No sooner did Apple announce that Leopard had been delayed did the gnashing of teeth and the rending of clothes begin among Macintosh users . excommunicate the iPhone ! It ’s nothing but a distraction to Apple , which has more and more become a consumer electronics company !
No . The iPhone is the stop .
When theiPhoneships in June , it will be the 2nd consumer electronics twist to ship this year that uses a adaptation of Mac OS X but is n’t a Mac . The first , of course , was the Apple TV , Apple ’s interface for widescreen TVs that make it potential to synchronise and stream the content of your iTunes library to your home amusement organisation .
This is exactly what many of us have been wait years for Apple to do — transmigrate out of a singular direction as a computer company and to take the technology that powers its figurer and its design sensibilities to many unlike products . And it ’s something that Apple ’s main competitor in the computer space — Microsoft — has been doing for years .
The iPod , of grade , has served as Apple ’s gateway drug , bring out many multitude who ’d never consider a Mac to their first taste of Apple Cartesian product possession . Most of theevidenceis still anecdotic , but there ’s definitely an indicant thatconsumers who get iPods are more likely to consider the Macintoshwhen it comes metre to buy their next computing equipment . And they ’re definitely visitingApple retail storesand train out the Mac while they ’re in there .
But the iPod does n’t leverage OS X , and it does n’t really give its drug user a “ Mac - like ” experience . The same go for the Apple TV — it ’s largely just a bridge between iTunes on your Mac or PC and your home amusement system .
That ’s really different from the way the iPhone will do work . The iPhone provides a essentially different and , from what ’s been shown so far , a much more Mac - like , user experience . It has Wi - Fi . It has a magnetic declination on Safari for browsing the connection . And it ’ll integrate perfectly with the Mac . With any luck , it ’ll have an even more wakeless influence on future generations of computing machine buyer than the iPod has had .
But that does n’t change the fact that Apple has denote a wait in shipping Leopard from June , around the prison term of itsWorldwide Developer Conferenceto October . Again , this is n’t a unfit thing .
At least some of the hoi polloi I ’ve spoken to , including those involved in Mac OS ecstasy program development , are relieved at the wait . It give them more time to check that that their code is up to snuff . It also afford Apple more fourth dimension to answer any remaining issues , and get developers working on supporting the new characteristic in Leopard . Lest we forget , Apple on Thursday also indicated that it project to present a gross feature - set to developers who attend WWDC .
There are others who I ’ve address to about this that are as thankful for the extra clip — IT staff responsible for for supporting Macs in their induction , for example . Any additional time they have to organize for the transition is welcome .
By and large , it seems like the gravid portion of mass really put out by this delay are consumer who want to bribe unexampled Macs but did n’t require to pay for Leopard on top of that — the great unwashed who were counting on getting a free upgrade or getting a new machine with OS X 10.5 pre - establish .
But I really guess that that ’s putting the cart before the horse . You should buy a new computer when you need the new computer , not hedging your bet that you’re able to await it out for something better to come down the road . It ’s inevitable that a good model is just around the nook and that you ’re going to palpate some sense of emptor ’s self-reproach : Almost every meter we post an clause about a new Mac manikin , one of the first posts in response will be from a lector who ’s upset because he or she just bought the model that it replaces .
Getting back to my first point here , I fully recognize that the iPhone is n’t everything to everyone : There are for sure a fair number of folks out there who say the iPhone is n’t for them . In some guinea pig it ’s the price . In other cases it ’s the carrier . There are countless justifications for why some people are n’t going to get the iPhone , and all of them are perfectly valid . I sure as shooting know a lot of Mac user who do n’t have iPods or Apple TVs , and have no interest in getting them , either . That ’s fine .
But at the ending of the day , Apple ’s goal here is to present a product that ’s got the fit and finish we ’ve make out to demand from Apple . It ’s one of the few fellowship out there that can really deliver what it has promise , even if the deadline slips .
Should we really expect anything less than excellency from Apple ? I sure do n’t need to . The option just are n’t good enough .
