Some famous errors..
“This should be no problem .. we won’t need any reinforcements .. where are my medals?”
– George Armstrong Custer
“A little sip wont kill me.”
– Socrates
“I think it would be really odd for them[Apple] to release a new OS without having some sexy new feature to brag about.”
– MacSparky
Well, nobody is perfect. So just a few days ago I wrote how certain I was that Apple wouldn’t update Leopard without adding some new features to tempt consumers. Now Apple announces that is exactly what they plan on doing. (To all the readers who emailed me today about me getting this wrong … thanks a lot – smirk.) I am okay with that. All geeks are. We really get excited about things like processor speed and system efficiency. I still think Apple is going to have its work cut out for it though. The non-geek Mac users (and there are quite a few of those) are going to wonder why they should be shelling out for something that doesn’t have any fancy bells or whistles.
Think about it. An upgrade just for geeks. You could chart it against something like “people with iStat menus installed” or “people who have opened terminal intentionally” and you would know exactly who will be bringing the Snow Leopard home.*
Well even though I am admitting I was wrong on this one, I still think Apple marketing will spin this as more than simply “security and stability” fixes. Indeed, the campaign has already begun. According to Apple, Snow Leopard is already listed as a “Quantum Leap” with built in Exchange support, 64 bit bells and whistles and a brand new Quicktime — and that is just after the first day. By a year from now the list will grow. I’m still pining away for a ZFS file system.
If the world has learned anything from Vista, it is that we don’t need our operating system to cure all sins, it just needs to be rock solid for our applications. I “get” where Apple is coming from on this and am looking forward to see what happens next.
* Another question in my mind is “will Snow Leopard be 10.6?” I didn’t read about anyone at Apple calling Snow Leopard 10.6. The Apple website just refers to it as the “next major version” but never calls it 10.6. Maybe they will have a reduced price and give it a different number … 10.5.?. That would be an interesting turn of events indeed.