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Apple to Unveil New Leopard OS in August

Posted by samzenpus on Thu Jul 06, 2006 06:51 AM
from the new-kitty dept.
Operating Systems Software Businesses Apple IT
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."
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[+] Leopard Fake Screenshot Contest Winners Announced 163 comments
Austin Sarner writes "Phill Ryu's Fake Leopard Screenshot contest which has been attracting a quite a bit of buzz has just ended and the winners have been announced! While there is a bunch of expected stuff in these screenshots, the entrants did not hold back when it came to trying out crazy stuff — and surprisingly, a good amount of them work great. Ranging from new window styles to a complete rethink of a window based work environment, these are sure to make any UI geek excited. The winners received over $1,000 each in prizes, and were obviously motivated to put out some great stuff. The judges included Wil Shipley, the creator of Delicious Library, David Watanabe, who makes NewsFire and Acquisition, as well as numerous other smaller devs."
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  • More Speculation (Score:5, Interesting)

    by eldavojohn (898314) * <my/.username@@@gmail.com> on Thursday July 06 2006, @06:52AM (#15666017) Homepage Journal
    There's not a lot of meat to this article other than "here comes Leopard!" This tech blog seems to state the obvious and then say perhaps five times ... so I'll throw down some speculation as this article [osopinion.com] points out.

    Way back in the day, Apple code named their boxes by color. From the aforementioned article:
    Red Box (for those that don't remember), was said to be a compatibility environment where Windows apps ran on the Macintosh but did so within a separate Windows installation. Apple doesn't have to reverse engineer the Windows API (like WINE) to get this functionality and theoretically upset Microsoft. Rather, it could simply be based on a standard copy of Windows. Red Box would override Windows native interface when run on OS X and would incorporate OS X's Aqua user Interface in the place of the Windows UI. The software would then make the two environments (Mac and Windows) functionally seamless with one another. Unlike a virtual environment, the end result would be full compatibility while retaining both visual as well as functional usability for the Mac user.
    So we can speculate that Leopard might not only be fast but also encourage a partitioned Windows installation using boot camp so that it can reference everything within Windows and run Windows apps flawlessly without having to reboot or (more importantly) reverse engineer Windows.

    Again, this is just speculation, I've been expecting them to put 'red box' functionality in a release of OS X soon.

    • Re:More Speculation (Score:4, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 06 2006, @07:01AM (#15666051)
      It certainly makes a lot more sense for them to just use a Windows installation. If they do that, Microsoft is likely to be okay with it since it means they'll sell more copies of Windows. If Apple reverse engineered the Windows API, Microsoft would probably make "improvements" to it out of spite, to cause things to break when run on the Mac's reverse-engineered API.

      That's probably also why Apple didn't reverse engineer MAPI so Mail.app could talk to Exchange, choosing instead to screen-scrape Outlook Web Access.

      • Re:More Speculation (Score:5, Interesting)

        by jcr (53032) <[jcr] [at] [mac.com]> on Thursday July 06 2006, @07:17AM (#15666111) Journal
        If Apple reverse engineered the Windows API, Microsoft would probably make "improvements" to it out of spite, to cause things to break when run on the Mac's reverse-engineered API.

        Actually, I'd say that implementing Win32 on Mac OS X would be a way that Apple could screw Microsoft, but good. A second implementation would freeze it: "Why aren't you using the normal win32? I want to use your app on my Mac!"

        It would create considerable pressure on developers to ensure that their apps needed nothing more than whatever snapshot of the Win32 API Apple had decided to implement. WINE is trying to track MS's changes, but if Apple turns Win32 into another penalty-box environment like Classic or X11.

        That being said, I don't see it happening.

        -jcr

        • IBM tried this already with OS/2, it failed (Score:5, Insightful)

          by AHumbleOpinion (546848) on Thursday July 06 2006, @10:08AM (#15667144) Homepage
          Actually, I'd say that implementing Win32 on Mac OS X would be a way that Apple could screw Microsoft, but good. A second implementation would freeze it: "Why aren't you using the normal win32? I want to use your app on my Mac!"

          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.
      • I don't really see Microsoft's updating of the API to be much of a problem for Apple. For one thing, a change that important would only come in as part of a new Windows version, something that Microsoft is not going to do overnight. Furthermore, it's going to take a lot more work for them to change the API than it would to change Red Box itself. It's the difference between a whole OS release and an update patch to a piece of software. Finally... The software makers will actually have to utilize the new
      • If Apple reverse engineered the Windows API, Microsoft would probably make "improvements" to it out of spite, to cause things to break when run on the Mac's reverse-engineered API.

        Did you even stop for a second to think how idiotic - not to mention unlikely, bordering on impossible - this idea is ?

      • Mail.app uses IMAP for it's Exchange connectivity.

      • Re:More Speculation (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 06 2006, @08:55AM (#15666611)
        "It certainly makes a lot more sense for them to just use a Windows installation."

        I have to post anonymously on this one...

        But speaking to a well known Oh-Ess Ecks programmer, I asked him about the possibility of Wine noting that he would be the one to ask. He is very collegial with Microsoft and I've hung with him and one of M$'s top programmers as they have both bitched and moaned about the other's OSs (and the Microsoft guy actually made a few points I never thought about before that were on the money...I program Windows for a living but own a niche Mac support company that grew out of a mailing list I use to moderate...I can almost give up the Windows programming these days as my organization is starting to look like it needs centralized day to day leadership, but beyond that, I could care less what OS anyone else uses. I know how to use both and my Vaio is as much a part of me as my new Intelbook).

        Getting to the point, talking to the guy and asking him about the possibility of using my Windows skills to port applications using WINE but with a translated front end on the Mac side. Pretty much, simply run the APIs of the apps I have created or have access to, and create new native front ends. Best of both worlds I thought (sorta like when I would create C++ backends and use VB to build the front end on the PC and Hypercard for the Mac -- I got pretty proficient at making certain DLLs could be recompiled as a XCMD simply by dropping it in the right compiler and letting the headers decide what to do with it).

        His response was one of the most direct responses I've ever gotten about future plans without him saying anything. Claimed to have looked into WINE, had it running internally (this was a year back, when I was still planning on having to use an X86 emulator to do most of the work as I didn't think the Intel switchover was going to happen so quickly) and he said that while it was a good product, they weren't going to use 'compromised' APIs to do this. When asked if they had any plans to license or develop any of their own non-compromised APIs, he responded that there was no plans to license anything. It was a pretty strongly worded statement, especially when looking into the point by point claims and what was missing from my original query. And considering the last statement I received in this manner was positively prophetic looking back upon the email.

        With Bootcamp and the new emphasis on Parallels and my knowledge of their staff, my best bet is that Apple is planning on leveraging Windows to their own needs, making it usable but a pain. Sort of like how their Bluetooth products refuse to work with the Windows side of the Intelbook and simple features that could have been added were ignored to ensure that you only got exactly what you needed to run Windows solidly in Bootcamp, but not with the trademark Apple Ease of Use.

    • Re:More Speculation (Score:5, Funny)

      by ElephanTS (624421) on Thursday July 06 2006, @07:44AM (#15666239)
      There's not a lot of meat to this article

      No, but it's Leopard Meat! They go mad for it!

      • I've known this for weeks as well, but when you get down to it, it's the discussion that matters. Sites like macrumors or digg (which had this story a week ago) have discussion ranging from "OMG!!1!! Teh Steveness!!" to "It'll have 4D graphics and ship two days after WWDC!!". On /. there will be discussion based on more reasonable features, and identify technical hurdles.

        • Re:More Speculation (Score:5, Insightful)

          by anethema (99553) on Thursday July 06 2006, @09:51AM (#15667002) Homepage
          I'd say mod parent up here because this is important.

          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?

        • Re:More Speculation (Score:4, Insightful)

          by rgravina (520410) on Thursday July 06 2006, @09:41AM (#15666924)
          Yes I agree. The article had no substance, and now this Formitchev guy earns thousands of pageviews worth of ad revenue from all the Slashdot users expecting to see something new and interesting about Leopard. Seriously, what a scam. The editors are supposed to filter out submissions like this. How did this ever get through?

          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.

  • Stock Tip (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Sv-Manowar (772313) on Thursday July 06 2006, @06:53AM (#15666020) Homepage Journal
    Seems like a great time to buy Apple shares right now as they are in a dip at around $57. Peaking at around $85 earlier this month with news of this and the new powermacs expected it will definitely be an easy jump if you are looking for a short term investment.

    • Re:Stock Tip (Score:4, Funny)

      by abscissa (136568) on Thursday July 06 2006, @07:13AM (#15666097)
      Are you the guy who sent me the e-mails that shares of APPL are predicted by experts to go up 500% in the next 90 days and that APPL was a great buy right now?

      • Re:Stock Tip (Score:5, Funny)

        by BasilBrush (643681) on Thursday July 06 2006, @07:21AM (#15666127)
        If I had a dollar for every new up and coming MP3 player that was supposed to be an iPod killer, I'd be able to buy an iPod.
      • MS has announced that they'll have an iPod killer out by Christmas, but they cleverly didn't say Christmas of which year. If Vista and Office are any indication, look for the msPod in late 2007.

      • Re:Stock Tip (Score:5, Insightful)

        by jmp_nyc (895404) * on Thursday July 06 2006, @07:43AM (#15666228)
        One of the reasons that MacOS can provide a relatively consistent stable experience is that there is a limited range of hardware on which it is expected to run. Sure, Macs don't always have the very fastest of graphics chipsets (although we'll see what comes with the new PowerMac replacements), but the Apple engineers working on drivers can know exactly what chipsets are out there.

        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
      • Because Apple is a HARDWARE company. They want to sell BOXES. To make OS X available for other hardware would mean the inclusion of countless drivers, support for vitually limitless hardware configurations, and the hiring of a huge support staff to manage the problems associated with a market that is far from manageable (among other things). These are just some of the problems Microsoft must deal with on a daily basis. But because Apple is a HARDWARE company, they can keep a short leash on the hardware they

  • Who writes this junk? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by vought (160908) on Thursday July 06 2006, @06:55AM (#15666027)
    I mean c'mon. A day's worth of submissions, and you can't do any better than information that's been on the street for over a week, rewritten by a fifth-grader?

    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.

    • Re:Who writes this junk? (Score:5, Informative)

      by kjart (941720) on Thursday July 06 2006, @07:14AM (#15666104)

      Agreed. It's not even like you'd need to edit a whole article - you're editing the summary of an article.

      we certainly would see Apple's remarkable market share gain next year
      (emphasis mine)

      I found that pretty amusing. Since when is a 10% (plus or minus; feel free to correct me with solid info) marketshare remarkable?

      Also, from the actual article itself:

      The upcoming "Leopard" OS is expected to be even slicker and faster than its predecessor OS X.

      Is this actually a new OS like the article suggests, or just a new revision of OSX (10.5 or what have you)? If it's not supposed to be completely brand new, I find this article somewhat questionable.

    • Re:Who writes this junk? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Rosyna (80334) on Thursday July 06 2006, @07:23AM (#15666134) Homepage
      I mean c'mon. A day's worth of submissions, and you can't do any better than information that's been on the street for over a week, rewritten by a fifth-grader?

      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.

    • Re:Who writes this junk? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Shaper_pmp (825142) on Thursday July 06 2006, @07:45AM (#15666247)
      Seconded. This is rubbish in every sense - writing, grammar, analysis... it's all crap.

      While Microsoft was battling with Vista that is a dog slow and resource-hungry Apple it would seem was focusing on speed, performance and elegance.

      Since when have Microsoft OSs not been slow and resource-hungry? And when did Apple ever not prioritize elegance and performance?

      The upcoming "Leopard" OS is expected to be even slicker and faster than its predecessor OS X.

      Careful - your fanboyism's showing.

      And with Macs running on Intel hardware, how long will it be before Mac OS "Leopard" or its successor spreads out into the PC realm?

      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.

      Some think this would never happen, but I have a feeling that it will. When Microsoft attributes a bunch of its Vista problems to backwards compatibility issues Apple would not suffer the same when expanding to PC platform.

      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.

      Perhaps transition to Intel's hardware was the first step for Apple. Perhaps Jobs wants to strike Microsoft when it is the weakest and not as paranoid as ever (due to stepping down of Gates).

      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.

      Perhaps a mouse will overcome a dinosaur repeating the course of natural history in the IT arena.

      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...

      Who knows. But I think that the departure of Gates and Vista debacle proves that the time is ripe for someone to seriously take on Microsoft's monopoly.

      This is probably the only mildly sensible thing in the entire article.

      And can anybody name a better candidate than Apple?

      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

  • This is just NOT news. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by GrahamCox (741991) on Thursday July 06 2006, @07:01AM (#15666047) Homepage
    Even if it weren't for the fact that this was announced, what, a week ago, it doesn't take a genius to realise that Apple will talk about their next OS at the forthcoming WWDC. It's what they've always done. Duh, that's what it's FOR. And those who care will know about it, and those who don't will ignore it. Just like THEY'VE always done. Fuck me, Slashdot gets lamer every day with shit "stories" like this. And I speak as a nominal Mac fan.

  • Yet another Apple commercial (Score:4, Insightful)

    by boaz112358 (947978) on Thursday July 06 2006, @07:01AM (#15666054)
    Neither the submission nor the article actually says anything about the OS, yet we're told the Leopard is "cool and fast" without any evidence whatsoever. Yet somehow this magic OS, which we know nothing about, is going to cause "remarkable market share gain next year." Nope, never heard that before.

  • Year of the Mac? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by i_should_be_working (720372) on Thursday July 06 2006, @07:03AM (#15666058)
    It seems as if journalists (or Apple proponents in general) have caught whatever afflicted the Linux fan-boys. Every release or change in Apple software/hardware is seen as something that could trigger a whole bunch of Windows users to switch.

    Seems a bit out of character..

  • Big Cat Names (Score:3, Funny)

    by Infernal Device (865066) on Thursday July 06 2006, @07:17AM (#15666113)
    I'm waiting for the release called "Pete Puma"!

    Yeeeeeeeeeeee.

  • Wake me when.... (Score:5, Funny)

    by cvd6262 (180823) on Thursday July 06 2006, @07:20AM (#15666123)
    ...they release OS X Liger.

  • Remarkable Market Share? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by whisper_jeff (680366) on Thursday July 06 2006, @07:28AM (#15666157)
    "...we certainly would see Apple's remarkable market share gain next year." Remarkable market share? Ok, I'm a Mac guy - have been for ... too long, but are you kidding? 3-5% is remarkable? Well, maybe in so much as how small it is given how good it is, but I don't think that's what you meant when you used "remarkable market share..."

  • who said vista was slow? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by buddyglass (925859) on Thursday July 06 2006, @07:30AM (#15666165)
    Yes, it requires a (somewhat) beefy 3d graphics card to make full use of Aero Glass. But that's just the UI. Rarely is the UI a system's bottleneck. I imagine that with the revamped TCP/IP stack and memory manager, Vista should yield performance improvements over XP/2003 for a wide range of apps.

  • 2.2% is remarkable? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by SEE (7681) on Thursday July 06 2006, @07:33AM (#15666177) Homepage
    In calendar year 2005 (Q2-4 FY2005, Q1 FY2006), Apple unit sales were 4.7 million.
    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)

    by NYTrojan (682560) on Thursday July 06 2006, @07:37AM (#15666202)
    Did the submitter even READ what he wrote?

    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.

  • Microsoft way ahead (Score:5, Funny)

    by KrunZ (247479) on Thursday July 06 2006, @07:52AM (#15666275)
    Microsoft released their Leper OS years ago

  • Empty Article (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Kichigai Mentat (588759) <ivan,kowalenko&gmail,com> on Thursday July 06 2006, @07:53AM (#15666282) Homepage Journal
    Did anyone else notice that the article was practically empty? That it was maybe, at most, five hundred words? Sorry, correct that, I just ran it through a word processor: 240 words in the article, not counting title, byline, or advertising.

    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.

  • Bloody naming! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Kopretinka (97408) on Thursday July 06 2006, @08:30AM (#15666486) Homepage

    With Windows, I know that the step from 2000 to XP is significant because the names are way different. Similar with XP and Vista. But seriously, how can I expect something significant going from Tiger to Leopard?

    BTW, I guess I can blame my ignorance, because as a long-time Linux user, I only view Windows and MacOS/X from afar.

  • I Suspect... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by eno2001 (527078) on Thursday July 06 2006, @08:35AM (#15666512) Homepage Journal
    ...that Apple moved to Intel to take advantage of Intel's new virtualization support in hardware. In nearly every case when using a hypervisor on top of such hardware (where there is a ring -1 for the hypervisor) the performance has beat native performance. Or put another way; using a hypervisor for virtualization provides you with virtualization with NO performance hit at all. If anything you get a performance boost. Apple, typically being quite a few steps ahead of the reast of the industry, is very likely going to use this so that you can run Mac OS X Leopard, Windows Vista, and any Linux distro simultaneously with the full performance of running natively. This is the first time in history when you really CAN get something for nothing!!! Not to mention they will likely make it so that you can set up ways to exchange data in a live fashion between VMs. No more incompatibility between OSes ever again. Leave it to Apple to come up with something like this.
    • If they lost that image, I'd certainly consider a mac of some sort

      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:5, Interesting)

      by BasilBrush (643681) on Thursday July 06 2006, @07:35AM (#15666193)
      Last I checked Windows Vista is in Beta. So just how does anyone know how it's performance is at this time.

      Well one could go with history and note the fact that EVERY new version of Windows has been a lot slower than the predecessor. Meanwhile every version of OS X has been faster than the predecessor.

      we not told by the Apple folks that the marketshare was going to boom with the release of 10.0? Then again with 10.2 and so on? And then again when they went to Intel...

      If you look at the unit sales of Macs from Apple quarterly reports, you'll see that they is usually significantly larger growth YoY that in the overall PC market. That means growing market share.

      Of confirm it by looking at sites browser stats. This one shows Mac userbase doubling in 3 years.
      http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.a sp [w3schools.com]

      in fact the market share has decreased since the release of 10.0...

      I can see why you selected your username. But you'd do better if you didn't overreach yourself with your FUD.

      • You'd do well to follow your own advice. I've already posted this, but what the heck:

        Q1 2001 [com.com] (roughly 5.4% worldwide) and Q1 2006 [appleinsider.com] (roughly 2.0% worldwide)

      • Re:Huh? Wanna say that again? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by elrous0 (869638) * on Thursday July 06 2006, @09:21AM (#15666788)
        every version of OS X has been faster than the predecessor.

        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

    • in fact the market share has decreased since the release of 10.0...

      Really? Not according to this article: http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/busines s/14191452.htm [mercurynews.com]
      Apple may have lost market share in the late 90's / early 2000's but they are recovering. I believe this a lot of this is due to OS X.

      Gartner puts Apple's 1996 share at 4.6 percent, IDC at 5.1 percent. Market share in 2005 was 2.2 percent from Gartner and 2.3 percent from IDC. According to Gartner, Apple's market share peaked at 15

      • And in my humble (and the rest of the world's) experience, Microsoft has not made anything that works faster than the previous edition. I dare you to name a product that Microsoft has revised, and turns out faster - I am not talking about more secure (which I accept that Windows 2000 is), but one that runs faster.

        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 annoy
    • I too hate to point out the obvious but...

      Thousands of casual computer users are switching. I switched. I know at least 10 people in my age group (20-30) who have swtiched. 10 more who are thinking about it. People looking to buy a new comptuer when they go off to college are looking at Macs more seriously than ever. They do the same things that any casual user is looking for in a Windows computer (email, web, chat, word processing), they look better doing it, and they work flawlessly (and better) with

    • Re:Apple's next Mac OS X, Leopard (Score:5, Informative)

      by saddino (183491) on Thursday July 06 2006, @07:55AM (#15666293)
      new finder (hopefully finally not carbon anymore)

      One should note that it's not Carbon that makes the Finder suck. Any decent, full-featured OS X application can be written in Carbon if the developer takes care to implement things correctly. And even more importantly, some things in OS X can still only be done in Carbon, hence the Framework's inclusion in many Cocoa applications as well. Unfortunately, most users associate Carbon with all those ported ("carbonized") OS 9 C++ applications written on top of Metrowerks' PowerPlant, so it makes sense Carbon has a bad rap, but the fact is: Carbon is not the issue here. Carbon's fine.

      • Re:Apple's next Mac OS X, Leopard (Score:5, Interesting)

        by GrahamCox (741991) on Thursday July 06 2006, @10:02AM (#15667092) Homepage
        Unfortunately, most users associate Carbon with all those ported ("carbonized") OS 9 C++ applications written on top of Metrowerks' PowerPlant, so it makes sense Carbon has a bad rap, but the fact is: Carbon is not the issue here. Carbon's fine.

        Carbon's fine, until you actually bother to learn Cocoa. The fact is, religion about this aside, Cocoa is just better. As in 10,000% more productive better. The fact that apps also tend to look better is not a reflection of Carbon per se, but it is a reflection of just how much work you have to do in Carbon to makes things come out right. I'd rather spend time on making the app functional rather than endlessly tweaking the widgets. I came from the Toolbox, then Carbon, and now Cocoa, so I know of what I speak.

        However, I disagree that PowerPlant is the cause of a lot of problems, because in many ways PP was the Cocoa of its day, Mac-wise (ignoring the fact that Cocoa has existed in some form since 1987, just not on the Mac). Using a framework on top of Carbon is the only sensible way to program with Carbon - anything other than a small app is unmanageable in Carbon if you don't have a framework there. What may be a source of this perception is that between System 8.0 and 10.0, Apple changed a lot about the organisation of the Toolbox/Carbon and PP may have struggled to keep up with that. It was a tough period all round.

        I'd like to see the Finder written in Cocoa, because it would likely be a lot more functional since getting functionality together in a Cocoa app just takes much less effort than the same functionality in Carbon. Given that Apple seems to want to throw a Finder together I'm sure it would be a lot more polished in the same timeframe if constructed in Cocoa.

    • Re:My feelings on OS X (Score:5, Insightful)

      by drgreg911 (741844) on Thursday July 06 2006, @08:48AM (#15666584) Homepage
      I felt the same way until my Windows PC broke and I was forced to borrow and live with a PowerBook for a couple weeks. At first, I hated it, until I got over my Windows habits and started to get used to the new UI. I absolutely hated Apple products, but now I'm more efficient and can't live without 'em. In any case, my advice to anyone thinking about switching is to spend more than just an hour with the thing. Force yourself to use it for a few days and actually be honest enough to give a go at learning how it's supposed to work. It may not fit your needs better, but then again, it might. You'll never know if you only try it long enough to get frustrated or you go into the experience planning on hating it.

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