Top secret features suspect in Apple's Leopard delay - Page 2

Funny, donebylee.


Daffy Gates and Elmer Ballmer chasing Jobs Bunny.


"Nyaaah, there is one more thing, Doc."

(unable to spell carrot munching sounds)

My dearest Solipsism,

2007 has started with a big delirious iPhone bang and a big implosion of Leopard disbelief only a few months later. While I am amused to read about the 300+ passionate outcries of the allready infamous AI October Leopard delay post, I do admit Apple has lost me as well with their 2007 strategy so far:


1- I don't think the iPhone would create more revenue than a widescreen iPod with touchscreen would've done. Remember, it's the early adapters who are gonna pay for the iPhone! Most people are gonna wait when the next iPhone is gonna be released. The widescreen iPod would've been easier to attract people that yet have to discover the magic of OSX. I, for one was not too happy with the sudden iPhone bang!

2- Both products, the iPhone and aTV are solely focused on the USA. The aTV is a dead ender in Europe as the iTunes movie flicks are USA only. And the iPhone is not gonna be released in Europe until October (Leopard time). I also don't understand why both products were being revealed in advance. It's so un-Apple like


As to my confusion:
Why didn't they release the widescreen iPod in January 2007? The iPod interface would've been easier to figure out so they could've kept their focus on the beast (Leopard).

As a self proclaimed Apple CEO (with a BA in design products ) I would've preferred a worldwide 3G iPhone release in January 2008! Leopard would've been a few months around and its operational mode would have been as smooth & soft as a baby's belly!

And when dealing with someone who'll just call people "idiots" because he "knows" all that's coming up in Leopard and anyone who doesn't appreciate that its the greatest thing since sliced bread, you automatically know you're dealing with a jackass.

Did it ever occur to you that people may be ignorant of the facts (which you apparently have all that wonderful inside information of), rather then just being clueless dimwits with an IQ of 6?


That is just plain stupid talk (wait, maybe I'm talking to the idiot). Why in the hell would Apple want to make their new OS look so boring and superficially improved? So everyone, like myself, go "Meh! Look what's coming up. Talk about a yawner. Wake me for OS 11". Just what you want to do, make most of your customers think there's no reason for them to even look forward to your new grand OS, with just the hauty 'mac-intelectuals' who spend time trying to figure out all that's great underneath.

I'm sure glad YOU'RE not running Apple. With that thinking, Apple should have just shown off the iPhone's ipodscapabilities, mentioned Leopard was underneath, and leave it to everyone to try to determine what else it could do.


Well, they'll understand it if they think its a benefit. I've never found it as some major computing-changing ability. But that's just me.

But maybe you missed the Tiger pimping apple did. They actually did pimp Expose, not your little "scaling of the UI" stuff. I guess that's why Tiger's such a flop? Too many lemmings understood the feature, and didn't leave it to those who want to dig?


Great. So now you're saying that Leopard is basically one giant $150 bug fix? Wonderful, everyone just loves paying a company just to fix the problems that shouldn't have been there in the first place!

But, most of all, why don't you grace us with your knowledge and wisdom and tell us idiots what these ramifications are that will explode upon us with Leopard (and you better be talking leopard, because why in the hell would anyone buy leopard if all it does is provide some underpinnings that apple might use in some future OS version, you might as well wait for that future version). Oh, and no suppositions, assumptions, or guesses, since saying "Well, Core Animation would allow them to do x, y, and z" is great, but that doesn't mean Leopard will have x, y, or z.)

Gee, Louzer, chill. He wasn't calling you out personally.

And he very specifically said "people who say there's not much to Leopard" without any context are idiots.

That's not belittling people who don't know, or who aren't developers, or don't have a grasp of the nuts and bolts of OS design, it's an observation about someone who would be so assertive without having any idea what's going on.

I feel the same way about anyone who is claiming the iPhone is a nonstarter because it doesn't do anything that cheaper phones do already, or who claim that the lack of one feature or another cripples it and dooms it to failure.

It just doesn't make any sense to go there when you don't have much info.

I've neither the time, inclination nor patience to deal with idiocy. Context is very important because speaking in absolutes almost invariably means the statement is coming from a base of idiocy. Hence commentary like 'Leopard doesn't seem to be a big update from Tiger" doesn't stand on its own. It's almost like an incomplete sentence. The reader gains little from such comment without context or qualifier. I like my positions to have the appropriate context or qualifiers because that shows a bit more thought into why I make the statements that I do. I'm well aware that this makes me jackass from within the context of my communications regarding computers.


Of course. I'm not an idiot. However there's a difference from making a definitive statement and and inquiry. If you make a definitive statement that someone disagree with they will likely refute your statement. They're not attacking your personality they are attacking your argument. I've made plenty of idiotic arguments (check the HD DVD vs Blu-ray thread for more) and thus when I descend into idiocy I realize it's a natural human condition. I try not to display it often though.


Could be an infinite amount of reasons I suppose. One could be this. If you're Apple you know that you only need "spark" the idea in a developer and let them run with it. Photobooth was one of the first demos of Core Image applied in realt time to images which in turn could have inspired Andrew Stone to create Imaginator a much beefier application using Core Image. The consumer could have looked at Photobooth as a simple toy but the developer saw it for what it could truly become. I'm not a haughty Mac intellectual. I do tend to have an active imagination about computing products that gets me into trouble at times admittedly. I dunno...I guess if given the choice between the reviewer that says "meh" when confronted with new technolgoy or the wide eyed excited person I'm more inclined to listen to the latter.


Consumer understand when they "see" the technology working or when they use the technology. Until then it's just technobabble to many. I was here when Tiger was announced. Many people said the same thing I read about Leopard. "Meh...I'd never use that" and some don't use it. But there were so many more features that they all enjoyed that they didn't have a clue about because it was "behind the scenes stuff". That's fair...they don't have to recognize every little change.


Yup a bunch of new features and bug fixes. Every application on the planet is Beta if it's still evolving. My opinion of course I think we pay for the evolution of the OS and of course a batch bug fix. I see nothing wrong with that.

Well I don't know what you guys like but some of the stuff I'm partial to are these features.

Fully accelerated GUI- Windows, compositing of elements and UI rendering is all GPU accelerated on its own dedicated thread. This could elicit a "Wow great I love responsive GUI" or a "Meh...I'm happy with Tiger" depending on the person. Geeks- OpenGL 2.1 with GSlang shaders are now available.

10x speed improvement in Core Data- Doesn't sound that sexy but if you use a Core Data app the speed increase will be apparent. Aperture users rejoice this and RAW support in Leopard Core Image will ease those speed concerns you have. Geeks before if you changed your Core Data schema you had to hand migrate over your data. Now that's done for you.

Productivity users - Tiger iCal data was read only. Sync services barely worked. Leopard has Calendar Store, ehanced AddressBook and improved Sync Service. Now 3rd party apps will retrieve and be able to write to AB or iCal. No more double entry or bugs is the goal. With iPhone this is huge. Geeks Core Text is ready faster text rendering easier development.

Media- - QTKit replace legacy Quicktime API. Faster encoding (iMovie users will be thankful) multiple outputs, recording from two different sources. Better browser integration.

Ahh I won't bore you. There's something for everyone. In hindsight my denigration of those who don't know as "idiots" is wrong. It's not idiocy but rather ignorance. One can quickly leave the realm of ignorance in the presence of new knowledge but idiocy is more likely to though of as innate and immutable. You were totally right to call me out on that Louzer. I was ignorant.

Cheers

Whether the iPhone has anything to do with this delay or not is irrelevant.

Personally I think the bigger reasons for this delay are a new Core Animation iPhone-like Finder, a completely new user interface and a fully bootable and stable from the ground up ZFS OS X. That and the fact that the new iLife and iWork which will have Core Animation all over the place, and will be part of the OS. Now stick that in your pipes and smoke it!!

Intel vs. AMD:
It's no argument that Intel's notebook offerings are much better than AMDs. Plus, I doubt AMD could keep up with Apple's demands for newer chips the way Intel has. Supply is also another speculated reason.

OS X on Apple branded Intel chips /= OS X to other OEMs hardware:
I can't even fathom how you get from point A to B. You admit that "Apple purposely, through hardware and software, disallows users from installing the Intel version of OSX on non-Apple hardware", yet you think the move to Intel was because they want their OS running on generic x86 HW, and not because the PPC path was a competitive dead-end?

It's pure lunacy to think Apple would dismantle it's own hardware division just to work 10x as hard on OS X trying to support the vast range of possible hardware options available. Apple has had many offers by OEMs to get OS X as they want to break free of MS' hold. Yet, despite the poor state Apple was in they refused these offers and after the Mac has gained unparalleled success and momentum, and is probably had the best selling higher-end notebook of any manufacture, you think they will just give that up because the iPod is generating more income than the Mac? Tell you what, if that comes to pass I'll buy you one of these non-Apple computers running OS X.

RedBox? Is that the project name?

We need to think outside of the box. First off, no one actually, in bold, said virtualization was going to be in Leopard. In fact, all they said was this: "The sources pointed out that the launch delay is not due to software design problems with Leopard but instead is attributed to Apples plan to have its new OS support Windows Vista through an integrated version of Boot Camp." Lets bold what they actually said here: an integrated version of Boot Camp. This is a feature I have planned in an OS thats been in the making (at least, in my mind) for years. It allows you to play Windows software inside your OS. Thats essentially what virtualization is, right? No. Virtualization lets you run Windows and/or Linux within OS X. What this is talking about is much, much closer to emulation -- which as far as I know, there is no third-party emulation software like Wine for Mac OS X. This way OS X can have ANY software that Windows has and OS X. And with some awesome features such as Core Animation, and the rest of Core features from the earlier OS X versions (not sure how many there are), that should be enough for developers to develop -- and hopefully exclusively -- for OS X.

This wouldn't be an easy thing, and could cause delays. And I am SURE Leopard isn't ONLY this. That would be stupid. But since the rumors are pointing to features I have come up with -- such as built-in office software -- and of course emulation built-in -- then that shows it's possible Apple has come up with more of my ideas.

So let me just shoot one out for you: no drivers needed. Let me bold that for you. No drivers needed. Your saying Apple has already solved that problem with building in drivers, right? Hmmm...thats relaying on third-party developers. What about video cards that aren't supported by Mac OS X? Or Printers thats not supported by OS X? Or, for that, any hardware thats not supported. Instead of having the company who makes the hardware make the driver, why don't we have something like Core Animation that actually CODES the drivers for the hardware? That is something that will be a HUGE thing to over come.

And thats the the tip of the ice burg. The possibilities of OS for the 21st Century is just endless. It's only limited by what you can think and how well you can work. Microsoft could think outside of the box -- they tried WinFX -- but they couldn't do it. I have a feeling there are many, many reasons why Apple didn't tell us what they are working on. Maybe, just maybe, they themselves weren't sure. And instead of doing what Microsoft did, announce something, make everyone excited, they just announced the safe features. The features they know will be there. But, one the ones like the features i described, or maybe something greater -- something that a fellow innovator came up with, and his name is Steve Jobs.

So lets play the wait and see game, like many video game players did with the Wii. The Wii turned out something new and amazing -- and yet, it was revealed in sections. It's nothing new, but it was something that just was never used in the game market.

That all sounds exciting. Hope you are right.

The secret features are more than likely not being mentioned yet because they are not sure they can finish them prior to cutting the umbilical cord.

M$ got a lot of flack and continues to get flack over the many anounced features that they cut out of the OS.

If you don't anounce them, then nobody knows they were cut out. No flack.

It's not at all likely that Apple will release OSX to run on other computers.
Not only for the market reasons listed before, but also because one of the things that
makes OSX great is that it doesn't have to support a gazillion different pieces of hardware
which work and behave very differently, like Windows does.

Granted, hackers have by-passed the locks. But to find what out? That half their hardware
doesn't work. I own a MacMini and some time ago tried OSX on my AMD 64 machine.
Guess what? Ethernet didn't work, sound card didn't work, graphics were far from ideal, etc. etc. etc.

MacLover-BR

This would be very far from being a mind-blowing top secret. Parallels already does this.
I have it working as we speak. The features are very cool: you can run the guest OS windows inside your OSX desktop, you can access the Windows Start Menu from your dock, create windows icons in the Mac desktop and run them as if they were Mac apps, etc.

MacLover-BR

What about the other features?

Nice.

i don't know whether you're right or not. but that's the first logical explanation i've seen of what otherwise seemed inexplicable: apple announcing a new product six months in advance. This is, after all, the apple that sues rumor sites if they spill some beans days in advance.

this might belong on a separate thread, but i'd really like to see some more insightful discussion of what the benefits were to apple of announcing the iPhone so early...and how that situation differed from other product announcements.

Not only the tin-foil hat club, but the Club-o-not-thinking.

If someone is in dutch with the SEC they don't suddenly make shit up in front of the shareholders and then try to cover their ass after the fact. 'effing stupid idea the theorists had I say.

Deal!

I really dont think so if it were to correct some of the major flaws/complaints of the phone, ie. 3G tech, and removable memory, and that was explained.

I'm just saying as one customer that planned on buying both, between the two I'd much rather have have apple take their time with the hardware product (with both perfecting and adding feature because it is more difficult to update if there winds up being bugs, and new features can not be added), as opposed to software (which can easily be updated, if needed).

I'm not that old but I'd buy it anyway

I suspect much of the delay is because of major internal recoding. Xcode 3 includes Xray, based on Sun's DTrace, so possibly this is being used to good effect to do a lot of detailed performance tuning.

Also, there are those reports that ZFS (also a Sun technology -- isn't free software licensing wonderful) will appear in Leopard.

And we do know that it goes a whole lot further towards full 64-bit support.

All of this adds up to a lot of work on the internals -- not necessarily a longer list of "secret" features but possibly big jumps in performance and scalability. But this level of internal change means a lot of existing code may break. So a delay is no big surprise.

Right on. Secrecy has been Apple's impressive trump card, and understatement that packs a punch coincides with Apple's emphasis on simple elegance. For all of the benefits of announcing a product like the iPhone ahead of time, such grand previews make me nervous. Better to surprise than to overplay a product's potential. Having said that, the iPhone may simply be so stunning that an early splash proves to be, in this instance at least, very much warranted.

A sexy girl holds her cards close to an ample chest, no?

I find the market overeaction interesting, I wish I have more money to buy AAPL when the stocks sinks further next week.

on a slightly related news...

Any relation to Shaw Wu?

Heh. You're funny.

the only way i can express myself upon what you have written is as follows:-

your name is apt, you are an ass

Ummm, maybe hard to concentrate on the card game with that little lady in front of me.

Sounds to me like Apple is trying to chew more that it can handle right now. Sounds like a lot of projects are delayed.

Maybe is because of the capabilities that they are adding to Leopard and because a lot of the new hardware will be running some of the new capabilities of leopard.

But it may also be that they are streching themselves a bit too thin, they only have so many good programmers and too many projects at the same time.

Time will tell, but so far 2007 looks like a drag year after all the hoopla of "The last 30 years", "and you seen nothing yet".

It is better to deliver a few good products every so often than be late on all of them.

I have no clue what the new features are and no clue what the new products are, but looks like Apple is very excited and developing multiple projects at the same time.

If I had to guess the new touch human interface will be in a lot of the new devices and yes I think a tablet like device is coming.

Yes your right (New Interface - Theme Engine - 3D Desktop) aren't new features per say, but Leopard is going to need a "WOW" factor. No?

Looks get people in the door, not engineering!


Here I disagree. On Apple's own website, under "Get A Mac,"

#3. Everything-ready.
The Mac is the only computer in the world that can run all the major operating systems, including Mac OS X, Windows XP, and Vista.
With software like Parallels Desktop or VMware you can even run them side by side.

If Apple doen't care about Windows why make this #3.

This would not be a big selling point for many people. Also, why would Apple go to so much effort when they can just rely on 3rd parties? I'm not even sure if such a thing is possible. There aren't enough standards with hardware IO to make this practical IMHO.

In short, I don't see them putting in effort on an idea like this any time soon, or ever.

Yes, Lepord is really an Auqafied version of Windows.

Whether or not its possible, i don't know (yet). However, releying on third parties does not solve the problem of drivers. My printer's drivers is not built-in. So I had to install a whole disk, install a bunch of software I don't want and or need (really, does any Mac user need photo software?)....and why? I thought everything "just works with a Mac", and that, and I quote: "You should simply be able to connect that camera, printer, gamepad, camcorder, or phone to your computer and use it. That’s certainly the experience you’ll enjoy on a Mac. Millions do now. And you can join them." Not even on a Mac you can't do that. Because once you connect your printer, you have to go searching for your drivers on your computer, have to know the name of your printer (and on some, like my parents, it can be a pain to find....), then go searchin' for them.

Which is why I am sure Steve Jobs is thinking of a way to get rid of drivers. Volia, I found it. Now Jobs, or maybe someday myself, -- go make it happen.

But for some reason, I have a feeling Apple will beat me to it. Dang. I could have made millions off of that, oh well (that was a joke, btw).

For more on how you shouldn't go hunting for drivers, Apple's site has it right here: http://www.apple.com/getamac/drivers.html. Maybe Mac users don't read the "Get a Mac" stuff....

The analysts are BEYOND stupid with this one! This is further proof that the analysts don't have a Mac - they only see "new products" and, what's even worse, they compare Apple to Microsoft...

The bottom line?

NO ONE CARES IF LEOPARD IS OUT OR NOT!!!!

Out of the 150 private clients I have, not even 1 is upgrading to Leopard because they are not doing anything that Tiger doesn't already handle!

That is the beauty of Mac users - we are realistic and only care about upgrades when the upgrades are actually necessary. The PC world (stock brokers) are paranoid because they are used to upgrading every week to deal with new viruses...

BUT THE BEST PART IS THE ANALYST PARANOIA! I love that they "suspect Apple is lying" - this is so pathetic. I know people who work for Apple and guess what? It's not a HUGE company with a billion programmers - they needed to allocate more resources to the iPhone because if the iPhone came out with bugs, the analysts would once again tear up the company they hate.

I was truly shocked to hear Herb Greenberg on Fast Money say that he thought they were advertising iPhone in order to drive up the stock. SAD....so sad...the stock went up because people who don't know about investing bought the stock based on the advertisements, Herb! Maybe Herb should stop smoking some of that Herb and then he won't be so paranoid....

If this goes anywhere below 90, I'm buying once again! At this rate, the paranoia of the analysts have given me almost 40K in profit. Thank you, analysts! I thought I would hold long and just make about 15K.....

Then you haven't seen this thread: Apple delays Leopard release until October (12-APR-2007)

It's the analysts who are saying Leopard's delay is not a big deal and that the iPhone is the most important item for increasing Apple's profit and Mac sales in the long run. Hell, even the stocks barley took a hit the next* day.

It was the Mac-fanatics that are the ones crying foul and claiming that Apple has put the cart before the horse, have given up on making proper computers and other such nonsense.


* Apple announced the delay just after the market closed. Coincidence? I think not.

I'm sure hoping its the implementation of zfs for the filesystem. The HFS+ of Apple's is a bit out-dated. zfs would rock and leap-frog Apple ahead of everyone else.

Even though it's 6 weeks later - can't resist to put my 2-cents in here: Yes - I do believe that Leopard has been delayed to fully integrate ZFS. With it Apple has something really superior in comparision with the new Windows Homeserver software (and H/W from HP) that will be released later in '07. The number of files, its speed and data protection are some of the advantages but the storage pooling feature of ZFS is a significant departure from how disks are handled. Out of disk space? Just add a new drive and your Macintosh HD is suddenly that much bigger! So while you will need a dedicated homeserver from M/S to store all your pictures and movies, a standard Mac (and all of the models) can do it for you.
One more thing: Why did the delay of Leopard not affect the stock price? Apple just came out of its best first quarter (after the X-mas season) - stock goes up! The iPhone is coming in June - revenue up, stock goes up. Leopard is released in October - revenue up, stock goes up. X-mas season with all new h/w.... Perfect revenue management. Brilliant!

What file system will OS X use for booting the system? Since ZFS currently doesn't have that capability will Apple still use HFS+? Wouldn't having a separate file systems on a consumer machine be somewhat pointless?


I think most people realized that a short delay in Leopard means very little in Apple's overall growth.

Not necessarily . . . various pros and cons to it and the whole thing could be seamless to the user.

You could have a core boot file system containing the absolute core of the OS which started up the system and the ZFS file volume. From there, the ZFS file loaded loads the rest of the OS ( UI etc ).

The boot file system could be kept closely guarded and untouchable by the general OS user and in effect, the only thing the user sees is the ZFS volume and all the normal OSX stuff within it.



Hiding things from the average user is pretty common place anyhow ... look at the rootkit issues of Sony debacle. So hiding a boot volume that kick starts the ZFS is no different.

Macs already have a boot partition anyway, so there won't be any difference if one is needed for ZFS. But ZFS is pretty much up to par with Solaris in the Leopard seeds right now. Really the only thing left is for them to be able to boot off of it. ZFS is a pretty cool file system that gives Sun and Apple a lot of space to grow into. And I'm not just talking about physical space, I'm talking features. ZFS right now offers file system level file compression. I imagine it wouldn't be too difficult to expand that to file encryption, something people have wanted for a while and which would make FileVault a much better feature.

If you want to look at it logically, think about the iPhone's target market: consumers who already have a mobile phone and are under contract. Now think about contracts expiring.

Assuming those contracts were signed equally throughout the year then 25% of the targeted customers on a 2 year agreement (and 50% of those on a 1 year contract) will be past the contract expiration and free to buy the iPhone when it is released. The numbers double when it comes to the Christmas buying season. If Steve had waited until June to announce the iPhone he would be faced with a very small percentage of potential customers who were free of their contracts.

Think about it. Steve could have briefly mentioned the iPhone and the FCC filing at MWSF and gone to other things. Instead he spent most of his time giving a sales presentation to target customers so they would not renew their expiring contracts. They even put a link to the presentation on the main page of their website.

Was it smart? Wait for pictures of the lines outside the Apple Store on the day the iPhone is released to find out.