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Yesterday I started noticing the flood of articles coming up posting about Apple delaying the release of Leopard until October. Then I noticed that on one particular site (I think it's Macworld...), there were literally hundreds of comments on the article, with a lot of people claiming that Apple was no longer a computer company and that they weren't going to be making good stuff any more, blah blah BLAH.
When I read that Apple was going to be delaying Leopard, I felt two ways:
Inside: Waaaaa!! *sucks thumb*
Outside: Meh.
Here's my take on this situation, feel free to do with it what you will:
We all know that Apple operates in a fundamentally different manner than Microsoft. They have a smaller number of incredibly skilled people who do absolutely amazing things for OS X. Microsoft's approach is to throw 20,000 cheap programmers at a project and attempt to manage that project with a handful of really skilled developers and managers. As a result, Apple can consistently turn out new product rapidly whereas Microsoft took 7 years to release Vista.
For me, its not that big of a deal because I'm already using Leopard (burning the new seed image to a DL DVD right now, actually...). But let's try and look at it from Apple's point of view, because I have a theory. Let's say you are a computer manufacturer, and you've just recently sold 100 million iPods. Now, you're about to enter yet another device market, and for the most part, people think you're going to make a huge splash in that market. The iPods didn't really have an impact on your Macintosh sales (not so far as I can see, statistically).
You're about to release Leopard, rumors abound that there are "secret" features in Leopard that the beta testers have not yet seen. What if, just what if, the resources being moved to the iPhone were also working on some absolutely stunning integration features with Leopard. In short, what if the entire experience of using an iPhone was made mind-blowing if you happened to be running OS X Leopard?
I think its a smart move. There are FCC regulations to deal with, contracts with Cingular to deal with, and a whole lot of other things that can go horribly wrong if they screw up the iPhone, but not much bad is going to happen if they delay Leopard by a few months. Keep in mind that they're not delaying it to the developers who need to write their apps on it, they're just delaying the public release. Tiger is already a kick-ass operating system, and if my hunch is right, Apple is going to drop some of those "secret" features into the WWDC build of Leopard and let developers salivate over that for the next few months and create more hype around the product's release as a result.
One other thing Apple could do to make the whole iPhone experience better is to drop an SDK for it at WWDC to all the attendees. In my opinion, that would radically increase the viability of that phone long term, but I won't get my hopes up for that one.
I imagine there's also a little about the overall PR they might want to
consider. Release the phone and Leopard at the same time and something
tells me they won't be getting equal coverage. Separate it by a little bit
and you get two big media hits rather than one.
Totally agree. Release the phone, get hundreds of thousands of people
excited about a new Apple device, then release a breakthrough new version
of OS X that comes with iLife, iWork (rumors), and comes with iPhone
integration out of the box...
That's the thing that does interest me though. What will happen to iWork
and iLife? I know they're both pretty good at the moment, but it just
doesn't seem quite right to keep selling something labeled as 2006 right up
until October 2007.
True, but they might be risking pissing off a lot of users if they roll
iLife and iWork to 2007, get a bunch of people to buy it, and then announce
that its included in the OS for free.
I'd disagree that ipods haven't been selling macs. I think a huge reason
that mac sales have been growing well is due to ipod.
You're right, there is a secondary effect of having to walk past the Macs
to get to the iPods (very strategically placed, IMHO). I am also less
concerned about the phone itself. I am far more eager to see how many more
people will become Mac owners after getting a little taste of "Mac-ness"
from interacting with their new phones.
I’m not convinced that they would give iWork and iTools free with the OS.
iTools has been charged upgrade just for a few years and I gather it
generates rather nice revenue stream. I don’t really see the logic behind
this rumor.
