News, info, and opinion by Mac users, for Mac users.

February 28, 2007

ihnatko

Waiting for Leopard

Posted Feb. 28, ’07, 3:00 PM PT by Andy Ihnatko
Category | Ihnatko

Okay: seriously, dude: where’s my Leopard?

Yes, I’m that befluxed and kerstrummelled. Not only am I forced to just make up brand-new words to describe my present state of agitation, to the almost certain perhormulance of this column’s hard-working copy editors…but I’m also reduced to quoting the title of an Ashton Kutcher movie, for the love of God.

To recap: Steve Jobs demonstrated some key new features of Mac OS X 10.5 (aka “Leopard”) last August at Apple’s annual worldwide developers’ conference. We got our first look at Time Machine, a new automatic backup system that makes retrieving a long-deleted Word document as simple as evading a Kr’Nolian Singularity Field in the original series of “Star Trek.” Meaning: there’s some technical mumbo-jumbo that you don’t need to get into, but it involves staring into a starfield on your main viewer and saying “Engage, Mr. Sulu.”

(Actually, you don’t have to say that. But you’ve got this awesome animated starfield with a whirling nebula in the distance and your past Finder windows are floating around on top of it. Under the circumstances, you might get carried away and add an “Engage, Mr. Crusher” and a “Traveling through hyperspace ain’t like dustin’ crops, boy…” while you’re at it.)

Safari will be able to “clip” live information from any website, and turn it into a desktop widget. A “spaces” feature lets you have multiple virtual monitors. A developer-level resource known as “Core Animation.”

And I enjoyed all of that. Truly, I did. But what caught my ear was one of Steve’s opening lines: that there was much, much more to come. He just didn’t want to give Microsoft any more ideas to copy.

Steve’s Macworld Expo keynote was the tree that me and my two good friends, Vladimir and Estragon, had been waiting near. We knew that the final, complete list of features was coming. Surely, this was the place. And yet, of our antelope-masticating friend there was not a single mention. Instead, we got two hours about some sort of cordless phone that Steve was all excited about for some reason. Who wanted to know about the iPhone?

Apparently, everybody. All right. I’ll grant you that. Still, why no mention of Leopard, due to ship by the end of the Spring? Why did I have to sit through a half-hour-long public demo on the convention floor to learn that Apple had nothing new to show that hadn’t already been up forever?

This is unprecedented. Apple’s forged a pretty consistent track record for sneak-peeking and then releasing new editions of the OS: they show all of their cards at least a year before release. It’s a fairly important strategy where an OS is concerned. Folks like you and me like getting this info early, but for the people who can do wonderful things for Apple and the OS, it’s absolutely essential. If you manage hundreds of computers in a corporate office, or thousands in a school system, your OS strategy is a battleship. You can steer it, certainly, but you need to commit to the idea of banging a right around the Florida peninsula and start the turn months in advance. If you don’t, you run the risk of creating a brand-new Trans-Florida Canal.

If these people can be convinced a whole a year in advance that Mac OS 10.5 is destined to elevate users to intoxicating new highs of productivity and increase their job satisfaction to the point where they can’t help but dance around the photocopier like the people in that instant soup commercial, they can plot out their strategies early on and ensure that the transition from the old system is a smooth one. More importantly, they can commit vast acres of next year’s budget to buying new hardware and software.

It’s a double-shame that Apple seems to be slow out the gate with Leopard. Because 2007 probably presents the biggest opportunity Apple has had to increase their market share since, say, 1982, which was the last year that the company could have bought out Microsoft.

2007 is the year of Windows Vista, which probably represents the biggest stumble Microsoft’s made in the past ten years. The OS itself is actually rather nice and it’s a serious improvement to Windows XP. Credit where credit’s due. But! It comes after a five-year drought of Windows updates, and on that basis its isn’t nearly as impressive as what users and IT managers were hoping.

Vista’s most critical problem is the fact that upgrading an existing PC to Vista is an itchy, twitchy proposition. When it comes pre-installed on a new PC, it works wonderfully. But when you try to install it on the PC you bought two years ago — the one that still works great under XP — it’s like having mean girls teasing you all during recess. So 2007 is a year when lots of people who buy lots of computers will be thinking long and hard about switching platforms. If they’re destined to buy new hardware anyway, then why shouldn’t some (or even all) of these new machines be Macs?

Macs, after all, are machines that don’t need a hard sell. During the Fifties, the US used to produce short films explaining the menace of international Communism. If just one stinking Commie infiltrates your place of business, well, the ballgame’s over: soon, your workers will be raising the red banner of revolution in the breakroom and before you know it, your little insurance agency is cranking out engine parts for T-55 battle tanks.

It was horrible propaganda. But they almost got it right. This isn’t how Communism works: it’s the primary mechanism for Macintosh evangelism. Just bring an iMac or a MacBook into a Windows office. It works, and people see it actually working. People want computers that actually work. Before you know it, the glowing logos that people surreptitiously doze behind during all-staff meetings in Conference Room A are Apple-shaped.

Despite this unique period in technological history when Windows’ throat is slightly exposed, Apple is keeping mum, as though Leopard contains clues to the location of pirate treasure.

I won’t speculate as to the reasons for the silence, other than to point out that OS X upgrades tend to alternate between being blockbuster user-oriented extravaganzas (like Tiger) and those more subtle releases intended to put additional developer resources on the playing field. Maybe this is just downtime. Maybe we should have taken the company seriously when they implied that Mac OS X 10.4 had finally made OS X mostly feature-complete, and that the era of tectonic changes was over with.

And maybe, despite Steve’s teaser back in August, we have seen all of Leopard’s features. It’s practically impossible for Apple to announce anything new at this late stage. We should just accept that Leopard is what it is.

Well, then…shall we go?

Yes. Let’s go.

(We do not move.)

Oh, dear God…now I’m quoting Becket. Again. I’m obviously way more drumbambillated than I first feared.

[Reprinted with permission from Macworld UK.]

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Comments

I'm on the same bench as you regarding Leopard.

And, props for making both Star Trek and Godot references in the same article. That's the work of a madman, there.

Posted by: Chris | February 28, 2007 4:49 PM

I do love the reference to Waiting For Godot.

My personal hope, is that Apple will have something up their sleeve that finally allows the Mac OS X platform to be taken seriously as a business computer.

Kernel level support for virtualisation?

An email system that can compete with Exchange?

Who knows.

I'm right there with you.
Waiting and waiting.

He said he would come. We should wait for him.

Posted by: Erik | February 28, 2007 5:35 PM

Apple has devoted itself to jumping into a crowded jacuzzi just as the regular pool was starting to get warm. The way that Steve Jobs talks about the iPhone seems to suggest that by now, Mac OS X hasn't been on his mind for quite some time.

Posted by: Pat Nakajima [TypeKey Profile Page] | February 28, 2007 6:53 PM

I have been a Mac user and avid proponent for almost 15 years.

I've seen the changes in focus at Apple and watched as loyal users have been manipulated. Trust me - the delay in Leopard is a well thought out plan to generate demand for the product. From a marketing prospective it's brilliant. From a loyal user's perspective I'm as frustrated as you.

Posted by: LBUTLER | February 28, 2007 7:58 PM

I am disappointed that things are not moving faster for Leopard. Why? Because I want a new Mac, but don't want to pay an extra $130 for Leopard if I were to buy now.

Aside from that, it's odd to say the least that Apple claimed last year to be keeping hidden parts of the new OS so Microsoft couldn't copy from them, yet remain secretive long after that argument became moot.

Posted by: Emily | February 28, 2007 8:14 PM

I totally agree about the apple logo. I'm a freelance IT architect and work with a macbook pro in an entirely PC centric industry. However after working with clients standing behind me going wow, I have noticed a few more macbooks appearing in the offices of my clients. Most bought by the employees and then taken into the office to replace the aging PC's on their desks.

Over the last 2 years I have noticed an appreciable increase in the number of mac users in my travels.

John.

Posted by: John | February 28, 2007 11:55 PM

Isn't it obvious ?
They are waiting to pull Vista to pieces in the lab to see what it can do. Then, they will improve upon it in Leopard before its final release.

Posted by: Gary Robinson | March 7, 2007 4:01 PM

Haven't you already guessed what Steve let unspoken last August? Think.... Time Machine: what's a time machine that allows to travel only into the past, but, together with a beer-drinking cat, a good device for a novel by Heinlein? The secret of TM is that Leopard users will be able to access the *future* content of their hard disks! This way, when you will be requested to produce some document on a tight schedule, you'll just navigate a week ahead and copy/paste the finished work. This is the ultimate productivity booster!

Posted by: spiderbat | March 9, 2007 10:41 AM

I'm waiting for it. My #1 fear: Leopard dosn't come out till WWDC or MAY!!! When exactly is NAB?

Digg for Ihnatko!

Posted by: gosox5555 | March 19, 2007 6:47 AM

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