Tuesday, August 15, 2006
Vista vs Leopard
Apple already has a history of rivalry with Microsoft, and things have not changed recently, nor are they like to any time soon. This year’s WWDC banners read 'Mac OS X Leopard: Introducing Vista 2.0' and 'Hasta la vista, Vista' while the into movie showed the ‘PC’ from the recent Get a Mac adds asking developers to take a year off and maybe if they have the time, to help out with Vista.
But that it’s not just about rivalry between Vista and Leopard, it’s also business, and while reminding people that Microsoft still hasn’t delivered one half of what it has promised five years ago will go down well with Apple’s developers, the fact remains that Vista will come out, eventually. The question is how does Apple intend to play things. Apple has three choices: they can launch Leopard as soon as possible, and maybe, if theyhave actually made a lot more progress than they are letting on to believe, even have it out in time for the Christmas shopping season; they can release it at the same time as Vista; or, if they can afford to wait that long and risk having fingers pointed and the words ‘delayed’ muttered, release it after Vista.
From Apple’s standpoint, it makes little sense to release Leopard as early as possible. The system they currently offer, Tiger, could even stand on its own in a head to head with Vista, let alone the now ancient XP. As such, it makes little to no sense for them to rush Leopard out of the door, it’s not like they would get much out of it, even in terms of publicity, as they have been thrashing the Redmond rival with every release of OS X so far.
Apple cannot afford to sit around and wait forever to release after Vista either. Apple has a reputation of being on time, and failing to deliver Leopard in the timeframe they themselves announced would only tarnish that. They did give themselves ample time when Leopard was initially announced, but Vista has most likely slipped even more than Apple anticipated. Once again, it makes no sense for Apple to ruin their record simply to trump Microsoft, although as Jobs himself said, they do intend to keep things secret for as long as possible in order to make ‘borrowing of ideas’ hard by giving little to no time for implementation so that even if something is borrowed, it will be badly implemented. On the other hand, it took Microsoft half a decade to get to the point where it is near to likely maybe deliver a Vista in the not too distant future, and this with so many features stripped down, while it will only take Apple one to two years to come out with a new version of the system. Microsoft, on the other hand, will probably never attempt something like this again.
At the end of the day, Apple only has so much space to maneuver in, as both too early and too late are bad options, however, one thing is clear, no matter how Vista compares with Leopard, the next version of OS X will be swiftly along, while Vista 2.0 will be little more than a WWDC banner joke.
