I was away on vacation last week, so I missed all the fuss about Apple’s announcement postponing any release of Leopard until October.
But now, catching up on the news and reading a week’s worth of email (and at the risk of finding myself tagged as “hoi-polloi”), it doesn’t sound like much of a big deal. I’m certainly not bothered about it. In some respects, I’m pleased.
First, it means I don’t have as much pressure on me to upgrade my hardware. I was seriously thinking of buying new kit, and have been for some time, but my existing Macs run 10.4.9 very happily and there’s no need for me to spend money replacing them until Leopard is released, or even some time after that. This delay gives me some extra time to save up some cash.
Second, I’d rather whatever got released is good stuff, and if that takes a few more months, so be it.
And third, the rapid development of earlier versions of OS X is not necessarily the pace that all versions should be developed at. As a community, we were treated to an incredibly swift path from 10.1 to 10.4, and now that 10.4 has matured I see no reason not to work happily for it for a while. There’s no need to change just for change’s sake.
I think Computerworld was using the tag "hoi polloi" to refer to those who were complaining. Either way, οἱ πολλοί ("the many") seems an odd phrase for an American magazine to be using: I thought Americans were proud of their democratic outlook.
Leopard seems to be going more slowly than Apple thought it might. And they've apparently had to shift some coders over to the iPhone. It is disappointing news, but it's not as if Tiger isn't the best OS for general desktop use currently available anyway.
One commentator seems to think Leopard will be making more use of ZFS than we expected:
http://blogs.zdnet.com/storage/?p=123
However that may be, Leopard should be worth having when it comes, and while I'd have liked it sooner, I can wait.
You may want to buy now. When Leopard does come out Apple will rev all the shipping models to only boot 10.5. Then you will buy a new Mac and when you need to boot it into 10.4. you won't be able to.
I mostly agree. Since 10.3 new versions haven't been as important. And for almost all users there don't seem to be any must have features (the same can be said of Tiger). But I was looking forward to Time Machine as I've never had an acceptable back-up procedure. Time Machine probably wouldn't have solved it all, but probably would have been a good starting point. But like you I'll keep my money a bit longer because I'm thinking to replace my laptop to one that will run Aperture and I was using waiting for Leopard as a restraint on my impulse.
And I may want an iPhone when my contract comes up next year, so let Apple get that right.
As to the comment about new machines only booting into 10.5. Even if true, not many would care and then it would probably be better to hold onto the old machine.
We may be democratic, but some are not beyond looking down their noses at those beneath us. I won't go into how current American policies treat democracy.
I'll wait until Apple is ready to sell a DVD with 10.5.x, where the "x" is somewhere beyond the initial release.
That's what I did with Tiger - - waiting until 10.4.6.
Since I'm still on dial-up, downloading a huge multimegabyte update is out of the question.
There's a rather common misunderstanding that 'hoi polloi' means 'upper-class twits' rather than 'the masses'. I suspect that's what Computerworld was on about; that Mac users -- who, US? -- are a bunch of spoiled brats whining about our toys not being ready right away.