Mac OS X Mountain Lion release signals shift in secrecy at Apple - Page 2

Instead of the iPod, it's the iPhone and iPad. But the end goal is still the same: Sell Macs to new iOS users, bring them into the fold as well.

Not so sure about borrowing the idea from Microsoft. I'm not sure Microsoft actually give press early information, it's more the case that they make everything really public. For instance I don't think there's actually been a proper press event for windows 8 yet. The presentations so far have been for partners and the preview is really just for anyone interested. Most of the information sites are reporting is coming from the developing windows 8 blog, and if you actually read it, its more for people that wet themselves finding out how Microsoft built special racks to easily test hundreds of tablet processors.

Microsoft may actually do a lot better if they kill off all the sites that give insights into what there working on and spend more time promoting what they've currently got. E.g. The office team made a video of there vision of the future, but most of the tech could have actually been replaced with current products. So instead of people watching it and thinking it was cool, people could watch it and then actually buy something.

Four months from now would be mid June. The release is supposed to be "late summer" which would probably be August.

NOT to mention the fact that the Mac still is (and hopefully will stay) a full-fledged computer that can basically perform any system management task, has a real file system and allows advanced users to deeply understand what they're doing instead of being pampered in ignorance.

You want to know why? This is why:

http://www.macrumors.com/2012/02/16/...most-30-years/

Apple sold more iOS devices this year than the entirety of cumulative mac sales since 1984. Think about that for a second. More iOS devices in 1 year than 30 years of mac sales.

In light of this, can you fault them for prioritizing iOS? I can't. It's what the majority of people using an Apple product today are using.

The irony is that prioritizing iOS is what they did in the past when they delayed Leopard. This is the opposite of that. This is pushing out a Beta for 10.8 6 months after 10.7 when live and saying that 10.8 will go live in about 6 months. This is a commitment to yearly updates to OS X. This is an attempt to make the Mac more familiar to get even more people on Mac which will increase adoption which could expand the line and possibly lower the price due to economics of scale. There is nothing bad to be had from today's announcements just people who were reminded that they haven't been pointlessly complaining about the Mac enough lately.

I completely agree with you, and think that 10.8 shows Apple's commitment to OSX. I was pointing out that IF Apple slightly favors iOS development (which some here are incensed by the mere possibility that this is the case), they are completely justified in doing so. Apple has a real chance to dominate the smartphone and tablet industries for a long time if they play their cards right. And if they ever get to a position where they can also dominate the PC space (which I can see happening within 10 years or less) this will be on the strengths of the iOS platforms, both in the halo effect that the synergy and new users that they bring to OSX who are using these iOS products. The record breaking sales of Macs is directly related to the increased attention the products have gotten by iOS users. Apple would be smart to continue exploiting and leveraging this- and they are.

What about a 64-bit, all-Cocoa, ground-up rewrite of iTunes?

I think that's done as of iTunes 10.

Then why do I get this vague feeling that there's something about iTunes 10 that doesn't fit that bill yet I could have sworn reading something that showed we didn't have a fully 64-bit, fully Cocoa, fully re-written version of iTunes yet. I remember commenting that we'll just have to wait for iTunes XI

I hate this so much. Worthless memory. I probably have Alzheimer's. No joke. I know it's not supposed to hit this young, but it's not unheard of

Oh, there's also one more point I have against iTunes 10 being what everyone actually wanted: I only did this recent clean install of mine because I was an idiot and used Monolingual (instead of XSlimmer) to remove architectures from my applications. It killed the applications on my computer that, you know, were needed for the computer to actually run properly.

Apparently slimming out everything but the "Intel" and "Intel 64-bit" options doesn't work, despite no older code being allowed to run in Lion.

Finder refused to launch. The OS did manage to launch around it, though. Safari was fine, but iChat didn't work. Nor did any of the iLife or iWork applications, I don't believe; can't remember. And iTunes? Didn't launch either. So that leads me to believe there's some old code still in there, meaning it's not a full rewrite.

Of course, anyone who has used iTunes for under a minute can tell you it's full of old code. Stupid thing is so bloated and slow anymore We really need a full redesign, as well as a rewrite.

It is not a shift in secrecy. Leopard was announced long before it was out. Snow Leopard was announced too. Lion was announced half a year before being out. It was always like this for any version of OS X. There is no change.

Pretty much. They told them about it a few days in advance and made them wait until the day they were going to launch it to the developers who would have leaked it out anyway as they have over and over in the past few years.

Apple doesn't like anyone to trump them on giving out information so they arranged that they still were the ones to control what got out to the public while at the same time wanting more 3rd party apps to be ready for ML when it launches with fewer bugs so they wanted to give more time to get things in order while targeting the anniversary of Lion as a release date (give or take).

Makes total sense.



Or neither. They appear to be shifting to smaller steps on a yearly basis than waiting 2-3 years for a huge pack of stuff for folks to learn.

That kind of shift can be done by the same crew of folks.


It's a developer's conference. Who says they will continue to do a media keynote at all. Perhaps they won't and the preview of iOS 6 will simply be posted to the site just as this one was.

If anything this experiment shows that they don't need a keynote to get the media to talk about them. The same number of sites etc have posted and reposted what they were given without the time and expense of going to wherever to get the info.