Mainly Macintosh

Apple Mac OS X - Leopard landing in Spring 2007

Apple revealed a bunch of features of Leopard to developers at WWDC, and they have followed up by telling the public what a lot of those features are too.

None of them seemed particularly earth-shaking. It sounds like Apple is holding back even more information than usual though, as they say a certain OS company has been copying their ideas and they do not want to make it easy for those guys to do so. So the lack of wow this time might be due to the fact that the really wow stuff will not be announced until the OS is almost shipping.

That brings up something that was a big surprise to me. I was figuring based in part on past OS product cycles, that Apple would realease Leopard around the turn of 2006/2007.

Not so. Apple's public page for Leopard says tat the bottom that the product will be available in Spring 2007. Tiger shipped in April 2005. Apparently, they have extended their OS delivery cycles to a full two years. Until now, I think their median was around a year and a half.
Apple - Apple - Mac OS X - Leopard Sneak Peek:

All these features and more are delivered to you in one universal, fully accessible, 64-bit operating system. Coming spring 2007.

Oh, well. I guess now that the conversion of Macintosh computers to Intel processors is complete, there is no reason to wait until Leopard comes out to buy a Mac. The new OS product is not just around the corner. It is at least half a year away, maybe more.

For the rest of this year and perhaps almost half of the next, Tiger rules the jungle.

posted by John Collins @ 12:47 PM