Apple to Unveil New Leopard OS in August 519
Max Fomitchev writes "Looks like Apple is going to reveal its new cool and fast Mac OS code-named 'Leopard' in the upcoming World Developer's Conference in August. Good news for Apple! And terrible news for Microsoft. If 'Leopard' is really what it claims to be, i.e. fast and efficient, in sharp contrast to slow and resource hungry Windows Vista, we certainly would see Apple's remarkable market share gain next year."
Stock Tip (Score:3, Insightful)
Who writes this junk? (Score:5, Insightful)
If "Leopard" is really what it claims to be, i.e. fast and efficient in sharp contrast to slow and resource hungry Windows Vista, we certainly would see Apple's remarkable market share gain next year."
Maybe the reason fewer people are taking Slashdot seriously is because Slashdot doesn't seem to take itself seriously.
Hire a f-ing editor to check out and rewrite the most egregious but still post-worthy submissions. No, a real editor, not one of your friends.
This is just NOT news. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:More Speculation (Score:2, Insightful)
There's nothing at all in the article on Fomitchev's site that wasn't common knowledge weeks ago. Apple itself announced Leopard's unveiling over a week ago.
Another self-promoting Slashdot submission! Submitted by Fomitchev, about Fmoitchev's blurb on Fomitchev's blog, which links to a short article that is hardly newsworthy.
Someone tell me why I should pony up to be a subscriber again? Even at the low, low price of free, Slashdot's not looking like a great deal.
Re:Stock Tip (Score:2, Insightful)
In all seriousness, why doesn't Apple sell Leopard for like $99 to PC users? Would drivers be the limiting force? If it comes out before Vista, is better than Vista, and cheaper, and has less system requirements....it could really sway people over to their camp. Or is it because then nobody would need to buy their hardware? Enlighten me please.
Yet another Apple commercial (Score:4, Insightful)
Year of the Mac? (Score:5, Insightful)
Seems a bit out of character..
Re:I think there is that possiblily - (Score:3, Insightful)
So, basically you choose your computer on the basis of its marketing image, rather than any serious look at what it can actually do, or how it works. You realise how lame that is? Still, it is certainly this sort of attitude that has handed Microsoft its 90%+ market share, so you're not alone.
Re:Huh? Wanna say that again? (Score:3, Insightful)
Why? Because Microsoft has chosen the option to add in more options, rather than streamline. Can't really fault them for this strategy, since it seems to work for them and most people, but it annoys the hell out of me.
Re:More Speculation (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:More Speculation (Score:2, Insightful)
Where did that get IBM with OS/2???
Nathan
Re:Who writes this junk? (Score:4, Insightful)
By week, I think you mean year. The fact leopard would be announced at WWDC was pre-announced at last year's WWDC. I'm not sure how this is news.
Remarkable Market Share? (Score:4, Insightful)
2.2% is remarkable? (Score:3, Insightful)
In calendar year 2005, total PC unit sales were 208.6 million.
Apple's selling plenty to survive as a profitable niche product, sure. But they are competition for Microsoft in the same sense mainframes are.
Wow, Slashdot is really falling apart. (Score:4, Insightful)
If "Leopard" is really what it claims to be, i.e. fast and efficient in sharp contrast to slow and resource hungry Windows Vista, we certainly would see Apple's remarkable market share gain next year."
WTF is that? First off, it's wrong. It's very very wrong. Tiger is better than XP now, but did we see 'Apple's remarkable market share gain this year'? No. There is nothing certain about Apple and 'market share gain' no matter how superior their products. Forget 'remarkable'. Second off, it's written so badly I had to go over it three times to make sure it really said what it said.
Beating the dead horse (Score:1, Insightful)
Apple (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Stock Tip (Score:5, Insightful)
If Microsoft could seriously limit and control the hardware on which Windows would run, they could probably do a lot better with drivers, too.
These days, now that Apple is using more standardized Intel chipsets, they are able to pick a few configurations that are identical to perfectly good PCs out there and develop for those machines. As technology advances, they'll still have a limited group of configurations to develop for. (And yes, they aren't putting out high powered gaming configurations right now, but they will have high powered graphics workstations when the high end desktops come out.) If they had to start supporting everything, they would be opening a Pandora's Box of compatability issues. Dealing with the required driver variants would eat up the same resources they're using to innovate.
Besides, the reason Apple sells OS updates for $99 is that they know that everyone buying a copy has already bought a machine they produced.
-JMP
Re:Who writes this junk? (Score:4, Insightful)
Since when have Microsoft OSs not been slow and resource-hungry? And when did Apple ever not prioritize elegance and performance?
Careful - your fanboyism's showing.
Erm, a long time. Apple needs to differentiate itself from Microsoft to retain its market share. Moving to an Intel architecture was a risky step, as it deprived them of one of their major differentiating factors, PPC architecture.
The minute Apple runs on commodity PC hardware no-one has any reason to buy expensive Mac hardware, so they won't. This takes Apple out of the hardware game, and makes them entirely reliant on software and iPods. Mac OS/X will then compete directly with Windows, and though it's faster, more stable and more secure, Windows has that whole 90%+ market share thing going for it. Apple would be squished in short order.
Sorry? If Apple wants to make OS/X run on commodity PC hardware it's going to have exactly the same problems. Sure, it could arbitrarily draw a line in the sand and refuse to support hardware older than X years, but that's not going to impress anyone used to Windows' (at least passable) support for legacy PC peripherals.
And even if the problems weren't as severe as MS's in the short term, by giving up control over the hardware OS/X runs on, Apple will be ensuring it only gets worse in the future, until within a few years they'll be just as stuffed as MS.
Riiiiight, because Ballmer et al are reknowned industry-wide as cuddly, fluffy-wuffy teddy-bears.
Certainly MS is looking shakier than it has for a long time, but I doubt the paranoia level's decreased much since Bill left.
Very poetic.
Except, of course, the dinosaurs actually kept the "mice" down for millions of years, and it was only once the dinosaurs had already naturally gone extinct on their own that the mice even had a chance. There's nothing like a bad analogy to really demonstrate you don't know what you're talking about...
This is probably the only mildly sensible thing in the entire article.
What, you mean the guys who failed to put a dent in it for the last twenty years? Sorry Mac guys and girls, but when a cash-poor FOSS operating system written by a bunch of hobbyists frightens MS more than a long-term competitor, you obviously aren't competing quite as hard as you think.
A better candidate than Apple?
Linux (free, doesn't have to worry about profits or budgets, has been eating MS's lunch for years on the server-side
It does not matter, and Apple does not care (Score:2, Insightful)
None of those things will EVER happen. Apple has come to understand you can run quite a profitible biz by having 7-10% marketshare. It even helps them because the evil virus authors don't write viruses due to it's market share compared to windows(one of the reasons). The OS runs well (one of the main reasons) because Apple controls the hardware it runs on, as opposed to MS having to deal with generic Asian motherboards and horribly written driver software by 3rd party vendors.
The Steve never wanted to become Bill Gates. Bill Gates and Microsoft has come to accept Apple because it does not effect them. Microsoft could wait another 5 years to release Vista and it would still be bought by 90% of the planet who runs PC's.
Empty Article (Score:5, Insightful)
The article had NO MEANING. It was one of those things you say to your buddies while hanging around. "You know, if Leopard is as fast as Apple says so, MS could be in deep [insert colorful adjective here]." Then you're promptly shot down by your friends, reminding you that the masses have a "Crapple" frame of mind because their last experience with Mac OS was with the pizza-box LC IIs running System 7 from back when they were in high school, and they don't care any more.
Not only does this bode poorly for Slashdot's credibility as having important and accurate information, but what does this say about journalism in general, when this passes for a good article. Oh, wait, it's not even an article! It's a blog posting! Do we even know who this Max Fomitchev is? I've never heard of him. This place is slowly becoming a rumor mill full of dupes.
Come back when you've got an article from a credible source, no less than 500 words, with some real analysis, facts to back it up, and maybe a cool graphic or charts or something. Until then, stop wasting my time.
Re:No, We Won't. (Score:2, Insightful)
What you fail to recognise however, is that Microsoft never have, and never will, deal with advancement of technology (why bother when you've got Sun, IBM, Apple etc. doing it for you, ten years in advance?).
No... Windows will continue to represent the 'world of computing' to people who don't know what a computer is (and presumably think that Macdonald's make the best food in the world!!).
As for Apple having a 'niche' market share, this is really funny. You could equally argue that more than 90% of people who need a stable and robust system that can process huge files, and have more important things to do then 'patch' their operating system every other week, have already ruled windows out. Remember those of us with an interest in the computer industry spent ten years listening to MS fanboys like yourself claiming that Mac's were 'rubbish' with their windows and newfangled mice and would NEVER replace dos.
Oh, and love the gaming bit. Yeah, mac users will never be able to compete with people who spend $1000 to play 'niche' games on a computer. Yeah idiots like Mac users will probably just have to spend $50 dollars on a gamecube and play stuff created by the world greatest games developers... oh dear. Not to worry Vista should be out soon, so you will be able to spend another $100 on making your email program run more slowly. How the world of technology envies you!!!!
Re:Remarkable Market Share? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Stock Tip (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:More Speculation (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:More Speculation (Score:3, Insightful)
Did you even stop for a second to think how idiotic - not to mention unlikely, bordering on impossible - this idea is ?
Re:Stock Tip (Score:2, Insightful)
Now to the point: If OSX (or Leopard) ran on PC's it WOULD NOT have every single one of XP's problems "in minutes" -- nor ever. While driver issues could cause *some* problems - by no means would it be the downfall of Apple's OS. I can't help but laugh when Window's Folks use the "Driver Excuse" to explain why Windows has so many problems. It's been said before, and I'll say it again: Window's biggest problem (i.e. reason for instability) is backwards-compatibility. Apple has been avoiding that pretty well.
Yes, if OSX (or Leopard) ran on PC's (and got a large enough market share), it would certainly become a larger target for spyware and viri, but I think because of its Unix backbone, OSX would be able to hold off better than Windows.
MS have a lot more practice at dealing with those issues which is why XP is by and large, so much better than 9x in these ways.
First of all: MS has more practice? Yeah, more practice at avoiding the issues! Second, Yeah, OS9 had problems... and the progress OSX has over OS9 is a heck of a lot more compared Windows 95 -> 98 -> ME (yeah, I joke) --> 2000 --> XP. Comparing XP to OS9 isn't fair. Course, OSX against XP is a blowout too...
Re:My feelings on OS X (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Who writes this junk? (Score:3, Insightful)
I wonder where people get the idea that OSX is fast. Apple marketing?
Most benchmarks that i've seen seem to indicate the opposite.
http://sekhon.berkeley.edu/macosx/ [berkeley.edu]
Even my X41 Thinkpad with it's Pentium M 1.6GHz running debian testing with stock kernel does time echo "scale=5000; 4*a(1)" | bc -l faster (1m9s) than MacBook Pro 2GHz running OSX (1m18s). The very same MacBook Pro does (0m52s) when running linux.
Not very good benchmarks I know, but i'd like to see some prove that OSX does anything faster than windows or linux.
Re:Stock Tip (Score:3, Insightful)
That would happen... (Score:2, Insightful)
Yes, when MS got complaints from both users, they would rush to reconsider.
No seriously, are you trolling, or do you not understand the numbers here?
Re:Huh? Wanna say that again? (Score:4, Insightful)
I suspect that has something to do with the fact that, with Apple, you constantly have to upgrade your hardware as well as your software. It's not like you can go back and install OS X on your 1998 PowerPC 740 and expect it to run faster than the OS it originally came with.
-Eric
Sounds like microsoft would come out okay (Score:3, Insightful)
What I'd like to see would be some sort of 'red box' for Linux. I've yet to find a program that I want to use that WINE runs well, much less flawlessly. I'd have no problem paying for a Windows installation, I just want to avoid all the problems that go along with it. A Virtual Machine isn't the environment I'd like to be working with, but something like the red box would be pretty cool with Linux. Linux development would keep up because most Linux users wouldn't want to touch Windows if it can be avoided.
Re:More Speculation (Score:3, Insightful)
They just look sort of OS X-ish, the widgets just don't feel quite right, because the shapes, the spacing between text and button edges etc. is different from native widgets. So in the end it just looks like some Linux app using an somewhat close but not good enough OS X theme.
And then there's the problem that programmers who are not familiar with the Mac and its UI guidelines, just just native widgets the wrong way, because they can't think outside of the (terrible) Windows UI convention paradigm.
Re:More Speculation (Score:4, Insightful)
I've had with these editors. I'm assuming they get paid for their work, yet they can't even check articles like this for substance, or spot that the sumitter and blog owner are the same person and probabably looking to get some quick ad revenue.
And even if the editors work for free, you'd at least expect they had enough pride in their work to do a decent job.
Re:More Speculation (Score:5, Insightful)
Slashdot stories are almost always links to blogs which links to reprints of stories. Half of them are uninterestingly written or contain nearly no information. BUT
Even if there was no link, if it was just a headline: Apple to soon release OSX Leopard!...without even an article..it wouldnt matter because slashdot is about the discussion. I want to see what people think about leopard..i want to see people uncovering cool features that arent mentioned in most stories..i want beta testers to come forward and tell about their experiances...THIS is why slashdot is great. Much more interesting than sites with many stories, but no usable forum to speak of. (digg,etc)
That beeing said, I have no idea why anyone would subscribe. I just block ads and get the stories ad-free anyways. And as for seeing them early...who to discuss with..yourself?
IBM tried this already with OS/2, it failed (Score:5, Insightful)
This was already tried with IBM OS/2 and it failed, and IBM was even requiring that users have a real copy of Windows. The future is vitualization and being able to run any version or patch of Windows. BootCamp is cool but it is temporary.
Not sure Vista is the slow resource hungry one (Score:3, Insightful)
The Windows machine is more than twice the clock speed of the economy mac mini, but even with this in mind I can't help but get the impression the MacOS is abnormally sluggish.
I am not traditionally a mac user (or a windows user for that matter) and people who are more familiar with Apples history tell me that the lack of a 'snappy' feeling in the GUI is just something you get used to, and not representative of the efficiency of the O/S... but i'm not sure that I buy into that.
Anyway, Let me go ahead and make my points very clear:
1) Vista is really not sluggish in the sense we are talking about here. Especially if you get the new RTM (post beta2) builds from MSDN. In fact it is much snappier than any Mac/Gnome/KDE desktop I have worked in on similar hardware. (Perhaps this is becuase the windows GUI is so ugly
2) Current MacOS IS sluggish, maybe its becuase of all that silly anti-aliasing and frequent x86 emulation, I really don't know, but if they make a new O/S which solves this problem there would be ALOT of people more willing to use it, especially if they can get some damn native applications available for x86.
Re:It will be cool and fast, DUH! (Score:2, Insightful)
A lot of posters on Slashdot are entirely missing the point. The Macintosh is not *meant* to appeal to people like us, the nerds, the geeks, the IT guys who love to hack about. The point of a Mac is that it's stylish, runs well, works, and is headache-free (or at least is *supposed to be*). The Mac is meant to appeal to the everyman, including power users who may want some customizability, it is NOT meant to appeal to the hardcore techies.
:: I get better entertainment value from a PC because it supports better quality sound output (true surround support), HD support, true PVR/Media Center capabilities, and of course, Games which is a Billion Dollar industry Apple has soundly ignored. ::
1 - Macs do have surround sound support, and when's the last time a shite Dell box had optical audio out?
2 - PVR/Media Center is a dream of the geek. The rest of the world uses TiVo, this is *not* a feature that Apple is concerned with simply because it's a hardcore feature that 99.99% of the Mac-using population will NEVER touch. You're complaining about a Toyota not having a big-block V8.
3 - Games are a legitimate issue, but the primary Mac audience is not very game-heavy. As their market share increases, particularly with college-age students, this will correct itself. Macs are *capable* of running games (very much so in fact), it is simply that the market share and demographics are not encouraging for porting things over, but that is changing.
Being in college right now, I can see the takeover of the Mac proceeding quite rapidly. 4 people close to me have just switched in the last month with the release of the MacBook (the only truly affordable Mac laptop), and many more have entirely forgotten about Dell, Toshiba, Sony, and the like, and are hell-bent on a Mac when their existing PCs expire. Apple may not be gaining large marketshare in the office, or with older folk who are already tied to their PCs, but if you check out the college market, you will find that Apple has been eating it up over the last year or two.
Heck, I'm an engineer (of the mechanical sort), we LOVE our PCs. The fact that any of us are switching is a testament to Apple's marketing of OSX/Macs to the college crowd. As these college kids graduate and move into the workforce, they will bring the Mac marketshare with them.
I know I'm getting a Mac for the parents soon, simply because it's easy to set up, more foolproof than any other OS out there, reasonably secure, more or less immune from viruses and spyware, and my mother enjoys the bouncing bar at the bottom of the screen more than obscure "Start" menus that don't appeal to a non-technical mind.
Re:More Speculation (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:List of OS X Code Names (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Huh? Wanna say that again? (Score:3, Insightful)
Since your post is in line with what I was going to say, I decided to just add a couple of things and then add my other two cents directed at the others reading these posts.
To add to the facts you present, if a computer system has 64mb of RAM or greater (not unreasonable for the last 10 years) then WindowsXP is faster than Win95, Win98, and WinME.
This is significant as the Win9x models used assembly optimiation and also due to the nature of the OS architecture, there is a lot 'less' going on in the Win9X OSes. (i.e. Security, Object passing, way processess are handled, etc.)
Vista ALSO has a chance to best WindowsXP on performance on equivalent hardware, again RAM being a key. I would estimate that if you system has 256mb of RAM Vista will again out perform even WindowsXP. (In our internal testing, non-official, post Beta 2, many applications, and this includes games, applications on Vista run 10-25% faster than they do on WindowsXP.)
The Vista performance can be attributed to several sound differences, the new memory allocation system, how paging works, the new caching systems, the new network stacks, and even the GPU drawing offsets.
Just a quick example of Vista's jump in performance can be seen on identical systems running WinXp and Vista and doing even basic tasks as Web Browsing (even non-IE), Vista will display the page in 1/10th the time WindowsXP will. Also with the Vista Video model, scrolling and display of the page is smoother, especially when animations/flash in involved.
Vista could hit the market and not be faster than WinXP in 'every' regard, but I would not be surprised that the numbers we are seeing are accurate to the final version, with the possibility of the final version of Vista even surpassing WinXP in many areas.
Here are my thoughts on this topic that are not an addition to the post I am responding to...
As for the whole debate about OSX 'getting' faster, people really aren't using OSX on the same hardware that it was released on. 10.4 is a dog on a system that 10.2 runs rather well on. RAM upgrades often make a difference, but with the increasing complexity of OSes, this is becoming true of almost ALL OSes.
Also when you look at OSX, it is still a very immature OS when you get beyond the MACH/BSD core. This would leave room for a lot of improvement, but sadly unlike Microsoft where update and Service Packs for XP have been free for the past 6 years, Apple makes users drop out $99 bucks for even 'optimiation' and set of bug fixes.
I know people say that 'new' features are added in each 10.x release, but if you look at these 'features' you should notice that the SAME LEVEL of features, especially the applications bundled are nothing different than 'free' add-on Microsoft has been providing with WindowsXP. (WindowsXP has actually had new applicaiton level features available for free from Micorosft since its release than even OSX, yet MS hasn't charged a single user for these new 'features'.
I don't hate Apple, and I use OSX, but the mindset of many Mac users borderlines on a neurosis of protecting their 'beliefs' rather than 'exposing' themselves to the truth.
One area this manifest is that people make fun of XP for not releasing a new version since 2001, yet this is far from the truth. With SP1, SP2 and the free application downloads like photostory or the new movie maker, etc Microsoft has continued to provide VERY COMPERABLE upgrades and new features for XP over the years waiting for Vista.
The difference between Microsoft and Apple here, the XP updates, features, and security fixes are and always have been free. Microsoft doesn't slap a new name on XP and try to scam $99 out of their users every year. This is
Re:Huh? Wanna say that again? (Score:1, Insightful)
You are so wrong, so stupid. OSX 10.0 was a DOG, a real FUCKING BIG DOGSLOW, so it's "easy", really, to be "faster" when you started DOG SLOW. Osx 10.0, 10.1, 10.2 are so slow compared to Windows 2000. 10.3 and 10.4 are acceptable but not as SNAPPY as, say, Windows XP.
Then, windows 2000 was faster than win98, if you compared them with a computer that got a minimum amount of ram (256's good). You can see that just doing something like viewing the FPS in the games.
Then, Windows XP got a better VM implementation and some more optimizations. (less fragmentation, for example)
Yes, every new version of Windows cost some more RAM, but they run BETTER on the same processor, graphic chip etc. Just tri-boot win98, win2000 and winXP and do some benchs on the same machine (with 256 of ram minimum). There's a real difference, and it's a lot faster.
Re:Who writes this junk? (Score:3, Insightful)