3 ms·

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

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.

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.