Apple setting us up for an even bigger OS X 'slow down'?
We all know the comments from Apple (forget who at this point) about how Apple will be slowing down with their fast paced OS X development efforts and with Tiger (slightly less quick to come out) and Leopard with a clearly longer 'bake time'.
Don't get me wrong I don't necessarily see this as a bad thing so long as proportional amounts of the additional time are given to BOTH features but more importantly stability.
I was just re-reminded of this after seeing the following on the WWDC 2006 web site.
"Developers can learn all about the sixth major release of Mac OS X [Leopard] this century at Apple?s Worldwide Developer Conference."
The inclusion of 'the century' is what caught my eye...
'The 6th Major Release Of OS X This Century!'
A really impressive feat for sure but can you NOT see Steve Jobs on stage with a 30' slide proclaiming this oft overlooked and frankly quite amazing statistic but, can you also NOT see Steve comparing OS X to Windows with the following slide?
"Windows Has Seen ZERO Major Releases This Century!"
All this to help set the developers up with and ease the pain of perhaps an additional re-issuance of the statement by Steve that the next "Post Leopard" release of OS X will spend even MORE time 'baking in the oven'.
Like I said I'm not saying this is a *bad* thing and yea it's pure speculation but I know this is something that many people wont like (at first blush anyway).
Thoughts?
Dave
Don't get me wrong I don't necessarily see this as a bad thing so long as proportional amounts of the additional time are given to BOTH features but more importantly stability.
I was just re-reminded of this after seeing the following on the WWDC 2006 web site.
"Developers can learn all about the sixth major release of Mac OS X [Leopard] this century at Apple?s Worldwide Developer Conference."
The inclusion of 'the century' is what caught my eye...
'The 6th Major Release Of OS X This Century!'
A really impressive feat for sure but can you NOT see Steve Jobs on stage with a 30' slide proclaiming this oft overlooked and frankly quite amazing statistic but, can you also NOT see Steve comparing OS X to Windows with the following slide?
"Windows Has Seen ZERO Major Releases This Century!"
All this to help set the developers up with and ease the pain of perhaps an additional re-issuance of the statement by Steve that the next "Post Leopard" release of OS X will spend even MORE time 'baking in the oven'.
Like I said I'm not saying this is a *bad* thing and yea it's pure speculation but I know this is something that many people wont like (at first blush anyway).
Thoughts?
Dave
Comments
2) Windows XP is the major release from this century. You can debate all you want whether the year 2000 belongs to the 20th or the 21st century, but Windows XP was released October 25th, 2001, and as such was definitely released this very century.
On point 2 - I stand corrected but still something Jobs could use 'against MS'
Dave
Originally posted by DaveGee
still something Jobs could use 'against MS'
Yeah, but MS could easily respond by "we have more features, more hardware to support, more software to support, etc." And they'd be correct.
Originally posted by jonnyboy
windows xp sp2 was a major BUG release
Now we're talkin...FTFY
Originally posted by Chucker
Yeah, but MS could easily respond by "we have more features, more hardware to support, more software to support, etc." And they'd be correct.
And don't forget that they could also lie, er, excuse me, show us how innovative they are and continue to be with Vista.
Originally posted by Placebo
Is it a bragging right that if you've used OS X since 2002, you've been coerced into paying over $500 on OS updates?
$500 on feature adding updates, or $500 on virus protection, disaster recovery, and just plain maintenance time... eh, it all washes out IMO.
Originally posted by iPeon
And don't forget that they could also lie, er, excuse me, show us how innovative they are and continue to be with Vista.
Whoever told you that in order to succeed in the market you have to be innovative - lied to you. There's more to success than pure invention. And MS has been quite successful at those other things, even to the point of beeing on the extreme side.
Originally posted by Kickaha
$500 on feature adding updates, or $500 on virus protection, disaster recovery, and just plain maintenance time... eh, it all washes out IMO.
There are free anti-virus apps. Grisoft, Avast, ClamWin (the same anti-virus engine Apple includes in their OS X Server). There are also free maintenance apps, including, but not limited to, Spybot and AdAware. Let's not forget that there are OS X maintenance apps, and an abundance of them too. OnyX, Cocktail, etc. So it's not a Windows Things at all.
And those "updates" are things that should have been included in 10.0. An OS that has no IM client? Not even the most basic one? No decent browser, apart from that abomination of a browser that was IE 5? No way to easily manage windows up 'til 10.3+ with Expose?
These are things that should be included by default on any OS. Of course, there was more under the hood than just that, but mostly it was playing catch-up to customer needs & wants. 10.4 (and even 10.3 to some degree) was the only release worth paying for from the POV of a customer. Other releases were just beta-testing while also paying for it.
You pay with your $, or you pay with your time. That's the choice, and specifically why I added 'maintenance time' in the list. My time isn't even remotely close to free, I don't have time to screw around with keeping my machine up and running, or finding an app that is usable enough for me to get work done. So I pay it in $ instead, and find myself far ahead of the game for my needs.
$500 over five years (student dev pricing), $8.50 a month, for increased functionality (compare 10.4 to 10.1... it's not even funny), all the while being able to not have to spend time on the mechanics of my system, but instead being able to focus on getting work done.
I'll gladly pay it. $100 a year? Let's see, at my current salary, that's about what, 2.5 hrs? How many hours do you spend in a *year* keeping a system running, finding suitable apps, etc? Is 2.5 hrs lost in the noise?
For me, for my situation, it's not even a discussion worth having with myself.
Originally posted by Kickaha
Your point? Are you seriously saying that in the five years of upgrades to OS X, that no upgrades have been necessary to XP or Linux?
Not upgrades that cost money. I'm not even counting Linux, as updates there are always free, even for distro's that are commercial (like SuSE) - and not just small updated, I'm talking about going from SuSE 9.0 to 9.1, which is like going from OS X 10.2 to 10.3 (in terms of upgrade weight, not quality of code).
As for Windows, or WinXP which was released in 2001, SP1 was free, as was SP2. They both included important functionality and important updates. IE5 was updated to IE6. WMP 8/9 to WMP 10, etc. The point I'm trying to make is not that Windows includes more functionality or that it doesn't need updates, but those updates have not cost the consumer $129 each time.
Of course, you could say that SP1 is not similar to going from 10.2 to 10.3, but 10.0 to 10.3 (and even 10.3 in it's early stages) was, quite simply, beta-level code. It was incomplete, slow, unoptimized, and lacking in significant features (10.0 didn't even include DVD playback, as far as I know). WinXP in 2001 wasn't the WinXP that we know now (which means "good enough" for a lot of people) but at least it included some of the basic functionality that OS X 10.0 to 10.3 lacked, like an IM client (Windows Messenger), a decent (for the time, considering it's competition, browser, IE5, which was not the same code-base as IE5 for Mac) and it included basic things like window management. It tooks Apple 3 releases to come out with a (admittedly, smart) way to manage windows.
All I'm saying is this: the $500 you said you spend on anti-virus, "disaster recovery" (what does that mean?) and maintenance, are not really $500. In fact, they're not even $50 dollars. People in the Windows world mostly use free apps, of which are plenty, to do the anti-virus protection thing, they use free apps, of which, again, there are plenty to do the maintenance tasks and "disaster recovery" (which I assume means some type of component failure) is not something specific to Windows.
Was an IM client included in a base install of Windows when 10.0 was out?
Windows Messenger. Still a part of a WinXP install to this date.
How about RedHat?
GAIM, somewhere in 0.7+.
It's been more or less feature parity all along, with some OSs pulling ahead in some areas, and lagging in others.
I'm not sure I agree with 'feature parity', as features per se are not my point here. The point is that pre-10.3 software had serious shortcomings and missed important functionality to even be compared to other OSs. I mean, come on, no basic window management?
But that's really not the point, is it? We were discussing money and time.
No, you were discussing strictly about money, and claimed that you need $500 dollars to buy anti-virus software and such pieces of software, when there are free, good alternatives available. Not to mention P2P.
Although some people don't see it that way, Windows is not the money-eating-machine that some people think it is.
Originally posted by Gene Clean
I mean, come on, no basic window management?
Um, what other OS's have basic window management now? Virtual screens in Linux are awful, and Windows, well, I only once accidentally stumbled upon the key command to hide all windows.
Prior to 10.3, Macs had the ever useful Hide Others, which is still 10 times more useful than anything Windows or Linux has.
Originally posted by Gene Clean
Not upgrades that cost money. I'm not even counting Linux, as updates there are always free, even for distro's that are commercial (like SuSE) - and not just small updated, I'm talking about going from SuSE 9.0 to 9.1, which is like going from OS X 10.2 to 10.3 (in terms of upgrade weight, not quality of code).
Well in that case, what's the discussion? Seriously, you're merging so many little pieces right now that we don't have a cogent discussion going. Let's pick one and concentrate on that.
As for Windows, or WinXP which was released in 2001, SP1 was free, as was SP2. They both included important functionality and important updates. IE5 was updated to IE6. WMP 8/9 to WMP 10, etc. The point I'm trying to make is not that Windows includes more functionality or that it doesn't need updates, but those updates have not cost the consumer $129 each time.
The maintenance apps and time *have* however. Or perhaps you feel that no one should be paid for IT work? That's basically your argument here - the only thing that counts is how many dollars you pay out for applications, and time spent on it, or money spent for someone else's time, doesn't matter. I disagree, obviously, or I wouldn't have mentioned maintenance time above in my list of things that add to cost.
Of course, you could say that SP1 is not similar to going from 10.2 to 10.3, but 10.0 to 10.3 (and even 10.3 in it's early stages) was, quite simply, beta-level code. It was incomplete, slow, unoptimized, and lacking in significant features (10.0 didn't even include DVD playback, as far as I know).
Okay, all code is incomplete (otherwise there's no need to ever add to it), unoptimized (otherwise there's no need to ever optimize it), etc, etc. The only thing that matters is how it compares to the previous version, and to the competition. For my money, 10.0 was better than 9.2, 10.1 was better than 10.0, and so on. Also, at each stage, it was better for my needs than the competition of XP or Linux distros. Better value, too.
WinXP in 2001 wasn't the WinXP that we know now (which means "good enough" for a lot of people) but at least it included some of the basic functionality that OS X 10.0 to 10.3 lacked, like an IM client (Windows Messenger), a decent (for the time, considering it's competition, browser, IE5, which was not the same code-base as IE5 for Mac) and it included basic things like window management. It tooks Apple 3 releases to come out with a (admittedly, smart) way to manage windows.
And how long has it taken for Linux to have a decent multimedia framework? How about GPU optimization of UI composition?
Every OS has plusses and minuses compared to the others. To point at one in particular and say "It didn't have X Y and Z so it isn't worth a paid upgrade to get them" is ridiculous. All OSs lack features that others have, and all OSs cost to upgrade... if not $, then time. Which most people pay others to do. With real $.
All I'm saying is this: the $500 you said you spend on anti-virus, "disaster recovery" (what does that mean?) and maintenance, are not really $500. In fact, they're not even $50 dollars. People in the Windows world mostly use free apps, of which are plenty, to do the anti-virus protection thing, they use free apps, of which, again, there are plenty to do the maintenance tasks and "disaster recovery" (which I assume means some type of component failure) is not something specific to Windows.
Actually, I meant general mucking about with the system just trying to get it back to a usable state after a screw-up - which seems to default to reformat, reinstall, recover. That takes time. That's money, whether it is your own time, or you are paying someone else, it boils down to a dollar figure, unless it's strictly your hobby. Maybe it's yours. It's not mine, and it's not most people's.
I'm not sure I agree with 'feature parity', as features per se are not my point here. The point is that pre-10.3 software had serious shortcomings and missed important functionality to even be compared to other OSs. I mean, come on, no basic window management?
(At the risk of derailing this even further, I'll bite on this irrelevant detail of a tangent because it's just so... silly.) Come on Gene, what do you call hiding apps, minimizing windows, access windows through the Dock icons? You can't seriously say that's not a basic window management with a straight face. Define what *you* mean by window management, please. Virtual desktops? Tiling? Obviously you have something specific in mind. (And I swear, if you say that abomination of a UI that is the Taskbar, or anything that emulates it, I'm going to laugh at you heartily...)
No, you were discussing strictly about money, and claimed that you need $500 dollars to buy anti-virus software and such pieces of software, when there are free, good alternatives available. Not to mention P2P.
Wrong. I said it would cost $500 in software *AND TIME*, and that includes paying someone else to manage or fix it. I was, and remain, very clear on that point. Since you utterly refuse to acknowledge it, I can only conclude that your time isn't worth much to you. You obviously don't pay someone else to do it, and you apparently enjoy doing it yourself. That's fine, but the rest of the world doesn't work that way. If it did, there'd be no need for IT staff.
Although some people don't see it that way, Windows is not the money-eating-machine that some people think it is.
It's more than 2.5 hrs worth a year, and that passes my breakeven point, making the cost of MacOS X pay for itself. Simple. Nothing else really matters past that. Everyone has their own breakeven point, based on what they value their time to be worth. Mine is less than three hours. Yours may be boundless, I don't know, but apparently there's *some* reason you refuse to acknowledge that time is costly in the end, in real dollars.
I have never understood why so many members of the OSS crowd take your viewpoint Gene, when their very livelihoods are predicated on being paid for their time.
Amazing how much wasted text over a simple statement... $500 amortized over 5 years is a pittance to pay, if it means that I don't generally have to mess with, worry about, or fix the system. If it saves me even 3 hrs a *year*, it has paid for itself. It's just that simple. The fact that it saves me much more than that makes it simply not even an issue.
I applaud the fact that there are free alternatives out there, and I understand that Windows has a lower per-year upfront monetary cost... it's the hidden costs and hidden time allowance that I can't afford.
Originally posted by Gene Clean
Whoever told you that in order to succeed in the market you have to be innovative - lied to you. There's more to success than pure invention. And MS has been quite successful at those other things, even to the point of beeing on the extreme side.
Where did I say that I'm of the opinion that you have to be innovative in order to succeed in the market?
You don't have to be innovative nor create a good product in order to succeed in the market, all one has to do is look at MS for proof. Propaganda outplays innovation, it's a very old trick that's been around for eons.
I think iChat and Safari were added in 10.2.