Article: Leopard delayed until October, says Apple

In spite of what this article says, some doom merchants were predicting this release date for Leopard.

But so what? Why would I change my purchasing plans for this news?

It is not the OS release – I am not that excited by it anyway.

It is much more to do with the between-the-lines reading of the attitudes at Apple. Many have suggested that the Mac is secondary to the iPod, and now the iPhone, and even the change of company name – to Apple Inc, rather than Apple Computer – this year, was not entirely enough to convince me of the reality of my old cynical cry that Apple will eventually dump OS X and go all Windows (or Linux or whatever succeeds in the end).

But this… I have only been an Apple user for 3 years, but as far as I know, nothing like this has ever happened in Apple history. In fact, the pre-announcement of the iPhone is also a “first” (Apple have, to my knowledge, never announced a product *before* release – the Apple TV and the iPhone in the past six months have been a new phenomenon, and with good reason… though I am struggling to find the link right now – watch this space

This sounds like a company not prepared to fund the resource needed for such a major undertaking as an operating system. And that means that OS X is dead. Or at least, dying.

All good for Apple shareholders, I should add. If Apple becomes a pure electronics company, then great for them. But what can that ever mean for the Mac platform?

The Mac is dead. It just doesn’t know it yet. And I am sad about that.

I became a Mac user at the appearance of the iMac G5. It did everything I was looking for at the time – almost silent, highly responsive, looked a damn sight better in the living room than the stuff I threw together, etc.

But it was still a reluctant switch in some ways. I wanted BeOS to succeed, and on standard Intel kit, but by then (and even with my own programming efforts it was obvious that BeOS was a relic of the past – dead before its time, but dead nonetheless.

With XP, there was no competition in the home. Linux was lost in its own isolated culture (still is in my opinion, in spite of Ubuntu), the Amiga had been dead for years, Solaris was an almost irrelevance, OS/2 a joke, PegasOS a nearly-ran, SkyOS just techie wank, etc.

Some people might wonder why I even care about the choice of OS. Those people have, I believe, become too used to the status quo – or maybe they never saw computers as I did when I first discovered them.

I have always seen computers as creative tools, in spite of Microsoft’s insistence that they are Business machines. It is a matter of soul – but like rhythm, if you aint got it, you can’t be taught it.

So, the machine I used to think (in the Amiga days) was an overpriced piece of fashion-crap, and that finally became my platform of choice, is now no choice at all. All current plans to buy a Mac Pro have now ceased. My next machine will definitely be a custom built PC. And, although I used to like building those things, I am still saddened that it has come back to that.

But to me, the current Apple trends and situation all smell like the final years of Commodore. I have seen this shit too often at my slightly creaking age. I don’t care what the publicity guys say – this company has lost the (computer) plot.

I would still semi-secretly like to be proven wrong. But I don’t feel positive about the chances of that. I have been wondering about this for a while. and this news just convinces me I am right.

Now, will I be right about the PS3, too? (Oh, please Wii, don’t be just a blip…)

F**king technology. I’m going back to the theatre.