t claim that Windows and Mac are good, but Linux isn’t, as that just doesn’t gell with reality.
Sorry, but I too run Ubuntu with GNOME, and things are *not* nice and consistent.
File open/save boxes are a case in point. For the directory path that runs across the top of the window I need to single click – whereas for the list on the LHS of the window I need to double click. (Indeed if I single click on a directory in the LHS list it looks like the directory is selected, but the file list doesn’t change to reflect this.) These windows are not even consistent with themselves.
Then we have how these windows are used. In Thunderbird if I choose to “Save All” attachments I’m presented with a file box that has an “Open” button to save the files. In need of a decent text editor (with regex search/replace) I’m using Kate, which presents me with KDE open/save boxes, completely different to GNOME boxes.
File open/save boxes are a case in point. For the directory path that runs across the top of the window I need to single click –
Those are buttons, look like buttons and act consistant with how a button is meant to work.
whereas for the list on the LHS of the window I need to double click. (Indeed if I single click on a directory in the LHS list it looks like the directory is selected, but the file list doesn’t change to reflect this.) These windows are not even consistent with themselves.
Those are lists: you might want to select multiple entries or work with the one you’ve selected or add a folder to your favourites. You don’t want it to automatically open the first item you click on.
I don’t think you can really claim that as an inconsistency.
Then we have how these windows are used. In Thunderbird if I choose to “Save All” attachments I’m presented with a file box that has an “Open” button to save the files.
Perhaps because you are choosing to open a folder in which to save the files? Have you not already done the save action and are being asked “Where?”. How is this inconsistent which how other applications save multiple files?
In need of a decent text editor (with regex search/replace) I’m using Kate, which presents me with KDE open/save boxes, completely different to GNOME boxes.
I stick with GNOME apps because I prefer the consistency and am not a big fan of Kate (which is an application from a different desktop environment, its bound to be inconsistant). I can use Bluefish if I want regexp search/replace but GEdit is getting lots of plugins to add improved functionality these days, regexp search is one of them.
If these are the biggest problems you can come up with then I’m sticking with my view of it being nice and consistent, seeing as that is one of the main reasons I like using it. I really like nautilus. I like the implementation of bookmarks in file/open, nautilus and places menu. I like totem, epiphany and gstreamer, rhythmbox and muine. Most of my most used applications have a gnome underpining, and they have a nice consistency which is really refreshing.
only thing is, you are wrong, gui in linux are far easier to use than those you find in winblows, even cli is.
Uh, with the exception of projectM (which I’m not familiar with) and hal/dbus, ALL those programs mentioned are graphical.
I assume you mean that with two major DEs, multiple window managers and multiple toolkits, the Linux GUI experience is not consistent? That I can agree with… though I’m not sure whether I’d call XP’s interface more intuitive, or just more familiar.
Yeah, and everything will just copy other oses and not innovate at all.
Copy >>> reinvent the wheel!
All the GUIs are similar anyway. It’s stupid to do everything from scratch. (see how vista innovatively messed up the menu!)
you can’t buy either off them, you never own proprietary software. you can only buy the right to use it (just a few hundred bucks), and they can revoke that right anytime they want – without any reason. guess you don’t read EULA’s
I cant buy the Leopard and install it in my PC, but i can buy Vista and install it.
Which makes the Intel Macs all the more compelling. Most people who use Windows admittedly use it for one or two apps/games. Being able to boot your Xeon Mac into XP/Vista to play a game then back into Leopard for real work is a compelling reason to buy a Mac.
not much of an article, more of a ‘rumor sites ONLY report RUMORS’
which (i hope) we all realise already
It’s a decent speculation on the part of rumor sites. Apple recently has been releasing new stuff much earlier than expected. The early release of the x86 boxes was a significant feat. Looks like they’ve been learning their mistakes from the past.
While it would be nice. Buy Leopard and Vista at the same time and install both with boot camp. But if Apple Beats Leopard it is just a way to snub MS a little more. Just to say Hey we got it done early.
Considering how much Vista has been delayed haven’t Apple been able to say “Hey we got it done early” for a long time now? Spotlight anyone?
wonder what they’re smoking & drinking.. I want some!
First, I don’t think that Apple has any great, powerful need to release Leopard on Microsofts time schedule.
However, it should be said that since Vista is (apparently according to reports, as I’ve not used it myself) going to have a rather large appetite for computer hardware, and that many folks who may decide to choose Vista will most probably have to upgrade their hardware.
This presents a fine opportunity for Apple to have folks simply up and replace not just the machine the people are running, but the OS as well.
It’s one thing to go from, say, Win2K to WinXP if the change entails simply dropping a CD in the drive and clicking upgrade.
But if the upgrade means tossing the beige XP box out for a sleak new beige Vista box, then swapping with an Apple machine may as easily make more sense since you’re getting a new machine anyway.
However, anyone really likely to do that, to upgrade to Vista, particularly consumers, is going to find much of what Vista has to offer them available already in OS X, much less in Leopard. OS X can already make a compelling play for those consumers as is.
And Apple is playing to those consumers right now with their Mac v PC ads. It’s not like Vista is going to dramatically change the face of the Windows PC (beyond a prettier interface) in terms of what Apple portrays simply as ease of use, working out of the box, etc.
So, like I said, I don’t think there is any great rush put on Apple. They may well do it simply to ride the marketing bandwagon, and hit MS head on in the media. But as a platform, the Mac has much to offer the consumer now, and if anything Apple can simply profit from the Vista campaign by leveraging folks considering switching and buying a new machine at all.
>Microsofts time schedule.
if apple uses the microsoft time shedule we’d now use Mac OS X 10.0
of course will Leopard beat Vista,
Tiger and Vista, both operating systems can do the same. Both has Widgets, and so on. Okay, Tiger was 3 years before vista, but that shows how late Microsoft is.
But Leopard is “Vista 2.0”. While Vista is getting Widgets, Leopard will introduce “Widgets 2.0” – and that’s only one of apples “non-top-secret” features.
So you see, Leopard will beat Vista
Vista will cost about about the same as Vista +Video card +maybe some ram, in my own case, I just have to upgrade my video card to get all the Aero goodness, so maybe about 400 bucks for a half decent video card and Vista, to move to Leopard, I have to buy an entire new computer, minimum cost, in Canada, about 679 for a Mini, and if I buy the computer now, another 129 to upgrade to Leopard.
http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPLE/WebObjects/canadastore.woa/wo…
so it makes no sense to move to Leopard when most people will not have to upgrade their entire computer, just a couple of components, any 1.5Ghz P4 or Athlon will do just fine, if it has the ram and Video card. The video card you buy doesn’t need to be anything special either, just anything within the last generation or so. My ATI 9200 is not up to it, but a 9600 would do fine.
https://support.ati.com/ics/support/default.asp?deptID=894&task=know…
Is all this FUD really needed?
Well, you’re assuming people will be willing to upgrade their system components, which isn’t quite as viable for laptops and isn’t quite as valid for people who don’t feel technically competent to open up their computer and play with its innards.
I see this argument a lot in general when Mac is discussed- Yes, build it yourself is going to be cheaper, but you have to have the time (and effort) to build it yourself- I’m assuming the actual building isn’t too difficult.
wtf? Your post made absolutely no sense.
You won’t have to upgrade your system when Vista comes out, in most cases, just your video card, and maybe your ram, most systems are powerful enough to run Vista, just not Aero. The cost of switching to OS X is the cost of a new computer, which is signifigantly more. Is that simple enough?
The cost of switching to OS X is the cost of a new computer, which is signifigantly more. Is that simple enough?
You obviously have not used a Mac, so get your facts straight. There are tons of old G3 iBooks are my school that are running Tiger (latest release) and feel even faster than they did Cheetah/Jaguar/Panther, etc… You most certainly do NOT need a new computer. My Powerbook came with Panther, I upgraded to Tiger when it came out for $80.00 and it feels faster.
We are talking about leopard, not tiger or panther. Most people who go buy a Mac for the first time are not going to go buy a second hand g3, they are going to go buy a new one.
You won’t have to upgrade your system when Vista comes out, in most cases, just your video card, and maybe your ram, most systems are powerful enough to run Vista, just not Aero. The cost of switching to OS X is the cost of a new computer, which is signifigantly more. Is that simple enough?
For most people getting extra ram or a new video card means getting a new computer. They can’t do this themselves and if they go to a store to upgrade they’ll get talked into buying a new pc anyway.
I do a tidy little side business doing this for people, lots of people do it, I believe more than you would think.
You won’t have to upgrade your system when Vista comes out, in most cases, just your video card, and maybe your ram, most systems are powerful enough to run Vista, just not Aero. The cost of switching to OS X is the cost of a new computer, which is signifigantly more. Is that simple enough?
And worth every single penny.
I think your sentiment is probably overstated, but there is something basic to consider here. In many respects, OS X has been feature equivalent to Vista for years now. Vector graphics UI? Been in OS X since day one. Filesystem search? In OS X for a year and a half, since Tiger.
So even to the extent that Vista achieves feature parity with Tiger, Apple still has the advantage these features are brand new in Vista, while they are mature technologies in OS X. It takes years for new OS features to get supported in the majority of apps people use, and Apple has a very good head start in this regard.
Mac OS X is already far ahead of Vista. I don’t think Apple needs to rush Leopard. Even if they released it in January, the PC press will be too busy counting down to Vista to notice.
Very many people don’t really know the feature differences or similarities between the two. But they will know which is “newer” so they’ll pay for that. And that’s in itself enough reason to hurry a bit.
“On August 7, 2006 the Mac community was twisted into a tightly coiled ball waiting to erupt in a spastic frenzy of Mac love when Steve Jobs previewed Leopard to the world. At 3:00PM EST on August 7 the same members of the Mac community were despondent, nothing seemed like a must-have or a Mac-only thing. Beefed up iChat with green screen effects? Yes, soon you can upload your Daily Show on location, knock off bits to youtube and share them with the world! Forget that Leopard is faster, 64 bit, Intellifiied and the like, those are under the hood things, we’re Mac users, we like our cool out in front where we can show it off to the world! Most disappointing preview of an Mac OS ever! Steve, really, go slap some folks around and make it better, we need more shiny!”
http://www.applematters.com/index.php/section/comments/leopard-prev…
Yes, because dtrace integration, time machine, and so forth are such “disappointing” features. *dripping sarcasm* You’ve got to be kidding me. Already thrashing 10.5 when all (probably most) of the features haven’t even been mentioned yet? Wow.
So after years of forcing users to pay $99 per year to backup (and if you’re lucky, restore) functionality, Apple finally realises to supply it with the OS?
Big whoop.
MS versioning.
Runs on local machine by accessing properties. MS mentions it in a blog somewhere.
Apple versioning.
Needs a second volume to run on; Apple holds a press conference.
So far Leopard doesn’t have anything really compelling over Tiger or Vista, since I can buy a cheaper (and probably more reliable) solution from a third party. All I’ll be missing is the ‘time warp’ effect that Jobs used to wow the faithful. This ‘big surprise’ Jobs eluded to, had better be spectacular.
Edited 2006-10-14 06:46
MS versioning.
Runs on local machine by accessing properties. MS mentions it in a blog somewhere.
So, is your mom or dad capable of using it? Time Machine looks to me to be made so anyone can use it. That’s really the core difference between Apple and everyone else. Everyone can make features, but Apple can help getting your mom or dad to use them. Power to parents everywhere! 🙂
Oh, by the way, Time Machine backups are also searchable with Spotlight.
It’s not $99 a year. Panther was October 2003, Tiger in April 2005, and Leopard around January 2007. That is anything but ‘$99 a year’.
What’s more, the cost of OS X has been decreasing because of inflation raising.
I bet you’re going to enjoy having to be forced to buy a Vista Business / Ultimate disc because the home/premium versions are so crippled. A cool $199.95 upgrade only, or $299.00 to actually ‘own’ the disc.
and to paraphrase you…
So far Vista doesn’t have anything compelling over Tiger or Leopard.
So after years of forcing users to pay $99 per year to backup (and if you’re lucky, restore) functionality, Apple finally realises to supply it with the OS?
MS versioning.
Runs on local machine by accessing properties. MS mentions it in a blog somewhere.
Apple versioning.
Needs a second volume to run on; Apple holds a press conference.
It makes sense to do versioning on a second disk. This way it is an actual backup. Anything on the same physical disk can, and probably will, get fubar’ed when things go wrong.
Sensible, though less convenient.
I’m a little curious about what exactly you’re expecting. Leopard will be released a year and a half after Tiger. It’s probably quite unreasonable to expect a similar magnitude of changes between Tiger and Leopard as between XP and Vista. This is especially true if you consider that Vista is a major shakeup release (big new UI features) for Windows, while OS X 10.0 was the major shakeup release for MacOS.
By the looks of it, Leopard is a bigger, better, faster Tiger. There are a few major user-visible changes, namely Spaces and Time Machine (which are non-trivial, the utility of these features is entirely a function of how good the UI for them is), and a lot of under-the-hood and developer-oriented improvements: 64-bit support, vastly improved Spotlight performance, Objective-C 2.0, XCode 3.0, Xray (which looks awesome), much-improved OpenGL stack (with the first and probably not last use of LLVM in OS X), etc. In addition to these, there is still probably at least a couple of major features that haven’t been announced yet, if history is any guide.
Considering that the time gap between Tiger and Leopard is less than the gap between Service Packs 1 and 2 for XP, that’s a pretty substantial list of improvements.
they’d make OS X installable on PCs.
they’d make OS X installable on PCs.
It has nothing to do with “balls”. Apple is a hardware vendor and it makes no business sense to cripple that. Plus, it would put them in the Windows quandary.. trying to support every legacy ISA card out there. While it is admirable that MS tries to do this, you need to draw the line and say we’re no longer supporting your 10 year old 3Com NIC. Apple would get all kinds of criticism from the guy who bought the $29.95 eMachines from Wal-Mart who wants to have everything supported under OS X. Forget it.
yea…;one of these days, Librals and Windows Dorks will finally understand economics!!!!
It’s not $99 a year. Panther was October 2003, Tiger in April 2005, and Leopard around January 2007. That is anything but ‘$99 a year’.
Lamest rebuttal ever seen on osnews. I don’t care one way or the other, but if you want to refute the original poster’s claim, you’d have to do better than that. You just confirmed his ballpark statement that Apple releases a new OS X version every year – a few months don’t change the truthfulness of it at all.
Your comment on inflation just aggravates the lameness even further.
Edited 2006-10-14 08:12
Erhm, October 2003 – April 2005 is 17 months and April 2005 – Januaray 2007 is 21 months. Considering that I bought a Mac when Tiger came out, I’ve not as of yet even had to purchase OS X. And when Leopard comes out, it would have been nearly two years since the previous verison. You know, like Windows used to be before Vista?
I’m even more convinced of what I wrote, now that you modded my comment down.
Strange that by the end of the 2006, before the release of Leopard or Vista, pretty well every major Linux distro will have some form of “3D desktop bling”, which equals or exceeds the bling in Leopard/Vista. So surely it’s Linux that’s “beaten” the two commercial desktop PC environments?
Ah, but you don’t understand… If Windows doesn’t have that feature, it’s not important. If Windows DOES have the feature then why bother switching? Who cares if the competitors have had it for ages and/or theirs works better?
(I recall an argument about… I think it was Spotlight, saying that while Apple had it shipped first, Microsoft had ‘legitimized the technology’ by talking about it)
Yay marketing.
The level of “3D desktop bling” Linux distros will have with XGLX/AIGLX is about at the level of OS X 10.2 (circa 2002). Ie: accelerated compositing, but not accelerated rendering. And both systems are basically enormous hacks, with XGLX being the bigger hack of the two.
The hacks are enough for some interesting demos, but they’re not long-term solutions. XGL won’t be adequate until Xegl makes some progress, and it can run stand-alone. AIGLX won’t be adequate until Gluecose is integrated, and it can accelerate RENDER. Then the DRI needs to be improved, to have better memory management and better handle concurrent rendering clients. Then the whole stack must be rationalized, to make sure that toolkit redraw and resizing synchronizes properly with the composite manager’s double-buffering, which interacts properly with the DRI’s memory management.
These things will bring the systems to about the level of OS X Tiger. At that point, Leopard and Vista will still have the advantage, because they’ll allow full use of the GPU for 2D acceleration, including the use of shaders in things like CoreImage/CoreVideo. Until RENDER is replaced, X GUIs will not be on the same level.
The level of “3D desktop bling” Linux distros will have with XGLX/AIGLX is about at the level of OS X 10.2 (circa 2002). Ie: accelerated compositing, but not accelerated rendering.
XGLX does accelerated rendering of Compose and Render operations; Gluecose is about providing that also for the regular Xorg server.
Also, AFAIK accellerated rendering is still disabled by default in Mac OS X.
XGL does not fully accelerate RENDER in hardware. Essentially, it still rasterizes polygons in software, then uses the GPU to do compositing. The reason behind this is that if you’re rasterizing polygons with the GPU*, you’ve got to depend on the FSAA in the graphics card for anti-aliasing. 4x MSAA looks like crap: http://www.beyond3d.com/articles/wildcatiii/index.php?page=page4.in…, and even 16x MSAA uses only 16 gray levels, far less than the 256 gray levels used by Cairo’s software rendering.
As for Gluecose, I highly doubt it’ll be production quality by the end of the year. Hence my statement that by the end of the year, XGL and AIGLX will be feature-comparable to OS X 10.2 (and 10.4, which is the same). The implementation, however, will still not be nearly as good, for the aforementioned reasons.
*) Microsoft uses a new technique in Vista that evaluates Bezier curves directly in a pixel shader. The pixel shader applies a high-quality edge anti-aliasing algorithm directly, independent of the full-scene anti-aliasing. This technique can’t be applied directly in XGL, because RENDER doesn’t know about Bezier curves (tesselation happens before the geometry gets to RENDER). It can probably be extended to evaluate polygons instead, but that probably won’t look as good, or perform as well.
Strange that by the end of the 2006, before the release of Leopard or Vista, pretty well every major Linux distro will have some form of “3D desktop bling”, which equals or exceeds the bling in Leopard/Vista. So surely it’s Linux that’s “beaten” the two commercial desktop PC environments?
This is not true because you have multiple UIs going in multiple directions. Until the Linux UI unifies and works together you will always have a 2nd rate user experience.
Hey, just because Microsoft can’t make a fast release with all intended features, doesn’t mean _Apple_ can’t.
I’m running Tiger and I think it was a good upgrade from the previous version. Especially with Spotlight and Automator. The widgets are useful too. I also like Expose and the things there were previously in Mac OS X. I wish Windows XP ran as smooth as Tiger.
It seems to me that it would actually be to Apples advantage to release Leopard after Vista and to spend that time making sure that it was as finished and polished as possible. The reason I say that is because I know people who are on the Vista beta test and have been since it started. (Not the public bata). The consensus among them seems to be that Vista is being rushed to make a January release date.
So the scenario seems to be Vista is released in the usual MS style with a lot of minor and a few major bugs to be worked out with a speedy service pack release in the spring. In the meantime, Apple finishes polishing up Leopard and working out most of the bugs before release. MS gets a lot of criticism for releasing Vista before it is ready and then Leopard comes out looking extremely good. Talk about PR value…
Anyway, I would rather Leopard come out a bit later and with no show stopper bugs. Most Windows users aren’t going to change even if Vista turns out to be another Windows ME. People just don’t like change, even when it is better for them.
Leopard looks nearly identical to what was released in 2001. The same blue and brushed steel theme, dock, and top taskbar. It seems most of the improvements focus on applications like Spotlight, Mail, iChat, Dashboard and Time Machine.
OS X was ground breaking in 2001 but now looks very old and wrinkled. I believe it needs some serious asthetic overhaul to stand out again. To be fair, Windows had a legacy 9x look for years but at least it changed in XP and now Vista.
Maybe I’m just spoiled with KDE and it’s near infinite customability. The default KDE 4 is bound to give both Aero and Aqua a big run for their money.
Edited 2006-10-14 19:48
it must be all in your head, Leaoperd look different to me then the 2001 release of OS X.
Leopard looks nearly identical to what was released in 2001.
Of course it does (I assume, you’ve never seen anything but screenshots of OSX, yes they look a lot alike). That’s the beauty of it: Not much reason to change if things aren’t broken, right?
Not like when Microsoft likes to remodel the Control Panel by every release, completely rearrange the start menu or the network preferences or when KDE needs to overhaul the GUI by every release, because the last designed-by-commitee control panel wasn’t good enough again.
Try doing phone or chat support on someone who uses different versions of KDE or Gnome adapted to different distributions.
OSX is so nicely predictable in that respect. Apple can focus on polish and getting things just right rather than redesigning things all over again.
Edited 2006-10-14 21:30
Why should Apple be any way concerned about getting Leopard out before Vista? It also does not matter to the average Windows user since it is not like they have a choice of running either Leopard or Vista on their computer. It only matters to those who are going to purchase a new computer. And I don’t think there is going to be a huge rush of Windows users suddenly deciding to toss away their computer and fork over their hard earned money on a new computer just to run Leopard.
“Oh, the new Mac-OS came out two days before Vista. I guess I better throw away all of my windows stuff, and run to the store and buy all the Mac Stuff I can.”
Yeah right. This is how it works in the real world:
1) Very few people plan to buy Vista the day it comes out. In fact most people will probably wait years. Note: it took nearly 3 years for XP to replace 98 as the most popular OS, and a lot of people still use 98, 2000, or even NT 4.0.
2) It will take a helluva lot more than that to get PC users to switch to a Mac. Look, I don’t hate Macs at all, but I can promise you that most windows users are not even aware of new releases of Mac-OS. All of their apps and hardware are made for windows, plus they know how to use windows. It would take a helluva lot to get most windows users to switch. A new Mac-OS coming out doesn’t mean a damn thing to most windows users.
I think a lot more Windows users are aware of OSX than you think. Certainly there isn’t going to be a mass exodus to OSX, but there doesn’t have to be. At this point there is growing and vocal dissatisfaction with Windows. The number of articles in the PC press is growing decrying Windows and all of it’s problems.
If there is even a 3% increase in market share (reflecting sales) over the next year and a half there will be a growing realization among the mainstream PC using public that there is an alternative to Windows and it is a computer that allows them to run OSX AND Windows AND Linux.