iPhone took priority over Leopard

[bjf123]

Apple StatementiPhone has already passed several of its required certification tests and is on schedule to ship in late June as planned. We can’t wait until customers get their hands (and fingers) on it and experience what a revolutionary and magical product it is. However, iPhone contains the most sophisticated software ever shipped on a mobile device, and finishing it on time has not come without a price — we had to borrow some key software engineering and QA resources from our Mac OS X team, and as a result we will not be able to release Leopard at our Worldwide Developers Conference in early June as planned. While Leopard's features will be complete by then, we cannot deliver the quality release that we and our customers expect from us. We now plan to show our developers a near final version of Leopard at the conference, give them a beta copy to take home so they can do their final testing, and ship Leopard in October. We think it will be well worth the wait. Life often presents tradeoffs, and in this case we're sure we've made the right ones.

[zlim]

Thanks for that. I wanted to hold off buying my first Mac until Leopard was released but I don't think I want to wait until October.

[Dreaming]

October is great for my finances. I did hope to get into my mac machine before then, but, for me it works out. I predict Oct. 12 and at that time I am ready to buy.

[Guest LilBambi]

By then maybe I can afford to buy it too! :thumbsup:I would rather have a solid Leopard and as I mentioned in the other thread, I am revising my date to Columbus Day.I think if they had to make a choice, getting a promised NEW product out the door solidly was likely a better choice at this time. We have a great OS in Tiger already! It's ahead of it's time already.

[Mike1]

I'm not too fazed by the news either.If they are going to hold the OS back, though, I hope they roll out an update to Safari in the meantime.I can't help suspecting that they've held back providing improvements in the rendering engine through Software Update for some time, because they've been keeping improvements for Leopard. Maybe that's a misapprehension - perhaps they still want to deal with some regressions before releasing updates, but it seems possible.AFAIK, Omniweb uses a more up-to-date version of WebKit than Safari does, and Omniweb blows the pants of anything else for speed:http://macintalk.com/2007/03/31/mac-os-x-b...rs-benchmarked/I've also used Omniweb successfully with the full GMail web-interface.Supposing Apple can update Safari now, it would be a nice something to give to loyal Apple users in the meantime and would win Apple some goodwill. It might also counter a certain amount of low-level grumbling that one's starting to see about the Mac not being up to coping with the full "Web 2.0" experience, and countering that is good for Apple, too. It's not good for potential switchers to come across references to Safari not working with this or that website.

[Neil P]

What about WebKit nightly builds? From testing countless Firefox nightly builds in the past, though, I can see why you wouldn't want to do this.

[Mike1]

What about WebKit nightly builds? From testing countless Firefox nightly builds in the past, though, I can see why you wouldn't want to do this.

I have used them in the past, but I'm not that bothered: I don't use a lot of problematic sites. Anyway, I've started using Omniweb.I just think it would make sense for Apple to do that to generate a little goodwill and to counteract the impression that Safari's not all it might be.David Sobotta, an ex-Apple executive, who writes a sometimes-critical (but not really hostile) blog on Apple matters has just that impression. And, of course, he's not the only one having difficulties.If Apple have been holding back improvements in order to give people an extra reason to get Leopard, then if it's delayed that makes less sense. Microsoft eventually concluded that with IE7, which was originally only going to ship with Vista, and I think that was wise of them.Of course, the situation was more extreme for Microsoft, both because the delay was longer and because IE6 had become a standing joke. Nevertheless, if I had the say at Apple, I'd be looking to throw Mac users something now - they're going to buy Leopard anyway.Having said that, I suppose Steve Jobs's commercial judgment is probably sounder than mine.

[think mac]

This delay is a money maker in itself, the people that have been waiting will now buy. The Oct. date will hurt the back to school sales but by then they will give you a Xmas date. Remember, it's not Apple computer anymore , it's Apple Inc.

[Art743]

Personally. i think one of the factors had to be the reality that they HAD to meet their commitments to Cingular, or it would be disastrous, and known well beyond the Mac community.