Quite an endorsement for Leopard!

Very good read:


http://http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9806255-7.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-5

It's interesting that people coming from Windows will drool over Leopard, and only Mc veterans and picking up on its GUI faults...

BTW, that article is basically saying MS copies its competitors, ergo it does not have a business model. Wrong. Microsoft's business model has ALWAYS been to copy any potential competitor and this negate the need for the said company. MS allowed Google to get too big before acting, and Apple a sniff of life in 1997, and may pay for both 'errors'

Hard to take that article seriously. It sounds very much like the author has his own agenda. I don't know that I believe that Vista was released prematurely because of the pressure from Leopard. OS releases are scheduled far in advance; it is not something that can really be accelerated.

I believe that Microsoft just announced better than expected sales of Vista. Part of the hesitation of the part of the consumer and of hardware manufacturers was the increased hardware requirements of Vista That is the primary reason that so many of the manufacturers want to continue selling XP; they want to be able to sell cheap computers. They can't do that if they need to include more memory and better video cards. It is not at all unusual to continue support for older OS versions. I believe that they are still (or just recently stopped) shipping service packs on Win2K server. And it is not that unusual to show previews of the next version of software.

Just don't like it when "journalists" obviously take sides so they can bash something. I love my Mac, but I also like my PC. Both have their benefits, both have their faults (though it is hard to find them on the Mac, I'll admit).

CookbookChef said:

Hard to take that article seriously. It sounds very much like the author has his own agenda. I don't know that I believe that Vista was released prematurely because of the pressure from Leopard. OS releases are scheduled far in advance; it is not something that can really be accelerated.

I believe that Microsoft just announced better than expected sales of Vista. Part of the hesitation of the part of the consumer and of hardware manufacturers was the increased hardware requirements of Vista That is the primary reason that so many of the manufacturers want to continue selling XP; they want to be able to sell cheap computers. They can't do that if they need to include more memory and better video cards.

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An interesting point of view, but surely the point is that you should not have to have a top of the range PC, built in the last 6 months, just to run an OS.

Dell et al, would surely want to shift more PCs and an OS that requires an upgrade would help that. But the reason they asked for XP to extended is nothing to do with still having the ability to sell $300 (tiny margin, virtually no profit) computers, it was simply that Vista was so incompatible with peripherals. I might not object to a nice shiny new Laptop, but having to buy a new printer, camera and upgrade half my software too, might be too much to bear.

On your point about release dates, I think Vista was rushed out for Leopard, which is ironic as Leopard was delayed (as was Vista). Considering Longhorn was originally scheduled for 2005, it's not a valid defense to say their schedule was defined years in advance and was not impacted by what was happening on the Mac.

I'd read it... but that link just takes me to www.enterthere.com =\

Leukeh said:

I'd read it... but that link just takes me to www.enterthere.com =\

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Try again - not sure what happened. It seemed to work before.

The link didn't work for me.

Zoolook said:

An interesting point of view, but surely the point is that you should not have to have a top of the range PC, built in the last 6 months, just to run an OS.

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That's hardly the case. My 4 year old computer ran Vista Business just fine.

Zoolook said:

On your point about release dates, I think Vista was rushed out for Leopard, which is ironic as Leopard was delayed (as was Vista). Considering Longhorn was originally scheduled for 2005, it's not a valid defense to say their schedule was defined years in advance and was not impacted by what was happening on the Mac.

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I don't follow your reasoning: it was slated for 2005, delayed more than once, thus it was rushed to beat Leopard? Anyway, I don't think Ms was that concerned with Leopard. They are 2 different animals: Leopard is more or less an incremental OS upgrade whereas Vista was a complete OS overhaul. When you look at the target markets and size of MS versus Apple, an Apple OS update should barely be a blip of MS's radar screen, let alone a reason for risking pushing out such a crucial product earlier than they wanted.

I think it was rushed out because it was delayed so long. Leopard may or may not have had a major impact on this. They may have wanted it out before Leopard because they wanted people to think Leopard copied Vista instead of seeing the truth that Vista copied Leopard.

I don't know if Vista was released premature or not, after five years Microsoft had release something after promising to do so. My experience with Vista was limited, it did feel immature to me. On a dual AMD 64bit machine, the interface felt slow, and of course many bugs were evident.

Leopard to me has a few bugs, as expected from a new release, although I feel over all OSX has matured much with this release.

I am cool with eye-candy features as long as they have some utility behind them. I felt Vista's eye-candy features were ok, although hard to find them useful, and cumbersome.

fleurya said:

The link didn't work for me............

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That is odd - I just clicked it got the article fine.

a friend of mine has it running on his HP laptop and it is painfully slow, it feels like it takes minutes to boot up, he wishes he still had XP, meh, this article is clearly more about bashing windows than cheering Leopard but whatever

fleurya said:

The link didn't work for me.

That's hardly the case. My 4 year old computer ran Vista Business just fine.

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Sorry, you're right, I should have been clearer, I was referring to laptops. I built a desktop machine in late 2003, an AMD 64, 9800pro powered beastie with 2 gigs of RAM, and yes it could run Vista, Aero Glass with all the goodies turned on. But it was a self built beast, costing about $3000 at the time.

I don't follow your reasoning: it was slated for 2005, delayed more than once, thus it was rushed to beat Leopard? Anyway, I don't think Ms was that concerned with Leopard. They are 2 different animals: Leopard is more or less an incremental OS upgrade whereas Vista was a complete OS overhaul. When you look at the target markets and size of MS versus Apple, an Apple OS update should barely be a blip of MS's radar screen, let alone a reason for risking pushing out such a crucial product earlier than they wanted.

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IMO, Vista was delayed for a number of reasons. Partly DRM dependencies (something that also delayed Leopard... where are the blu-ray Macs?), and partly the farce with WinFS.

But what pushed Vista out of the door, ready or not, was a combination of the DX10 marketing machine (despite it been shown recently you can get DX10 effects on XP, on DX10 cards...) the constant security scares on XP and the rise and rise of Apple. At least that's what I think.

I don't agree that Tiger is merely a tweak, whereas Vista is an OS Overhaul. OS 10.5 has had some fairly significant Kernel changes, specifically moving the intruction queue processes to make better use of multi-core processors and the addition of DTrace. In fact, many people are far more excited about the improvements under the hood, than the the simple (but nice) user tweaks. DTrace will improve development speed on Macs in ways that were previously unpresidented. Hopefully this will translate into more software. There are API improvements, i/o improvements and additional Core layers (Core Animation and Quartz GL). If you're really harsh, you could say they're simply -'ad-ons', but they have been integrated so well, that they seemed to be there by design.

Leopard has been in development for probably close to 3 years... hardly a version bump, it's a new OS.

it is obvious to me that the author had his own intentions because vista is still selling pretty well and a lot of people love the os
personally when i installed bootcamp i chose xp just because i saw nothing that made vista better for my purposes... and with sp3 coming out soon; ill hopefully have some of the glitter of vista too

babarnette said:

I think it was rushed out because it was delayed so long. Leopard may or may not have had a major impact on this. They may have wanted it out before Leopard because they wanted people to think Leopard copied Vista instead of seeing the truth that Vista copied Leopard.

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I don't think so. The things people initially complained that Vista stole from Leopard were already a part of Tiger. And the few (one or two?) things that Vista and Leopard have in common couldn't possibly have been ideas taken by MS from Leopard, simply because the timing is all wrong. Vista was pretty much done by the time we knew most details about Leopard. In fact, some find it curious that after Vista went on sale, Apple delayed Leopard and came out with a feature: translucent menubar.

But I don't want to get into a copy debate. That's been drilled into the ground. I don't think Vista was released intentionally early to spite Leopard, but some of the reasons Zoolook mentioned like Dx10 may be true, or maybe MS just foolishly thought it was ready for full release when it still had issues. Or maybe it's just a bad product everyone should try to avoid like the guy at the party who is being way too loud and obnoxious.

I really don't get the constant Vista bashing or Mac users' obsession with comparing OS X to Windows. Seriously, I use Vista every day and don't have any problems with it. I also use OS X (Leopard now ) and Linux, and really am not wedded to any one OS or company, for either hardware or software.

Having discussed the issue with a MS guy one time, I was told that the reason for Vista being released when it was (and it was released early) was because of upgrade contracts (software assurance) that were scheduled to run out at the end of 2006. Basically, MS had come out with their software assurance program, sold it to a bunch of companies with the understanding that they would get the OS upgrade during their contract period, and then ended up severely delaying Vista. MS would have had to either extend the contracts or defaulted on their promises if they had delayed Vista yet again, so instead they cut features that weren't going to be ready, fixed up everything the could, and pushed it out the door. Leopard's impending release had nothing to do with it.

dan828 said:

I really don't get the constant Vista bashing or Mac users' obsession with comparing OS X to Windows. Seriously, I use Vista every day and don't have any problems with it. I also use OS X (Leopard now ) and Linux, and really am not wedded to any one OS or company, for either hardware or software.

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I also use vista 64 bit edition when I want to play my windows only games and I like playing around with Linux too. I switched last year and really enjoy OS X more than vista or XP for that matter. I don't have many problems with Vista but I am also not an average computer user. I guess my point is I reserve the right to make fun of any OS at any time.;D

dan828 said:

Having discussed the issue with a MS guy one time, I was told that the reason for Vista being released when it was (and it was released early) was because of upgrade contracts (software assurance) that were scheduled to run out at the end of 2006. Basically, MS had come out with their software assurance program, sold it to a bunch of companies with the understanding that they would get the OS upgrade during their contract period, and then ended up severely delaying Vista. MS would have had to either extend the contracts or defaulted on their promises if they had delayed Vista yet again, so instead they cut features that weren't going to be ready, fixed up everything the could, and pushed it out the door. Leopard's impending release had nothing to do with it.

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That sounds very plausible. Good post.

I would have to concur with the majority of what is being said, I will say this, A friend of mine by the name of "joe" runs a large internet host site... He has some couple hundred serves running out of a wear-house, and he received an offer, (I don't think it was directly from Mic. but it may have been) offering him a 3 month trial on vista server edition for 5 of his servers, thoes servers crashed and burned, and "joe" and I spent a couple days re-loading all of the content back onto the dell stackers, I decided then that I was going to switch, I can say that I havent spent more than an hour or two at a time on a vista machine, but I just get more of the disgusted feeling I got with xp, I thought it ran fine, and did what it needed to... But the reality is, I like to have control of my computer, and vista just takes away what little more control you have... I like the back side of programing and networking, something these gui's cant bring you... Wow me when I turn you on, give me a sweet desktop, but when I hit start, I want to controll what shows up, and vista only gives you a certin degree of control before your decompiling near-bianary jumble...
Most of the people I know at this point, are going from windows to apple, I dont know anyone who has said, OH IM SO SICK OF APPLE AND OSX IM GETTING A DELL GRRRRR! no, it doesnt happen... I was late, I should have made the change... I have my xp desktop (self built) wich runs great, but I look at my room mates brand new toshiba )2 months old), and today it crashed trying to print an excell sheat, someone from across the hall jumps on, gets onto his email, grabs the file, opens, uses crtl+p, because vista menue are just stupid... then it ets half way through and crashes... he walks over, I pull my mbp out of my bag, and with a 6 month old, same exact hp printer, I turn on my mbp, get online, grab his file, print and he is gone... about 5 min later I showed my room mate how to do a full re-boot with his power button... I know im rambling... sorry... =\

The point is, mic. has to relise they arnt competing for new buisness... ther are fighting to keep what they have... and charging a pretty penny, and with as big a learning curve the conversion to vista has (you have to admit it takes some getting used to the new gui) they arnt gana cut it, with or without the release of leopard...

Zoolook said:

I don't agree that Tiger is merely a tweak, whereas Vista is an OS Overhaul. OS 10.5 has had some fairly significant Kernel changes, specifically moving the intruction queue processes to make better use of multi-core processors and the addition of DTrace. In fact, many people are far more excited about the improvements under the hood, than the the simple (but nice) user tweaks. DTrace will improve development speed on Macs in ways that were previously unpresidented. Hopefully this will translate into more software. There are API improvements, i/o improvements and additional Core layers (Core Animation and Quartz GL). If you're really harsh, you could say they're simply -'ad-ons', but they have been integrated so well, that they seemed to be there by design.

Leopard has been in development for probably close to 3 years... hardly a version bump, it's a new OS.

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Zoolook brings up a good point that many people are really looking over. Leopard is the longest gestating iteration of OS X to date, and the reason is because of all the changes that took place under the hood. While some of us are griping about the GUI, I'm betting most Mac developers are practically giddy at programming for Leopard given the new changes.

Oh, and it's two years, not three ;P

Kash said:

Oh, and it's two years, not three ;P

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Well Tiger was released two and a half years ago (April 2005), almost to the day. If Apple is like most software developers, version 4.0 is being worked on before version 3.0 is out of the door, even if it's only at the design and feature stage. But they may have only started work on it at the end of '05, who knows?