why the long wait for tiger?

applewhore

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Hi

I'm sure I've missed something somewhere, but does anyone know why there's going to be such a delay before launching Tiger?

I watched the whole of WWDC on QT, and I have to say I was impressed...

I understand that they want to give Developers time to create new software, but why the extra delay from last year?

Is Apple saying that there WILL be 150 new features, but that they've only concentrated on the 10 they showed us at WWDC (and that the others aren't ready?)

I know there are loads of people who like to bitch about the fact that it's costing them $129 to upgrade their OS each year, but I for one would be happy to pay that right now just for what I've seen...

iChat AV with 3 others - the perfect business tool - especially now that they've brought in H264 technology - super cool...

This, coupled with Spotlight, Automator and the new Sync features are worth it for me...

I'm sold... "Here, kitty, kitty"! :p
 
If I were to hazard a guess, I'd bet they are not yet satisfied with the stability and/or security of 10.4. It might be ready enough for a demo, but naturally rather than risk provoking a tsunami of support phone calls, they want to do HUGE amounts of testing and debugging.
 
they have the time. i think it is as simple as that and i dont think they are quite ready with the look of it. they will probably launch a iLife 05 to go with it and they cant do that until 05 :) wouldnt it be cool if apple bought Babel Technology and incorporated their text-to-speech engine. it is sooooo good. even does swedish perfectly!
 
brianleahy said:
If I were to hazard a guess, I'd bet they are not yet satisfied with the stability and/or security of 10.4. It might be ready enough for a demo, but naturally rather than risk provoking a tsunami of support phone calls, they want to do HUGE amounts of testing and debugging.
i guess you're right - there's a huge difference between making sure the demo software works perfectly with your own (intentionally limited) hardware (e.g. G5) at WWDC and testing for the whole range of potential hardware / software configurations out here in "the real world"!

I'll still be very happy when it ships! ;)
 
In general I expect there to be an element of maximizing profitability in software releases as there is in hardware releases. Apple doesn't need to be three years ahead of Longhorn - two is enough and allows them to continue to pull enough (not all) interesting new capabilities out of their pocket when needed and charge for them. Plus, we'll all be salivating more for the new stuff having anticipated it and discussed it for some months.

...Larry

applewhore said:
i guess you're right - there's a huge difference between making sure the demo software works perfectly with your own (intentionally limited) hardware (e.g. G5) at WWDC and testing for the whole range of potential hardware / software configurations out here in "the real world"!

I'll still be very happy when it ships! ;)
 
They'll probably release 10.5 just prior to Longhorn too.
This will steal some of MS's Thunder, if just prior to Releasing their Revolutionary new OS, they Biggest Competitor in the Desktop Consumer Market releases a new OS which makes the features in their Revolutionary new OS appear ancient History (and in computing, 30months, or even 18months is Ancient History).

I wonder what Apple will call this OS? Since a Longhorn is a European Alpine Goat, anyone know of a European Native Wild Cat? Then Apple could release a "Longhorn KIller".
 
im kind of excited about the long wait. hopefully apple might actually add some new things we didnt see at the WWDC or at least really fine tune what they have already.

my biggest grip is, DO SOMETHING WITH THE DOCK ALREADY. it really hasnt been updated in 4 years.

10.3 didnt feel finished when it was released. it took a couple system updates to tie up lose ends. hopefully 10.4 will be a much tighter package.
 
lbrandt said:
Plus, we'll all be salivating more for the new stuff having anticipated it and discussed it for some months.

...Larry
I do understand what you mean but I'm afraid, for me anyway, 6 months takes me into the "boredom" stage when it comes to waiting for something...

The 2 - 3 months waiting for Panther was just about perfect...
 
I think the extra wait is good. Apple has a lot of time to iron out the bugs from Panther, and fully implement the new features in Tiger. I too hope they will come out with new features that weren't previewed at WWDC. Tiger is going to make Mac OS X so much better then before. I hope Apple is also working on a brand new iApp to include with Tiger when it ships.

BTW, quite OT, but does anyone have any idea where Inkwell is going? It seems like it's going nowhere, unless Apple has something up its sleeve that no one knows about? (Not starting rumors, just curious.)
 
I for one really hope they improve the crappy Finder, which also hasn't significantly changed since 10.0. Since then they've added a sidebar and changed from aqua to metal (which certainly is not an improvement), but the irritating spatial/browser hybrid remains. The Finder should use either spatial navigation or browser-style navigation, but not both. In my experience of using the Finder, you never know what's going to happen (especially with spring loaded folders) - will a new window pop up or not? Also when using a file browser, the view should always stay the same and not depend on the current folder being viewed. Apple should learn from the Gnome project on Linux - in the latest 2.6 release the default navigation method is spatial, and an entirely separate file browser window is also available if needed.
 
Salvo said:
I wonder what Apple will call this OS? Since a Longhorn is a European Alpine Goat, anyone know of a European Native Wild Cat? Then Apple could release a "Longhorn KIller".

The Iberian Lynx (actually, I think "Lynx" is a cool name for a UNIX based OS, unfortunately there's already a terminal based browser with that name)
 
Now where did that off-topic thing come from? ;-)

I'm glad Apple takes its time. But I _guess_ they want to deliver this early. To even more embarass Microsoft. "First half of 2005" - imagine what'd happen if they'd release it NOT in June (which would be expected) but in MARCH or even JANUARY. :) Steve on stage: "Redmond, you DO have a problem." ;-)
 
Yep, of course. But why do we even _talk_ about the codename of 10.5? Tiger in mid-2005, 10.5 in ... early 2007? Apple said they've adjusted and won't bring out that many upgrades in short time. WWDC 2006 will probably see the first preview of 10.5... That's a long, long time. :)
 
It's a bit annoying, I was holding out on buying a new Mac until one of two things happened:

1) iMacs went G5, or

2) New displays that matched the G5 PowerMacs were released.


Now that they've done number 2 I'd be very tempted, but now I'm thinking I might just wait until Tiger comes out.
 
lnoelstorr said:
Now that they've done number 2 I'd be very tempted, but now I'm thinking I might just wait until Tiger comes out.
There's always a reason to hold on for just_one_more_thing!

Fortunately, there are many more reasons to BUY, BUY, BUY!!! ;)
 
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