How does everyone feel about the Macless Macworld?

I find it strange how people are "fed up with" or "angry with" Apple for not keeping up with those people's expectations. To talk about "how Leopard slipped in recent years" is _hilarious_ - if you think about how its development was only announced about 7 months ago. rubaiyat said: "Leopard's release date has slipped steadily in the last couple of years." Do you _really_ believe the things you say there? ;)

Microsoft released Windows XP in 2003 (late, might I add, according to the original Whistler plans) and will release Vista in 2007 (very late, might I add, according to the original Longhorn plans), whereas Apple released 10.0 in 2001, 10.1 in 2001, 10.2 in 2002, 10.3 in 2003 and 10.4 in 2005. I'd say Apple's pretty predictable about those releases. The frequency was more quick at the beginning, because there was a _lot_ to be fixed. But from Jaguar onwards, Apple could breathe a little more. I'm personally glad that Apple takes the time it needs for Leopard.
 
Tiger was released 18 months after Panther. it wasn't totally finished. i;d prefer a finished product to buggy rubbish, with leopard.

why do you really want this so bad, rubayiat? what is stopping you from doing what you need to do on Tiger, the best OS in the world?

Leopard probably won't be stable and thoroughly usable until about 10.5.3/4, which is easily going to be around august time, if not later.

buy a mac now. Tiger is just so powerful and stable. then in 9 months time, upgrade to Leopard. or don't.
 
My son would like to start the year with a new computer of his own. I'd like to get him off mine.

If we buy now it is bleedin' obvious it will be superceded in short order. Which means having paid too much for it or got short changed on features which will be crucial eg a 2nd internal hard drive to make Time Machine usable or Blu-Ray to read new media.

Both iLife and iWork need updating, that will cost A$119 each if they are upgrades. Leopard will cost A$199. These alone make a difference of A$436 if bought too early. Similarly there will be a major difference in the iMac 24" price.

It is the uncertainty that is painful. We expected to know by now when and if the upgrades would be available. Now it could be soon, or much later. My experience of Apple is little delays drag out into big delays and sometimes ultimate total disappointment. They can also make a major switch and leave you in the lurch if you moved too soon.

I have bought Macs previously to instantly regret them. My G4 AGP I grew to hate after having spent a small fortune on it. I don't want to do that again.
 
this could be endless though. iMacs won't ever have 2nd hard drive bays - that's what Mac Pro's are for; Time machine is designed for use with external hard drives.
blu-ray will be far too expensive for any realistic gain for at least a year from now, so i'd scratch that off the list for now.
iLife 04 is still very much usable. i don't want or need any of the features in the bloated 05/06 or even 07 releases. hell, if i could ask for a new mac with iLife 04 on it i would, i really can't see why moaning about a point release is that much of a deal. and iWork doesn't get sold with new macs anyway.

basically, i think my point is, is that the computer you actually want, the one you are putting off buying now, won't be released for at least a year. the computer that runs leopard perfectly, the one with blu-ray, et al.... it's just not viable in the next 2-3 months. and in a years time, you will be facing the same dilemmas...
 
No it won't be endless because all we are trying to do is not buy on the wrong side of a product upgrade.

Much of the rest of what you say is unsubstantiated assertions of what will prove in the end to be wrong. To backdate your assertions, "iMacs won't ever ship with upgradeable Video cards nor 2nd monitor support, that's what Mac Pro's are for" and Time Machine will have a hard time backing up reliably to a drive that is not necessarily connected or turned on.

iLife does ship with new iMacs and the existing versions have flaws one can only hope will be fixed in the next upgrade. I never said iWork gets sold with new Macs, but my son would be buying it with his proposed iMac and simply doesn't want to then in short order have to pay all over again for the next version.

The computer my son is aiming to buy is the shipping iMac 24" with video card upgrade. But that computer will be cheaper and/or better speced in the due upgrade.

To repeat myself, he is trying to avoid the extremely expensive upgrade to Leopard, iLife and iWorks because he will want those, and knowing Apple it will also freeze out certain features from slightly older Macs. Best not to have those just before a major change.

Seems quite obvious to me, I don't know why you are struggling with this, unless when you shop with Apple you just open your wallet and ask Apple to help itself, because it is all going in a good cause. ie Steve Jobs' backdated options.
 
I previously mentioned my G4 AGP. Within 3 weeks of my purchase it was superceded by a model that had Gigabit ethernet, as well as usable keyboard and mouse. Its AGP slot was the slowest version ever and proved both expensive and difficult to upgrade to another card that would support 2 monitors.

I think it came with only the bare minimum RAM as well. To rub soap in the wounds it crashed straight out of the box and proceeded to progressively become more unstable until I couldn't boot off the hard drive. Took me over a year to establish beyond a shadow of a doubt its problems were due to instability from overheating.

I bought it because I had been waiting years for Apple to finally upgrade their line to something worthwhile. I am not going to repeat that mistake again.
 
i think that, while yes, there is always the 'what if...' factor, there is every possiblity that you could be waiting around for a long time. there is always something cool on the horizon, and always has been. at the moment, it's Leopard, and Blu-ray. a year ago, it was the first Intel macs, a year before that, the 3ghz G5, and a G5 Powerbook, Tiger, a year before that etc.

apple has never shown much trend between their software and hardware releases - i mean it took at least 7 months or so for the mac mini's (which were shipping with Tiger) to even get 512mb RAM as standard. anyone who uses tiger knows that even 512mb is the bare minimum. i don't think that apple will release updates specifically for Leopard, only releases that needed doing anyway, regardless of leopard, it doesn't go hand in hand.
 
Well it all depends how big a distraction the iPhone has been. It obviously took away resources from Mac projects and was Steve's Lieberskind.

Unfortunately this is one of the consequences I predicted back when the Intel announcement was made. Progressively the Mac will fade as the star of Apple's business as the iPod takes over and Apple will assign less resources to it.

Steve I am sure will have plenty more shocks in store for his loyal Mac users. Like God's testing of Job in the Bible, this Jobs is testing his power over his customers to see how far they can be afflicted before renouncing their devotion to the Mac.
 
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