Cheetah----------- March 2001 Puma -------------September 2001 Jaguar-------------August 2002 Panther------------October 2003 Tiger---------------April 2005 Leopard------------October 2007 Snow leopard------August 2009 Lion ----------------July 2011 Mountain Lion------July 2012 9 os in 11 years and 4 months or 1 every 15.11 months. How about every 20 or 24 months? I just get used to an os and then it is time to toss it out. Just venting.
You don't have to update every time. I'm still running 10.6.8, and my MBP came with 10.5. I'll wait to see what happens with Mavericks.
Every two years like Tiger, Leopard, Snow Leopard had would be nice. Certainly would keep things speedy. Well, at least they are taking their time with Mavericks, it will probably be out 15 months after ML.
I personally think that the rapid change is good, especially since I have tons of iTunes money collected over the years.
In order to keep up, and not have critics say that apple "Cant innovate", they must produce new software often to keep the ecosystem fresh and launch with their model year of computer.
I think rapid releases are fine. It's not like you actually have to learn much new things each release. I'm on Mavericks right now and I can barely tell the difference between the last OS.
You need to learn that lately that Apple seems to go now to a brand new Release (every other time)and then the next one clean it up and stream line the code, etc. I kind of like this way.
New hardware requires new OS software to drive it. Whilst you're doing that, you might as well fix some bugs. And introduce some new features.
It's about functionality. I have some classic apps that I still need. So I still run mac os 9. And I have some mac os x ppc apps so I run snow leopard server. And I have some windows apps so I run windows 8. And I have some hardware that never got updated drivers so I still run lion. And I need airplay mirroring so I got mountain lion but recently replaced it with mavericks because mavericks handles multiple displays better (at least for my purposes). So I have a lot of systems because they serve different functions that I need. If you only have one system and are happy with the functions that your current system has then you don't need to upgrade.
Apple announced two years ago that they'll be switching over to 12-month release cycle. They're actually behind this year. That's just progress of better development tools, faster machines, more engineers, and so on. Microsoft is doing the same thing, they're already planning to release 8.1 in the next few months. Instead of doing major big releases in the past like Leopard, they're just splitting them up into smaller OS updates with less features. ML wasn't even that big of an upgrade from Lion, it was practically almost the same experience. So, if you've used Lion, switching to ML was a no-brainer.
Thanks SO much for starting a thread, venting and disappearing. If you don't like the new releases of OSX, don't upgrade. Problem solved. You'd think that'd be common sense.
"Vanish in the air you'll never find me" Sting . But seriously I have and off day vent about it rest up a bit read what everyone has to say about my vent got some good info. My conclusion is if it is like Lion to Mountain Lion I am cool with it. If it has a lot of change I won't be cool with it. I have a lot of machines in my home. A while back I was running Windows 7, Windows 8 ,Snow Leopard, Lion and Mountain lion. On 15 machines. Just a bit too many OS systems. I am now at Windows 7, Windows 8 and Mountain Lion. Which is a bit easier to deal with.
Of course he does. He's bought hundreds of Minis and given them HDD/SSD and/or RAM upgrades. Someone who spends as much time with computers as he does would know basic things like which company makes an OS. Personally I often don't upgrade straight away when a new OS comes out (though I did on one machine when Mountain Lion came out, I think). I often wait for a few point releases or so at least on machines that I need to work with as few issues as possible. That gives plenty of time for any major bugs to be ironed out and apps to be upgraded to be compatible with the new OS. For someone who upgrades new machines though I guess waiting a while before using a new OS wouldn't be a good option. After getting my BlueBerry iBook which had a handle (Macs don't come with these any more) and ran Mac OS 9, I later got a Windows laptop, and then in 2007 I bought a White MacBook which came with Mac OS X Tiger. Whilst some things had changed it was in many ways still the same and I found it wasn't difficult to get used to.
parallels, vmware, bootcamp. they all were affected by apple's 10.6 to 10.7 to 10.8 osx up grades. So for me a simple change from 10.7 to 10.8 meant I needed new vmware upgrades. As windows 7 works with vmware 4 and lion well but windows 7 works better with vmware 5 and 10.8. So a single upgrade may mean 4 to 5 software changes across a lot of machines for me.. @mdgm yeah I sometimes just get a bit tired since I have my own thing going and the upgrade business going. I would prefer 2 year for mac osx and 4 year for windows os. It would cut back some work I do. Have to say once in a while it does allow for a nice profit I sold 2009 imacs in 2011 at higher prices then I purchased them for. As they could run 10.6, 10.7 ,10.8 windows 7 windows 8 A few businesses had expensive software that needed that ability so they grabbed 2 or 3 from me at a small markup from oem even though they were 30 months old ( 6 months left under apple care). Saved them a few thousand bucks in software upgrades.
because apple wants us to pay for service packs. some of the features that they've implemented are so minor that i don't see how they could be charging for them.
Some things in the system probably need to be upgraded pronto, like bug fixes and security fixes. Other stuff like interface changes, not so much. I'd like to see Apple segment the upgrades, so that we'd have some more choice in what we upgrade. Not completely piecemeal, but say bugs/security, Finder changes, new technologies, etc. That way you could plug a security hole without say getting a new Mission Control or whatever. Maybe if we went to a subscription model that would work; no more pressure to lump enough stuff together to attract upgrade purchases. The developer is free to push out needed fixes to subscribers immediately. And Apple wouldn't have to spend time searching around for names.... Rob
OS X doesn't change so much that you need to get used to it again and again. ---------- Wait, i know this, this a broken record No. 7? Right?