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Why must a new OS X come out every 15-16 months?

philipma1957 said:
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..

I would prefer 2 year for mac osx and 4 year for windows os. It would cut back some work I do.
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Those VM apps are integrated deeper into the OS with their custom kext extensions. They will be affected by any OS upgrades, regardless of length.

So, the easiest solution is to don't upgrade each year, just upgrade every 2-3 years if you use the virtual machines a lot and the rest of us will upgrade every year.

I don't understand the problem here, it's a very simple solution for you.
 
MikhailT said:
Those VM apps are integrated deeper into the OS with their custom kext extensions. They will be affected by any OS upgrades, regardless of length.

So, the easiest solution is to don't upgrade each year, just upgrade every 2-3 years if you use the virtual machines a lot and the rest of us will upgrade every year.

I don't understand the problem here, it's a very simple solution for you.
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Not really. If I am modding new machines every year I have to have fully up to date software. I sell to small business a lot. All they want to know is it works. So I have to have 2 softwares the old and the new in windows and mac..

Why to help a customer with his upgrade and why do they come to me and not Apple price and support. I can beat apple on price very easy and I actually can do better support then apple can most of the time. The turnover of os is a two edged sword for me more work and sometimes more business.

I was a bit down in the dumps about my health, I more eye problems, and I posted this thread.
 
philipma1957 said:
Not really. If I am modding new machines every year I have to have fully up to date software. I sell to small business a lot. All they want to know is it works. So I have to have 2 softwares the old and the new in windows and mac..

Why to help a customer with his upgrade and why do they come to me and not Apple price and support. I can beat apple on price very easy and I actually can do better support then apple can most of the time. The turnover of os is a two edged sword for me more work and sometimes more business.

I was a bit down in the dumps about my health, I more eye problems, and I posted this thread.
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I see what you mean, I didn't realize you were running a CS business. In that case, yea, the length of the OS upgrades will factor into the problems. The same is true for some big developers and corps.
 
philipma1957 said:
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.
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Averaging over the course of OS X's existence doesn't really make sense. Conditions have differed drastically throughout. Frankly when OS X launched it wasn't great. I would argue that Jaguar was the first truly usable version. Hence the hurry to refine it in the early years. Once they hit their stride with Panther, Apple shifted to a 2-year model. That was the plan for quite some time. Then, thanks to iOS's influence, last year they moved to a one-year model. Mavericks is a slight aberration due to the perceived need to greatly overhaul iOS's design language. Though it'll still arrive this year, obviously.

As far as why Apple's changed from 2 years to 1, I'd say it's from a desire to differentiate themselves from their competitors, and to keep the Mac fresh, and try to encourage more growth for the platform/stem the overall decline of the desktop PC marketplace. Being able to talk about year over year new features is a lot more engaging for users than just doing it once every two years.
 
Meyvn said:
Averaging over the course of OS X's existence doesn't really make sense. Conditions have differed drastically throughout. Frankly when OS X launched it wasn't great. I would argue that Jaguar was the first truly usable version. Hence the hurry to refine it in the early years. Once they hit their stride with Panther, Apple shifted to a 2-year model. That was the plan for quite some time. Then, thanks to iOS's influence, last year they moved to a one-year model. Mavericks is a slight aberration due to the perceived need to greatly overhaul iOS's design language. Though it'll still arrive this year, obviously.

As far as why Apple's changed from 2 years to 1, I'd say it's from a desire to differentiate themselves from their competitors, and to keep the Mac fresh, and try to encourage more growth for the platform/stem the overall decline of the desktop PC marketplace. Being able to talk about year over year new features is a lot more engaging for users than just doing it once every two years.
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The key difference has been in adding truly features to the OS over those releases, versus simply catching up.
I mean when OS X was really adding functionality, allowing new things to be done or in easier ways versus just supporting new hardware technologies; or just making it compatible with Intel processors; or just simply catching up or fixing annoying things that didn't work well the first time they were tried, like cloud services before they were even called that.
The competition for iOS was bleak at the beginning, and then some of them hit the market like a train at full steam; and this next iOS iteration seems to be a mix of what makes sense to catching up.
More hardware features will drive better OS, and real game changers in Software Apps will also help to make better OS.
The mouse became the trackpad, and the keyboard became...still the keyboard...some attempts to make it the touch screen or some dictation thing...but it isn't there yet...we are still faster making some keystrokes...imagine writing code in a different way...
If Apple pursues buying or implementing something better than Lytro cameras, it could drive some more things for the OS.
3D printing will be something else that can make a difference, the OS will evolve as features are added.
When specific apps or hardware gadgets become the natural way of doing something with a PC if when they make sense to become part of the OS, when they make sense to Apple...sadly not necessarily when they make sense to us (MacRumors enthusiasts).
 
philipma1957 said:
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.
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What you really should be calculating on is the time between releases, and not "x releases in y months". Using your math between Cheetah and Puma, there were two releases in six months or "one every three months". Not really making sense presenting it like that... Calculating that way would in fact make a fixed 20 month release cycle longer for every release. :p

The average time between releases of OS X so far is 17 months (or 518 days if we care about specific dates). Still less than your desired 20-24 months of course, but anyways.
 
They release them so soon so they can clean up the code, really. Although they introduce a few new features, I'd rather them just fix bugs in the sub updates (10.x.x), save the new features, and release them in ground breaking versions every 2 or so years.
 
ValSalva said:
Apple charged $30 for Lion and $20 for Mountain Lion. I doubt they even came close to recouping their development costs. Unless you mean that new OS's spur sales of new hardware.
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Maybe Mavericks will be $10 and the next OS update is $5 and then Apple will start paying us for updates? :D
 
ValSalva said:
Apple charged $30 for Lion and $20 for Mountain Lion. I doubt they even came close to recouping their development costs. Unless you mean that new OS's spur sales of new hardware.
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But money is fungible, and Apple's way in the black. Unless you think Apple would've made more money if they hadn't charged for Lion and ML, "profits," while an incredibly crude way of looking at the situation, does apply.
 
Meyvn said:
But money is fungible, and Apple's way in the black. Unless you think Apple would've made more money if they hadn't charged for Lion and ML, "profits," while an incredibly crude way of looking at the situation, does apply.
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Profits apply on the whole with regards to being in the black. But there is no way Apple is making profits specifically from charging $20 for upgrades to ML. Of course Apple would have lost more had they not charged for it.
 
ValSalva said:
Of course Apple would have lost more had they not charged for it.
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Right. So it's still, on a basic level, about profits. Apple believes that they make more when they charge for the update than when they don't. The black number is higher. That's what matters. You can't talk about the development of OS X in a vacuum, because OS X doesn't exist in a vacuum. Apple isn't an NPO that just makes OS X and sells it below cost. It's an extraordinarily profitable company that makes OS X as a method of selling products that do make them a profit. OS X is cheaper than it used to be, but that doesn't make it a charity. There's no need to pretend they don't make decisions based on profit motives. There are more interesting discussions to have than this.
 
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Meyvn said:
Right. So it's still, on a basic level, about profits. Apple believes that they make more when they charge for the update than when they don't. The black number is higher. That's what matters. You can't talk about the development of OS X in a vacuum, because OS X doesn't exist in a vacuum. Apple isn't an NPO that just makes OS X and sells it below cost. It's an extraordinarily profitable company that makes OS X as a method of selling products that do make them a profit. OS X is cheaper than it used to be, but that doesn't make it a charity. There's no need to pretend they don't make decisions based on profit motives. There are more interesting discussions to have than this.
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Of course Apple makes decisions based on profits and marketing. And companies do break down projects individually to see if they are making or losing money. That's my only point: that on it's own the development of OS X is not a profit generator. I know it's not that simple. Taken in the context of advancing the Mac platform and helping developers, charging less for OS X upgrades is win for Apple, and of course increases profits.
 
ValSalva said:
that on it's own the development of OS X is not a profit generator.
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How could you, or anyone else know hat Apple's margins are on OS X?

Taken in the context of advancing the Mac platform and helping developers,
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No, constantly adding new features to OS X each year and changing APIs (both of which have testing and debugging overheads) is generally not in the best interest of developers. It represents an almost constantly moving target for developers and this costs both time and money.
 
SlCKB0Y said:
How could you, or anyone else know hat Apple's margins are on OS X?
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They have charged only $20 for upgrades. It's not that hard to make an educated guess ;)

No, constantly adding new features to OS X each year and changing APIs (both of which have testing and debugging overheads) is generally not in the best interest of developers. It represents an almost constantly moving target for developers and this costs both time and money.
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This is true but it's the price of progress. I'm saying the low price helps developers in that it moves more OS X users to the newest version, in theory. It doesn't work out that way but I'm pretty sure price is not the reason.
 
Meyvn said:
Right. So it's still, on a basic level, about profits.
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It's about recouping costs.

If you think that the development that goes into OS X would be in any way profitable at $20 a copy for the new versions.... well....



Go see what other operating systems you can buy for $20 with any level of support.

Hint: Redhat Enterprise (kinda equivalent, but not as polished) is $49 per machine per year, to be entitled to updates. That's the "self support" license. Which i guess means ZERO phone support.
 
ValSalva said:
This is true but it's the price of progress. I'm saying the low price helps developers in that it moves more OS X users to the newest version, in theory.
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Agreed. Apple has always been willing to risk alienating a small subset of developers, users or both in the name of progress (at least the Apple after Jobs' return).
 
The recent updates since leopard really all work the same and honestly even if they charge 20.00 a year for software it's fully worth it. If not they don't force upgrades.
 
ValSalva said:
They have charged only $20 for upgrades. It's not that hard to make an educated guess ;)



This is true but it's the price of progress. I'm saying the low price helps developers in that it moves more OS X users to the newest version, in theory. It doesn't work out that way but I'm pretty sure price is not the reason.
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The updates in more recent iterations of OS X have been so minor that they'd have a cheek to ask for any more than $20.

I would have zero interest in Mavericks if it wasn't for the ability to use an Apple TV as a second monitor. The rest just seems like performance tweaks and stealing ideas off 3rd party devs (finder tabs).
 
emptysoul said:
The updates in more recent iterations of OS X have been so minor that they'd have a cheek to ask for any more than $20.

I would have zero interest in Mavericks if it wasn't for the ability to use an Apple TV as a second monitor. The rest just seems like performance tweaks and stealing ideas off 3rd party devs (finder tabs).
Click to expand...

But Mountain Lion had 200+ new features ;)
 
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