Jobs: Leopard Will Anchor Product Schedule For A Decade

[kjs862]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/22/te...gy&oref=slogin

[flopticalcube]

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.

[MacinDoc]

Originally Posted by flopticalcube

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

On the other hand, if 10.6 has a separate development team/track from 10.5, then in may come in on time 12-18 months from now and be much more polished than your typical new OS, because it will have had more time to mature.

[flopticalcube]

Originally Posted by MacinDoc

On the other hand, if 10.6 has a separate development team/track from 10.5, then in may come in on time 12-18 months from now and be much more polished than your typical new OS, because it will have had more time to mature.

If the rumors of no PPC support in 10.6 are true, there will be a lot of p****d off G4 and G5 owners in 12-18 months time.

[erandall38]

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?

[sananda]

Originally Posted by erandall38

Is kind of long

[gr8tfly]

Guess Steve had nightmares of "egg freckles"...

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

[vansouza]

Originally Posted by flopticalcube

If the rumors of no PPC support in 10.6 are true, there will be a lot of p****d off G4 and G5 owners in 12-18 months time.

People said the same thing about M$ going gui and leaving DOS behind. Progress!

[Mr. Dee]

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]

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]

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

[Oirectine]

Sounds good to me, as long as this doesn't mean we'll be waiting a decade for 10.6. 12-18 months sounds good

[wattage]

That must be a lot of manpower to release a new OS every 12-18 months. Keep them coming. We love new features!!

[Project]

Is there a link to the NY Times article?

[Brianstorm91]

I would love to know when stuff will be coming out

[BenRoethig]

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.

[MacJediDude]

Come on sub-notebook! my aging 12" powerbook needs a replacement

[mkrishnan]

Originally Posted by Macrumors

In 2004, Apple had said that it was slowing down its development of the Mac OS

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.

[Foxglove9]

Why do i have a feeling 10.6 is coming in 2010 and it's going to be another major release.

[wordmunger]

The next Windows is code-named Windows 7? I guess Microsoft is getting tired cow jokes...

[twoodcc]

sounds good here. i love updates personally. as they keep improving, people will continue to buy their products....

[clevin]

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]

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.

[twoodcc]

how come there is no link to the interview?

[the.snitch]

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?