PS: For the first time in my life I'm really starting to hate Apple fans. Every year the hysteria seems to grow. The outcries over AppleTV's delay, the switch to Intel chips, the removal of "computer" from the name, etc.
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:
Quote:
Originally Posted by solipsism
Yesterday's announcement stated that Leopard will be delayed a few months but it also stated that iPhone will be on time. Of the two, the iPhone will undoubtedly generate more direct revenue and indirect revenue, such as people whose first introduction to OS X is the iPhone who then switch to Mac, than the Mac platform would.
I'm looking forward to the iPhone's timely release and personally know several longtime Windows users who have been afraid to switch OS platforms who are ready to test the OS X waters with the iPhone.
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!
When people say "there's not much to Leopard" without providing a proper context you automatically know you're dealing with an idiot.
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?
Quote:
Originally Posted by hmurchison
Leopard is a huge update. It's just Apple hasn't divulged much on their main apple.com/macosx page other than some superficial stuff. In fact that page is do dumbed down peope actually think Core Animation is some "Cover Flow" on steroids.
That's exactly what Apple wants. They want to keep the rank and file consumer in a fog. They'll show the basics of a feature and only the people who are willing to dig a bit will truly undersand the ramifications of that feature.
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.
Quote:
Originally Posted by hmurchison
If Apple says "feature XXX allows on the fly scaling of UI elements" the consumer won't understand. However show a consumer Expose in action and they freaking understand the benefit.
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?
Quote:
Originally Posted by hmurchison
The Top Secret features could be delaying Leopard but in reality I htink it's a confluence of factors that have contributed to the delay. Leopard is a HUGE update that needs to work correctly upon launch.
You can point to almost any pain point in Tiger and Leopard has a fix.
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.
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.
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.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Louzer
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?
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.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Louzer
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.
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.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Louzer
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?
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.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Louzer
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.)
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.
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!!
AMD was kicking Intel's butt around at the time Apple made its decision to go Intel. Why are you glad they didn't choose AMD? AMD processors are still very competitive with Intel's offerings.
There's no correlation??? OSX now runs on Intel chips which 70% of the worlds PCs use. Hmm.
Apple purposely, through hardware and software, disallows users from installing the Intel version of OSX on non-Apple hardware. Yet hackers have bypassed those locks.
Yes, Apple makes most of their money on hardware. The iPod brought in the majority of Apple net profit last quarter. The AppleTV and iPhone will help to dwarf their reliance on Mac hardware sales. Now they can spread the love to non-Apple hardware and start to switch to a higher margin software sales.
It is Bootcamp in reverse. Dual boot your Dell, HP, or Gateway with the MacOS and Windows for $129.00 a pop.
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.
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 Apple?s 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.
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!!
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
Quote:
Originally Posted by MacTel
AMD was kicking Intel's butt around at the time Apple made its decision to go Intel. Why are you glad they didn't choose AMD? AMD processors are still very competitive with Intel's offerings.
There's no correlation??? OSX now runs on Intel chips which 70% of the worlds PCs use. Hmm.
Apple purposely, through hardware and software, disallows users from installing the Intel version of OSX on non-Apple hardware. Yet hackers have bypassed those locks.
Yes, Apple makes most of their money on hardware. The iPod brought in the majority of Apple net profit last quarter. The AppleTV and iPhone will help to dwarf their reliance on Mac hardware sales. Now they can spread the love to non-Apple hardware and start to switch to a higher margin software sales.
It is Bootcamp in reverse. Dual boot your Dell, HP, or Gateway with the MacOS and Windows for $129.00 a pop.
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
Quote:
Originally Posted by Macintosh_Next
]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.
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.
The purpose of Steve Jobs premature disclosures at MWSF was to change headlines from the SEC criminal investigation into the backdating of Apple stock options (at the request of Steve Jobs to favor his pet Vice Presidents) to a more favorable, speculative buzz about the iPhone and the "secret features" of Leopard...
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.
There's a stretch. Welcome to the conspiracy theorist's club.
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.
OTH a iPhone delay will have a very serious effect on the bottom line as that's a delay in hardware sales, Apple's business, along with credibility of getting into a new market.
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 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.
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.
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?
Comments
PS: For the first time in my life I'm really starting to hate Apple fans. Every year the hysteria seems to grow. The outcries over AppleTV's delay, the switch to Intel chips, the removal of "computer" from the name, etc.
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:
Yesterday's announcement stated that Leopard will be delayed a few months but it also stated that iPhone will be on time. Of the two, the iPhone will undoubtedly generate more direct revenue and indirect revenue, such as people whose first introduction to OS X is the iPhone who then switch to Mac, than the Mac platform would.
I'm looking forward to the iPhone's timely release and personally know several longtime Windows users who have been afraid to switch OS platforms who are ready to test the OS X waters with the iPhone.
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
When people say "there's not much to Leopard" without providing a proper context you automatically know you're dealing with an idiot.
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?
Leopard is a huge update. It's just Apple hasn't divulged much on their main apple.com/macosx page other than some superficial stuff. In fact that page is do dumbed down peope actually think Core Animation is some "Cover Flow" on steroids.
That's exactly what Apple wants. They want to keep the rank and file consumer in a fog. They'll show the basics of a feature and only the people who are willing to dig a bit will truly undersand the ramifications of that feature.
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.
If Apple says "feature XXX allows on the fly scaling of UI elements" the consumer won't understand. However show a consumer Expose in action and they freaking understand the benefit.
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?
The Top Secret features could be delaying Leopard but in reality I htink it's a confluence of factors that have contributed to the delay. Leopard is a HUGE update that needs to work correctly upon launch.
You can point to almost any pain point in Tiger and Leopard has a fix.
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.)
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.)
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
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
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!!
AMD was kicking Intel's butt around at the time Apple made its decision to go Intel. Why are you glad they didn't choose AMD? AMD processors are still very competitive with Intel's offerings.
There's no correlation??? OSX now runs on Intel chips which 70% of the worlds PCs use. Hmm.
Apple purposely, through hardware and software, disallows users from installing the Intel version of OSX on non-Apple hardware. Yet hackers have bypassed those locks.
Yes, Apple makes most of their money on hardware. The iPod brought in the majority of Apple net profit last quarter. The AppleTV and iPhone will help to dwarf their reliance on Mac hardware sales. Now they can spread the love to non-Apple hardware and start to switch to a higher margin software sales.
It is Bootcamp in reverse. Dual boot your Dell, HP, or Gateway with the MacOS and Windows for $129.00 a pop.
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.
There are enough critical, core problems with Leopard as it is. What makes you think RedBox is the issue?
I seriously hope you are joking!
RedBox? Is that the project name?
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.
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!!
That all sounds exciting. Hope you are right.
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.
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
AMD was kicking Intel's butt around at the time Apple made its decision to go Intel. Why are you glad they didn't choose AMD? AMD processors are still very competitive with Intel's offerings.
There's no correlation??? OSX now runs on Intel chips which 70% of the worlds PCs use. Hmm.
Apple purposely, through hardware and software, disallows users from installing the Intel version of OSX on non-Apple hardware. Yet hackers have bypassed those locks.
Yes, Apple makes most of their money on hardware. The iPod brought in the majority of Apple net profit last quarter. The AppleTV and iPhone will help to dwarf their reliance on Mac hardware sales. Now they can spread the love to non-Apple hardware and start to switch to a higher margin software sales.
It is Bootcamp in reverse. Dual boot your Dell, HP, or Gateway with the MacOS and Windows for $129.00 a pop.
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
]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.
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?
When bullshit collides?
Nice.
The purpose of Steve Jobs premature disclosures at MWSF was to change headlines from the SEC criminal investigation into the backdating of Apple stock options (at the request of Steve Jobs to favor his pet Vice Presidents) to a more favorable, speculative buzz about the iPhone and the "secret features" of Leopard...
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.
There's a stretch. Welcome to the conspiracy theorist's club.
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.
Tell you what, if that comes to pass I'll buy you one of these non-Apple computers running OS X.
Deal!
OTH a iPhone delay will have a very serious effect on the bottom line as that's a delay in hardware sales, Apple's business, along with credibility of getting into a new market.
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 am a buyer at 80.
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.
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.
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?