For what seems like an unusually long time, Leopard is still eagerly awaited as the next incarnation of the hugely popular Apple Operating System 10 (OS X) - now rumored to be released in April. Since before December, speculation has been mounting on the subject of the Apple software updates. By December, the current version of OS X was 10.4.8 - which many believed would lead to one more update, i.e. 10.4.9 - before the logical jump to OS X 10.5 which would be Leopard in historical senses.
Now Apple have indeed pushed out their latest update to the now 2yr old Operating System - 10.4.9. This paves the way for a soon-to-be-announced upgrade to Leopard. Originally, it is said that Leopard would arrive before Vista - however, given that Vista was so delayed and over-hyped, no doubt the marketeers at Apple realized that a release of their operating system would suffer from the confusion surrounding the latest variant of the Windows environment. To their credit, Apple got it right. In an attempt to quash any such release by Apple, Microsoft over-hyped Vista to the point where at this point in time, 2 months after its release, many home and business users have no intention of upgrading to the latest MS version. This I believe is largely due to the fact that Vista is a huge GUI change and very much a bare maintenance service on the back-end to the already well-established Windows XP. This has hurt Microsoft, and amidst poor sales of their so-called iPod rival ‘Zune’, Vista is suffering at the shelves. I’ve been out and about in Germany and Ireland to gauge the response to Vista in computer stores, and it’s largely negative. This is down to the completely-different operating system GUI, the annoying authorization prompts, the bewildering number of versions, the hardware incompatibility and of course, most of all, the ridiculous price-tag.
While the world’s number one PC manufacturer (Dell) has transitioned completely to Vista (no-doubt spurred on by its Redmond WA colleagues), people have come to me on numerous occasions looking to find an alternative recommendation in order to get XP instead of Vista. Why? Because Vista is a disaster in terms of heralding a new direction in computing. It was touted as the be-all and end-all of the Windows desktop strains, an now it’s become synonymous with user-conflict, bad reviews from friends and of course, a victim of its high price.
Apple is now prepping the release of OS 10.5 ‘Leopard’ and will most probably launch it in the next few weeks - well after the Vista hype has died down. With more and more people making the switch to the Apple way of thinking, it’s difficult not to speculate about OS 10.5’s chances at the winning post. Sure, OS X isn’t the business-daddy (as Apple coyly admit in their ’switch’ ads) but OS X is now BY FAR the easier to use of the two major competitors (leaving aside Linux) for the home market.
The Paradigm Shift in recent years has been in favor of the Home Market - people’s private, personal and favorite computers. For years, Windows users have been battling an operating system that slows over time, is succeptable to virus attacks and is a virtual nightmare when connectivity and scalability is introduced (new printers, more computers, iPods etc.). OS X on the other hand, is a vibrant, fresh and warm system that is very difficult to call a piece of software - it’s more of a companion. And this is where the money is to be made, as more and more of the Western World’s population can now afford computers and are exploring the world of the internet and their e-capabilities.
Businesses will most probably always run Windows - that’s a given due to their unnatural inability to accept change. But it’s in the home that Apple will beat the monopoly, and this may in turn spread to Government and other institutions who are more broad-minded about new technology (not that Apple is newer than Microsoft - far from it!).
So it is with great anticipation that I look forward to this battle that should show Micro$oft some real competition in the newest and most volatile market - the home.
diarmy
