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flopticalcube

macrumors G4
Mr. Jobs said that Leopard would anchor a schedule of product upgrades that could continue for as long as a decade.

“I’m quite pleased with the pace of new operating systems every 12 to 18 months for the foreseeable future,” he said. “We’ve put out major releases on the average of one a year, and it’s given us the ability to polish and polish and improve and improve.”

Hmm... Leopard took more than 18 months. A lot more.
 

erandall38

macrumors 6502
Jun 24, 2007
460
1
great article, nice find.

Is kind of long but if you have the chance you should read it.

It really makes me wonder... how are people using vista? and how do some people think vista was such a huge innovative step?
 

gr8tfly

macrumors 603
Oct 29, 2006
5,333
99
~119W 34N
Guess Steve had nightmares of "egg freckles"... :p

The Newton easter egg was actually a special frame, not from the above.
(just took this pic of MP 130):
 

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Mr. Dee

macrumors 603
Dec 4, 2003
5,990
12,831
Jamaica
Two versions by Windows 7?

Interesting that the author says that Apple will have released two versions of OS X by Windows 7 which is planned for 2009 or 2010. Could he be referring to Tiger and Leopard or Leopard and 10.6?

If its 10.6, then it seems as if Apple already has it in planning. And know, I don't believe they have parallel development teams since they had to take folks off Leopards development to help with the iPhone effort.
 

Rodimus Prime

macrumors G4
Oct 9, 2006
10,136
4
I do not like apples 12-18 months upgrade cycle along with force obsoleting of any previos OS. They drop all major support (anything but security updates) not long after the release of the next OS. This a long with put out all this nice little apps and making sure they do not work on older vs.
Then they get the Devs in on doing the same thing. One thing I like about M$ is they tend to try to do a 3 year cycle on its major OS releases. 95,98,XP and Vista original planned release date were all 3 years apart.
People complain about what M$ charges for it OS upgrades but when you compare it with apple upgrade cost over the same time span M$ is cheaper. Plus add in the fact that with windows one can true get away with only really upgrading when getting a new computer. With an Mac you can bet on you will need to pay for at least one if not 2 OS upgrades.

M$ continues to support there OS and Devs keep making plenty of software for 3+ years after its been replaced. XP support last threw summer of 09 (extended past the original slated drop date of 07)
 

MacRumors

macrumors bot
Apr 12, 2001
63,557
30,888
Jobs: Leopard Will Anchor Product Schedule For A Decade



In an interview with the New York Times, Apple CEO Steve Jobs said that the Macintosh has a lot of momentum and the upcoming Mac OS 10.5 Leopard release will anchor a schedule of product upgrades that may continue as long as a decade.

“The Macintosh has a lot of momentum now,” said Steven P. Jobs, Apple’s chief executive, in a telephone interview last week. “It is outpacing the industry.”

Recent numbers from research firm Gartner back up Mr. Job's claim, indicating that Apple's U.S. 3Q 2007 market share rose to 8.1%.

Mr. Jobs also indicated that Apple's pace of OS releases will not continue to drift dramatically slower.

“I’m quite pleased with the pace of new operating systems every 12 to 18 months for the foreseeable future,” he said. “We’ve put out major releases on the average of one a year, and it’s given us the ability to polish and polish and improve and improve.”

In 2004, Apple had said that it was slowing down its development of the Mac OS because the current pace had not been sustainable (Apple had released Mac OS 10.0, 10.1, 10.2, and 10.3 between 2001 and 2004). Since then, Apple has released Mac OS 10.4 Tiger, and will be release 10.5 Leopard this Friday.

By comparison, Microsoft has only released two consumer OS's since 2001: XP and Vista. The New York Times references a rumor that the next Windows release, code-named Windows 7, may not come until 2010.

Article Link
 

wattage

macrumors 6502
Oct 14, 2005
320
0
That must be a lot of manpower to release a new OS every 12-18 months. Keep them coming. We love new features!!
 

BenRoethig

macrumors 68030
Jul 17, 2002
2,729
0
Dubuque, Iowa
Personally, I would push 10.6 back to around 20-24 months and take the time to fix the few things that OSX does not well. How about sending some software engineers to help get the third party drivers up to snuff with the windows drivers. Apple is great with the spectacular, but they have a tendency to get bored and slack off when it comes to the more mundane tasks. Spaces is going to be a great tool, but I would also like the scanner on my AIO to work right.
 

mkrishnan

Moderator emeritus
Jan 9, 2004
29,776
15
Grand Rapids, MI, USA

This was one of the main things I noticed, also, when I read this in the Times.

As bad as it is, I think we actually can thank Vista in part for that. I don't think Vista is very impressive, but the misguided press and publicity seem to have pushed Apple to feel like they had to respond tit-for-tat by pulling Leopard up. I'm glad to hear that the net result is that they plan on continued rapid development of OS X. :)
 

clevin

macrumors G3
Aug 6, 2006
9,095
1
OSX is a Unix derived system. Even if apple want to dwell on its current incarnation for a decade. Linux will not stop, and if apple won't follow up (which apparently is true as of now), it won't be happy for apple.
 

Stella

macrumors G3
Apr 21, 2003
8,838
6,341
Canada
I hope Apple keep the OS cycle as long as 18 months.

Anything less is just too much IMO, especially as low as 12 months.
 

the.snitch

macrumors regular
Mar 24, 2004
110
4
Auckland, NZ
In contrast, Mr. Jobs said that multitouch drastically simplified the process of controlling a computer.

There are no “verbs” in the iPhone interface, he said, alluding to the way a standard mouse or stylus system works. In those systems, users select an object, like a photo, and then separately select an action, or “verb,” to do something to it.

Not sure where he's coming from here. I unlock my iphone, and it says "Slide to unlock" on the screen. There's a verb right there, and it also involves doing an action.

Many iphone dialogs are also full of verbs, in typical OS X fashion. Where Windows dialogs generally focus around presenting a lengthy description, and "Yes","No","Cancel" /"Abort","Retry","Ignore" buttons, Apple's HIG has always recommended placing Verbs onto the buttons to give a sense of what is going to happen without having to read the entire dialog.
I finished watching a video on the iphone this afternoon, and it presented a dialog asking me if I wanted to remove the video to save space, along with "Keep" and "Delete" buttons. Are these not verbs?

In fact many of the actions on iPhone revolve around "selecting an object", and then separately selecting an action. Due to the lack of features such as selecting text/images and a clipboard, many tasks on the iphone involve selecting a menu (such as the "share" button, presented in different contexts), which then present a variety of choices. e.g. for photos, iPhone gives the options of "Use as wallpaper", "Email Photo", and "Assign to Contact".

Am I missing something here? :confused:
 
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