Leopard delayed until October...

http://www.apple.com/hotnews/

This sucks because I just bought a mbp a few weeks ago and was excited to use leopard...

BUT after all Steve's onstage crap about Vista delays... Hey Steve, how does the crow taste?

Thought they had just said it was on track? or was that "it's not off track because of Vista... but it is off track"

I'm writing a lot of emo poetry right now.

Taking engineers off the Leopard team for the iPhone? That seems like a bad call.

stevo_ wrote:

Thought they had just said it was on track? or was that "it's not off track because of Vista... but it is off track"

I'm not sure about this.  I remember hearing alot of buzz about Apple being on track, when it was questioned, but I think that was media outlets and speculation, I don't remember ever reading where Apple has actually commented on it.

What I wonder is, how long Apple knew this was most likely going to happen.  They didn't talk about it AT ALL at Macworld, I'm wondering if they knew then that they wouldn't hit their date.

TimWoodland wrote:

BUT after all Steve's onstage crap about Vista delays... Hey Steve, how does the crow taste?

I think I heard him mention 'tastes like chicken'

Also, this has a lot of potential for sarcastic Mac ad spoofs.

My guess:

Apple needs the extra time to add more DRM into Leopard so that it becomes harder to install on non-Apple PCs.

My Guess: A few extra months for an OS that won't need patching 10 seconds after you install it is a good thing. And at the very least, it's better than a 3 year delay :O

Bas wrote:

Taking engineers off the Leopard team for the iPhone? That seems like a bad call.

I don't think so. Problem is deeper. Something is definately wrong with software development. Globally wrong. Too much tools, too much theoretical(!) development methodologies written by different... guys, too much "books of knowledge", too much promises, underestimated resources, overestimated resources and TOO MUCH MANAGERS. Just compare software with normal factory - factory has A LOT of workers and quite small number of "managers", but "software factory" has HUGE number of managers and quite small number of actual developers. It's just wrong.

Also, remember Tower of Babylon - it's impossible to grow infinitely. Everyone and everything has own limits in this world.

We have to go back for 10-15 years and start everything over again, because we've chosen wrong way.

I think the sad truth is that anyone who wants Leopard will be willing to wait, Apple has a very loyal fan base in its users, they could delay it till Jan and I don't think they'll lose many users.

The iPhone however, that's like the iPod, it's not got the loyal fan base, it's a fashion icon, all the kiddies will rush out to buy one because it's sleek and sexy, the sooner they get that out the better.

the-laughing-man wrote:

 I think the sad truth is that anyone who wants Leopard will be willing to wait, Apple has a very loyal fan base in its users, they could delay it till Jan and I don't think they'll lose many users.

I don't know if I'd call that sad. OEMs would pre-load Vista no matter how incomplete or delayed it was. In the grand scheme, as users discard their XP machines and buy Vista machines, there will be more copies of Vista in use than XP.

theshadguy wrote:

My Guess: A few extra months for an OS that won't need patching 10 seconds after you install it is a good thing. And at the very least, it's better than a 3 year delay :O

Well, Vista was delayed because what they had three years ago was such a mess, they couldn't carry on. So huge swathes of it had to be re-written.

Looking at the notes on their site, Leopard doesn't look like its anywhere as near much work, so I'm surprised that they have to delay it all.

What should be concerning developers though, is how they went about announcing the delay. Rather than say something like:

'We delayed it because we need more time to complete the new whiz bang features'

they said

'We're delaying it because the phone is more important'

Which, aside from being a pointer to where Apple's future lies, makes me wonder if there is anything really compelling coming along in Leopard after all.

@DCMonkey


Love the picture ....

BlackTiger wrote:



Bas wrote:Taking engineers off the Leopard team for the iPhone? That seems like a bad call.

I don't think so. Problem is deeper. Something is definately wrong with software development. Globally wrong. Too much tools, too much theoretical(!) development methodologies written by different... guys, too much "books of knowledge", too much promises, underestimated resources, overestimated resources and TOO MUCH MANAGERS. Just compare software with normal factory - factory has A LOT of workers and quite small number of "managers", but "software factory" has HUGE number of managers and quite small number of actual developers. It's just wrong.

Also, remember Tower of Babylon - it's impossible to grow infinitely. Everyone and everything has own limits in this world.

We have to go back for 10-15 years and start everything over again, because we've chosen wrong way.

You're right.

Two men and one book on assembler ... it's the future. I've seen it.

Take your point though; I would cite Vista as an example, but I don't really want to be one of those people who speculates what went wrong without really having a clue what I'm talking about.

BlackTiger wrote:


Also, remember Tower of Babylon - it's impossible to grow infinitely. Everyone and everything has own limits in this world.

Including Apple's workforce which is a tenth of that at Microsoft, that isn't an excuse that will make me go lightly on Apple.  A company that promises only what it can deliver, and it has promised something that it can't (although stuff from Apple is rarely actually on time).

I am very, very disappointed, I can understand the one delay, they've obviously bitten off more than they can chew in terms of the number of products they are shipping this year - I can wait until October (I have to wait until Nov for the phone anyway), but delays after that are most definitely *not* going to be welcome.

I better be getting the minor releases in the meantime though, although I always worried that things might be going wrong when they got to 10.4.10

This doesn't surprise me. Apple is scrambling to implement as many facets of the latest Vista UI into their product. It's sad because this has been going on for decades now.

Anybody remember the first Macs that came out? They had blatent UI knockoffs of Windows. The first time I saw it, I thought "been there, done that".