{"id":774,"date":"2007-04-19T16:18:03","date_gmt":"2007-04-19T15:18:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/2007\/04\/has-the-leopard-lost-its-spots.htm"},"modified":"2007-04-20T07:44:40","modified_gmt":"2007-04-20T06:44:40","slug":"has-the-leopard-lost-its-spots","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/2007\/04\/has-the-leopard-lost-its-spots.htm","title":{"rendered":"Has the Leopard lost it’s spots?"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you read many Apple or Mac OS X forums, magazines or listen to Mac-related podcasts, soon enough you’ll come across a comment about how Windows Vista was late to market, only just competes with Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) and how OS X 10.5 (Leopard) will rewrite history and further boost Apple’s growth. Some of the podcasts I listen to even expected Apple to release Leopard at MacWorld in January and therefore beat Vista to market. Well, Leopard wasn’t ready at MacWorld (why would Apple rush it to market just to “beat Microsoft”, especially as Vista was already available to Microsoft’s business customers at that time?) – all Apple announced at MacWorld 2007 were some products that weren’t ready yet<\/a> (although the Apple TV<\/a> and AirPort Extreme<\/a> have since begun shipping).<\/p>\n

For a while now, Apple has said that Leopard will arrive in the spring 2007. Well, spring is here, and there is no sign of Leopard but when exactly does spring end? I could be generous and assume that the second quarter of the year counts as spring and maybe Leopard, iLife, iPhone, a new iSight camera and updates to the Macintosh and iPod product lines will be launched at Apple’s worldwide developer conference in June. Nope. Leopard will be late<\/a>. Except in the southern hemisphere, where it will<\/em> be spring in October. Yes, October. Now, I’m no Microsoft apologist (although some of my friends may disagree) but I do feel an element of smugness here as the same Apple fanboys who poured scorn on Windows Vista weep while they have to wait until the autumn (at least) for a new version of OS X.<\/p>\n

To Apple: shame on you. I’m not sure whether to be more annoyed that you dropped the ball and let down your existing customer base in order to enter the highly-competitive smartphone market with an unproven product or that you are hiding behind the development of the iPhone in a crude attempt to mask the hypocrisy of criticising Microsoft’s incessant delays on Vista then delaying your own operating system update<\/a>.<\/p>\n

100 million iPod sales<\/a> is a fantastic achievement, as is the resurgence in Apple’s computer sales but, by introducing uncertainty into the market, delaying releases of Mac-related products and failing to ship a new generation of iPods in order to follow a dream of becoming a consumer electronics giant, Apple risks losing it all. If they don’t get their act together soon then the winners will be Microsoft (PC operating systems), Nokia (phones) and Sony (consumer electronics).<\/p>\n

Even before Apple announced that Leopard would not ship until October<\/a>, there were rumours that all is not well in Cupertino – in TWiT episode 94<\/a> it was even suggested that the reason for the delays is not actually a lack of resources but actually because Steve Jobs is personally involved in so many of the decisions at Apple and only has limited time himself. An interesting theory (there were others too that I hold less credence in).<\/p>\n

From a personal perspective, I’ve been considering a new Mac purchase and was looking at Leopard to see if it’s worth waiting for – even before this announcement I’d been preparing to blog about Leopard because my conclusion is that it’s probably not worth the wait. It looks to have some nice features but it doesn’t seem to offer much at all that’s ground breaking and I very much doubt that it can live up to Apple’s claims of “advancing the world’s most advanced operating system”. Now, before I get flamed, I’ll set out why I don’t see what the fuss is about, based on the Leopard Sneak Peek on the Apple website<\/a>:<\/p>\n