3 ms·

Just over a year old, and just past two years since Apple first showed it at WWDC 2008. Snow Leopard was a relatively minor upgrade even by Apple's admission (h

Just over a year old, and just past two years since Apple first showed it at WWDC 2008. Snow Leopard was a relatively minor upgrade even by Apple's admission (hence the price tag $100 lower than for previous iterations), yet it still suffered delays because of work on iOS. Meanwhile, there was zero mention of anything Macintosh at WWDC this year, meaning we're probably at least a year off from any real news at 10.7, which would put us at 4 years since OS X has had any significant user facing updates.

megablast 16y ago
To be honest, what more do you want to see in it? Perhaps Apple should go down Microsoft's route, and add more and more stuff until it looks and acts ridiculously. I hope it does not.
- cemregr 16y ago
  Resolution-independent UI. They've postponed it for years.
- torpor 16y ago
  >To be honest, what more do you want to see in it? An App Store for OSX would be nice. Or even just a repository mechanism - I am so sick of updating the apps on my Mac systems when my multiple Linux boxes are always up-to-date with the latest stable releases. Its 2010, can we please have an OSX repo mechanism, Apple?
  - bruceboughton 16y ago
    Most OS X apps seem to have this built in. The donkey is somewhat out of the stable with auto-update on OS X, no?
    - commandar 16y ago
      Some apps use third-party libraries like Sparkle to provide this. But it's inconsistent between applications with no guarantee that any given app is updated without user intervention.
- commandar 16y ago
  In the time since 10.5 was released, MS has gone from the creaking, ancient XP to putting out Vista (yes, with some rough edges) to Windows 7, which is, frankly, the best desktop operating system that Microsoft has ever produced. The superbar is a better dock than the Dock. Windows Search was a usable app launcher before Spotlight was. Aero Snap and Peek are useful window management features. During the same time period, desktop linux has rapidly evolved, with Ubuntu 10.04 being a very polished UI on top of a *nix base -- something which used to be OS X's great claim to fame. What I'm getting at is that Apple has been so focused on the mobile sector that they've been consistently and thoroughly out-innovated by their competitors in the last several years. I don't understand how anyone could argue that Apple resting on their laurels after 10.5 while Windows and Linux has consistently moved forward could possibly be a good thing. I mean, remember WWDC 2006 where Apple was bragging that they were releasing Vista 2.0? [1] What about WWDC 2004 with the "Introducing Longhorn" banners? [2] For much of the last decade, Apple was at the forefront of desktop innovation. That hasn't really been the case since they started focusing on iOS, and the fact that they're pulling manpower from the Macintosh to work on iOS is a key factor in why. [1] http://www.macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/comments/10441/ http://www.macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/comments/10441/ [2] http://macdevcenter.com/pub/a/mac/2004/07/01/wwdc.html http://macdevcenter.com/pub/a/mac/2004/07/01/wwdc.html
  - Tamerlin 16y ago
    Realistically, Apple hasn't even been all that innovative at all. They haven't really come up with all that much that's new, they've just been making existing things looks nicer than everyone else does. If you look at OSX and Windows 7 from a purely technical angle, they aren't actually all that different. They both have an increasingly analogous set of libraries (Cocoa looks more like .NET every time I visit ADC's site, though Apple still isn't in Microsoft's league as far as development tools and languages). Apple has done some innovative things, like OpenCL -- which, naturally, Microsoft is copying... but in the end, the differences between OSX and Windows 7 are largely user experience, not technology. That's not a bad thing, but it does highlight the fact that most of the "innovation" that Apple has been touting over the years hasn't been innovation, it's been lambasting Microsoft for not having its act together. I suspect that Apple is focusing on mobile computing and the cloud partly because there's no technical way to differentiate its computers from everyone else's any more. Their internals are built by the same companies that build everyone else's internals... so the only differences left are the operating system and the chassis. That's not going to do wonders for their margins.

megablast 16y ago

To be honest, what more do you want to see in it? Perhaps Apple should go down Microsoft's route, and add more and more stuff until it looks and acts ridiculously. I hope it does not.

cemregr 16y ago
Resolution-independent UI. They've postponed it for years.
torpor 16y ago
>To be honest, what more do you want to see in it? An App Store for OSX would be nice. Or even just a repository mechanism - I am so sick of updating the apps on my Mac systems when my multiple Linux boxes are always up-to-date with the latest stable releases. Its 2010, can we please have an OSX repo mechanism, Apple?
- bruceboughton 16y ago
  Most OS X apps seem to have this built in. The donkey is somewhat out of the stable with auto-update on OS X, no?
  - commandar 16y ago
    Some apps use third-party libraries like Sparkle to provide this. But it's inconsistent between applications with no guarantee that any given app is updated without user intervention.
commandar 16y ago
In the time since 10.5 was released, MS has gone from the creaking, ancient XP to putting out Vista (yes, with some rough edges) to Windows 7, which is, frankly, the best desktop operating system that Microsoft has ever produced. The superbar is a better dock than the Dock. Windows Search was a usable app launcher before Spotlight was. Aero Snap and Peek are useful window management features. During the same time period, desktop linux has rapidly evolved, with Ubuntu 10.04 being a very polished UI on top of a *nix base -- something which used to be OS X's great claim to fame. What I'm getting at is that Apple has been so focused on the mobile sector that they've been consistently and thoroughly out-innovated by their competitors in the last several years. I don't understand how anyone could argue that Apple resting on their laurels after 10.5 while Windows and Linux has consistently moved forward could possibly be a good thing. I mean, remember WWDC 2006 where Apple was bragging that they were releasing Vista 2.0? [1] What about WWDC 2004 with the "Introducing Longhorn" banners? [2] For much of the last decade, Apple was at the forefront of desktop innovation. That hasn't really been the case since they started focusing on iOS, and the fact that they're pulling manpower from the Macintosh to work on iOS is a key factor in why. [1] http://www.macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/comments/10441/ http://www.macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/comments/10441/ [2] http://macdevcenter.com/pub/a/mac/2004/07/01/wwdc.html http://macdevcenter.com/pub/a/mac/2004/07/01/wwdc.html
- Tamerlin 16y ago
  Realistically, Apple hasn't even been all that innovative at all. They haven't really come up with all that much that's new, they've just been making existing things looks nicer than everyone else does. If you look at OSX and Windows 7 from a purely technical angle, they aren't actually all that different. They both have an increasingly analogous set of libraries (Cocoa looks more like .NET every time I visit ADC's site, though Apple still isn't in Microsoft's league as far as development tools and languages). Apple has done some innovative things, like OpenCL -- which, naturally, Microsoft is copying... but in the end, the differences between OSX and Windows 7 are largely user experience, not technology. That's not a bad thing, but it does highlight the fact that most of the "innovation" that Apple has been touting over the years hasn't been innovation, it's been lambasting Microsoft for not having its act together. I suspect that Apple is focusing on mobile computing and the cloud partly because there's no technical way to differentiate its computers from everyone else's any more. Their internals are built by the same companies that build everyone else's internals... so the only differences left are the operating system and the chassis. That's not going to do wonders for their margins.