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Why Apple Delayed Leopard for the iPhone
Ernest DeFarge writes "Apple recently announced that they've pulled several key programmers from the OS X 10.5 "Leopard" and assigned them to the iPhone in order to get it done on time. In doing so, they delayed Leopard for 4 months. Does that mean that the iPhone is more important to Apple than Mac OS? Or is it just capitalizing on the current state of Apple's fanbase?"
I guess brand new massively hyped iPhone is more important to Apple than the difference between OS X 10.4 and 10.5 during the limited time period of the summer of 2007.
Don't be crazy anymore!
I don't know what Leopard is. I know what an iPhone is. You know why?
Because the iPhone is on the news, tv, radio; everyone is talking about it. It is absolutely more important than OSX at the moment. The iPhone could potentially be Apple's new iPod.
Sigs are for Terrorists.
Does that mean that the iPhone is more important to Apple than Mac OS?
Did nobody else notice that when Jobs announced the iPhone, he also renamed the company to take the word "Computer" out of it?
That sounds kind of, well, I dunno, strategic to me.
You can't conclude from a press release what the real reason for the delay is. Leopard may be delayed because of the iPhone, or it may be delayed because it's still buggy, or maybe Apple is still trying to file some last minute patents, or maybe it's something completely different.
Given the Apple emphasis on support for open standards (such as a standards-compliant web browser and email client) and the UNIX base of Mac OS X, I'd say Apple users are relatively much less locked in than Windows users.
Apple users are certainly no more locked in than users of any other platform. The average useful life of a general purpose personal computer has been two to four years, depending largely on individual use case. If you don't like being locked in to Windows, buy a Mac the next time you need a new system. Same works in reverse.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
My personal theory is that Apple is hiding a big iphone feature. They announced it in January because they had to for FCC filings, they showed us a bunch of the features to get people excited, but there's going to be something more that justifies the price and their entry into the market.
don't panic-- clowns can smell fear.
Either way, everybody using a Mac has to buy it and will buy it.
Yeah, I know they've FORCED me to buy the upgrades several times now. Damn I wish I still had freewill...
This guy's the limit!
Taco? Is that you? How much space do you have left on that Nomad these days?
This is not an example of "giving the customer what they want".
No, it's an example of you're not the customer. You haven't purchased a computer from them, so you're not a customer. Period. Whine and gripe about it all you want, but if you want Mac OS X, you must become Apple's customer, and that pretty much requires a hardware purchase.
Try thinking of it like this: Apple sells computers. Mac OS X is a pack-in (and really, it's optional, you can install Linux or Windows if you want). You don't get the "free" copy of Mac OS X and a fully supported installation without buying hardware. You could just buy the boxed version of Mac OS X (well, once 10.5 is out, anyway) and install it on your existing hardware, but it's unsupported. And don't bother with the tired "it's not allowed by the EULA" argument, since that hasn't ever stopped anyone before and it probably isn't even legally enforceable, much less enforceable in a practical sense.
So don't use Apple computers. It is, as you stated, your choice. But know that by not using them, you aren't a customer, and aren't entitled to be treated like one.