Leopard, Vista and the Boot Camp Delay Myth
When is Apple's new Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard arriving? The rumor mill has lately consumed itself with reporting a flurry of dates. Most recently, it has invented the absurd idea the Leopard is hung up on Vista compatibility. Why make crazy stuff up when the truth is so much simpler?
I blame Google. If the company weren't paying bloggers per web page view, we wouldn't have nearly as much noise being reported. Half of the rumor articles about Leopard pounce on a random upcoming date, and the other half proclaim the date to be wrong. Sometimes, a single web site performs both functions.
Indeed, if we ask Google, the top results from people who don't seem to have anything to say and who bend over backward to make stuff up in the most negative possible manner. A recent googling resulted in a top article by David Chartier, for example.
Chartier is the blogger who posted such an incendiary response to a RoughlyDrafted story that Greenpeace jumped on his comments to form half of its defense case. What did he have to say about Leopard?
TUAW Hyperbole
Chartier said that Apple “pulled a Microsoft” by delaying Leopard into the distant future.
Of course, every time Microsoft delayed Longhorn, it was pushed out another two years. Those delays followed a pattern that goes back across two decades:
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•Windows 95 was perpetually two years away from merging with NT until XP arrived half a decade later.
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•2001's Longhorn was perpetually two years away until it was announced Vista would ship stripped and as-is.
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•The replacement for Vista is purportedly much better and only two years away.
If Apple were to actually delay Leopard in the style of Microsoft, it wouldn't ship until 2009. Why suggest such an idea? How does Charier support his indignation against Apple’s ability to ship?
He insists that Apple promised Leopard in 2006, citing a year old MacNN article that said Leopard and Vista would both arrive around the same time in late 2006.
Of course, MacNN does not really hold the power of attorney for Apple, so that’s not really a promise Apple made.
In reality, ManNN was paraphrasing from a linked, June 2005 eWeek article by John Rizzo which stated, "while Microsoft introduces the world to Vista, Apple is keeping mum about its next version of Mac OS X, which Steve Jobs has said will ship at about the same time as Vista."
Rizzo also wrote, “When Windows Vista ships in late 2006, Windows will mimic many features of Apple's Tiger and go beyond it.” It turns out that didn't happen; Vista only shipped in the first part of this year.
The first time Apple made any significant comment about Leopard was at last year's WWDC, when it was stated Leopard would ship in the middle of 2007.
So no, Apple didn't ever set a concrete date, nor did it “promise” delivery in 2006. Various people have guessed at ship dates, but that does not constitute a promise by Apple, and Chartier should either provide some basis for his comments or apologize for launching into a tirade about nothing. Google should apologize for putting his screed at the top of its search results, and Digg should apologize for its likely role as an accomplice.
Spring Has Only Sprung
It has been nearly nine months since Apple released the Leopard preview at WWDC, and the company is still targeting "spring 2007" as its release date on its Leopard web site.
It also hasn't been spring in California for more than a week yet. Apple has three months left to sit on Leopard before the product could conceivably ship later than announced. Spring ends in late June.
What sort of hints do we have about delivery dates? The features Apple demonstrated in Leopard so far have been largely dependent upon third party developer support. For example:
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•Core Animation doesn't do anything for users until developers use it in their applications.
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•64-bit application support requires work from developers before it means anything to users.
It's certainly no puzzle why Apple released Leopard to developers at WWDC a year early: it needs their help in making Leopard useful to consumers.
Look A New Look
Developers don't need as much advance information about features that primarily add sizzle.
Leopard is all about new technology, but it will also introduce new user interface features and very likely overhaul the Finder, which hasn't seen a significant usability update since Panther.
A variety of knowledgeable commentators have suggested that Leopard will likely introduce a new, cohesive look for applications. Currently, the Finder has its own unique look, and Safari, Mail, and iTunes all sport very distinct visual interface features. Developers also choose between the Unified/Plastic and Brushed Metal designs.
There's room for variation, but it seems pretty clear that Apple needs to do some work in making everything look tighter and more consistent. Leopard addresses some technical issues that are behind the variations in Tiger apps, reinforcing that point.
The 2007 Mac
Another point brought up earlier in relation to iWork and iLife is that those new applications will likely get the same overall treatment, creating a strong 2007 brand that associates Leopard with Apple's applications. Microsoft has long tied releases of Office and Windows together in a similar way using an overall cohesive branding.
New features in Leopard make strong arguments for binding applications to the new system. Backward compatibility trades off so much functionality and complicates application development to the point where end users are simply better served to upgrade than to use new apps on their old system.
Statistics indicate that most Mac users rapidly upgrade to the latest version of Mac OS X, making backward support nearly a non-issue.
No Race To Deliver
Sensationalist writers try to spin up a rivalry between Vista and Leopard, but the current reality is that Vista only matches features that are now two years old in Tiger. Vista's main attraction is its new compositing window manager, a very late entry in delivering what Apple introduced well over a half decade ago as Mac OS X's Quartz.
A future article will compare technologies in Vista and Mac OS X, but as introduced in the Leopard vs Vista series, consumers don't really care about operating systems; they care about products and features and the ability of vendors to deliver them. 
Buyers won't be comparing Vista with Leopard or Tiger, but rather PCs against Macs. From that perspective, there is certainly no reason for Apple to rush out an early version of Leopard before it’s ready. That would only make the Mac less attractive than it is. People are already buying new Macs faster than Windows PCs are growing.
Vista sales have been a big disappointment. Throughout 2006, market analysts stated that PC sales were being 'held back' because consumers were waiting on Vista, but that turned out to be wrong.
The Changing Tune on PC Sales
PC sales were indeed flat when compared to the steady growth of previous years, but Microsoft's promotions offering Vista coupons to PC buyers this winter didn't help. And since Vista's launch, even Gartner has changed its tune. Earlier this week, it released a report predicting 10% growth in PC units, but only 5% growth in revenues.
It cited emerging markets and mobile PCs as growth areas, but warned that falling PC prices and slow replacement of existing desktop PCs would "keep PC vendors under pressure to rationalize their operations or exit the market."
The lack of profits in the overall PC industry highlight why Apple’s rapid growth in eating up the most valuable segments of the market is far more painful to Microsoft than market share denigrators want to admit.
Vista was supposed to help jack up the price and premium stature of PCs, but that's not happening.
Gartner's press release states, "PC shipments will enjoy, at best, a limited boost from the release of Microsoft’s new operating system, Vista."
"The vast majority of consumers and SMBs [small and medium sized businesses] are expected to adopt the new OS as they gradually replace existing machines during the next several years."
Gartner’s ikako Kitagawa: "While Vista includes a number of interesting features, these features just don’t have enough ‘must have’ appeal with the average home and SMB user to spark a significant rush of new PC sales."
In other words, nobody is rushing to buy Vista, and the only adopters will be consumers and small businesses who buy new PCs because they will be, as Gartner says, "hard-pressed to find a new PC with Windows XP."
Ouch!
Does the Enterprise offer any silver lining? According to Garter, “Vista is forecast to have virtually no impact on PC shipments to larger businesses in 2007. And Vista adoption among large business is expected lag behind consumers and SMBs.”
Boot Camp is No Barrier
Given the absolute lack of any interest in Vista, this latest meme to jump off the web is patently absurd. Apple's Leopard is being held up, they claim, because Apple is scrambling to support Vista in Boot Camp.
Apple didn't exactly scramble to get iTunes working on Vista, and iTunes is an important part of Apple's business. That being the case, will Apple hold up the release of Leopard for months in order to support Vista in Boot Camp, a product that Apple makes no money in providing?
The story is so absurd on so many levels that it's hard to find a place to start pointing out why it’s so stupid.
First, Boot Camp doesn't need to do much to support Vista. All it does is partition the user's hard drive and then kick start the Windows installer disc. That's it; Boot Camp isn't a magic shim running underneath Windows on an Intel Mac, its simply a preparation tool, and a fairly simple one at that.
An Intel Mac is very simply an Intel PC with some extra hardware not commonly found on PCs, including the iSight camera, digital audio jacks, backlit keyboards, and the multitouch trackpad. Apple has to provide drivers that allow Windows to use that extra hardware optimally, but this isn’t rocket science.
After releasing the beta version of Boot Camp last spring, Apple released a series of minor updates that added new functionality. For example, the iSight camera wasn’t initially supported the first few months, but that made no difference to most users who only need Boot Camp to run games or other Windows-only applications.
There is nothing stopping Apple from doing the same with Leopard. Further, Apple released an updater for Windows that can grab driver updates within the Windows environment. And of course, users are already running Vista on Intel Macs. There is absolutely nothing that would hold up the release of Leopard in Boot Camp.
Vista is also supported by Parallels and other virtualization tools, all of which are far more complex than Apple’s Boot Camp and require more work to support new versions of Windows like Vista. Even so, they already do.
Suggesting that Boot Camp is a barrier to finishing Leopard is ridiculous, saying Apple would hold up Leopard for Vista is absurd, and speculating that Boot Camp in Leopard will not be able to do something it already does under Tiger is just shameless misinformation or grossly ignorant.
DigiTimes
This non-news was invented for DigiTimes in a blurb credited to Ruby Huang and Joseph Tsai. They wrote, "Apple is expected to launch its next generation Leopard operating system in April," without pointing out that Apple only gives a spring 2007 release target. When Apple give a season for a release date, it invariably means the last day of that season. April is indeed spring, but so is June.
The entire premise is based on their idea that, "with Vista support, Apple's chances of increasing its share of the PC market would increase." Wow, so what features would not have an impact on 'Apple's chances of increasing its share'?
Does that fact that Boot Camp already boots Vista factor in? Why not ask your unnamed industry sources?
Newsfactor
The story was picked up and embellished by a variety of tabloid style websites with poor track records. Jennifer LeClaire at Newsfactor quoted Yankee Group analyst Josh Martin as asking, "You have to wonder if Vista compatibility is really the reason why Apple may be delaying Leopard."
What was that? You have to wonder if Foo is the reason Bar might happen? Why not determine if Bar is happening first, because there certainly isn't any reason to suspect such a thing, apart from generating a story.
The Newsfactor web page contained less panicked text in the article than it did advertisements; perhaps that's why we need to question the reason for speculating about possibilities that aren’t really being seriously raised.
MacNewsWorld
Another luminary in online page filling industry is the Mac branded portion of TechNewsWorld. Katherine Noyes pulled a brilliant quote out of “analyst” Phil Leigh: "It's critical to have Leopard work with Vista."
What will they be doing together? Intel Macs merely boot Windows; Leopard and Vista do not collaborate with exciting synergies that create new paradigms for competitive advantage, even if that sounds good.
Noyes writes that Leopard "had reportedly been delayed until October," only briefly stopping to cite a blanket rebuttal by Apple before continuing her relay race into Rampant Speculationville:
"Lynn Fox, a spokesperson for Apple, would only say that Apple previously announced that it plans to release Leopard in Spring 2007."
"If the reports are true, delaying the new operating system's release could make a lot of sense."
Wow, thanks for that wild non sequitur, Noyes. But can't you do better? How about a quote from someone who can say something really absurd without saying anything at all? How about citing somebody who writes for your website, but introducing them as an independent analyst who runs a firm?
Sure enough, Noyes manages to pull out a line of foolishness from none other than Rob Enderle, who helpfully spews, "They've been having trouble getting Leopard out, and it's supposed to be the most compatible platform they've ever brought forward..." He continues, but doesn't say anything, of course.
Apple’s been having trouble getting Leopard out, really? Enderle, isn’t it true that you are just a paid shill, working with worthless ad-click supported websites to spew false information that makes everything outside of Microsoft look scary and dangerous? When’s the last time you’ve stated anything that was remotely factual?
When you drop your asinine soundbites, shouldn’t you introduce yourself as a columnist for the website your prattle on for, rather than presenting yourself as some outside, respected authority on everything, so we know better than to consult your TechNewsWorld as a news source in the future?
The Register
Not wanting to be left behind in rumor news, Tony Smith hastily regurgitated the non-event, coming perilously close to defusing the entire bomb scare by asking, "would Apple really delay Leopard at least three months to allow it to support Vista? Boot Camp is just one small part of Leopard..." but short of pointing out that Macs can already run Vista, he merely states that nobody in business cares about Vista at all anyway.
He does get points for observing that those who "do want to run Vista on an Intel-based Mac have other options than Boot Camp," but failed to point out that this idiot story was quite obvious rubbish that didn't deserve extensive analysis, but rather a speedy dismissal.
The Inquirer, MacWorld and AppleInsider also picked up the story, with AppleInsider at least insisting that DigiTimes' "accuracy in prediction Apple's future directions is mediocre at best," and that its "coverage of Apple has been historically inaccurate and therefore its reports should be taken with a grain of salt," although failing to point out how absurd the story actually was.
When is a Spade is a Spade?
Why has it become so difficult to simply slap down unsupported, illogical stories from unreliable sources? Why does it require careful attention and airtime?
Why does it require documenting noises from Enderle, who hasn't said anything of interest in his entire career?
Who is paying these people to write articles about nonsense fluff and “analysis” of reporting that has absolutely no credibility, no accountability, and is simply insulting to read?
It's the web advertisers who slap their ads on such "content," and subsequently pay these writers by volume, not by their journalistic ability, their attention to detail, the capacity to offer any useful analysis, or their track record in stating facts or questioning obviously false information.
It’s also the news aggregators like Digg that “democratize” the web by dialing up every noise source to eleven just to make sure the loudest bleaters get heard as they pointlessly shout about nothing.
We don’t need objective viewpoints on false information nor quotes from professional FUD mongers. We need critical thought. Pull out Occam’s Razor and lets see some critical analysis. There is nothing polite and professional about uncritically forwarding along stories that are obviously wrong and misleading.
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Saturday, March 24, 2007
