“It’s Steve Jobs’s plan to make this the Week of the Tiger. But Bill Gates and his minions at Microsoft are crying bull—specifically, a Longhorn steer. Despite the zoological bent, this dust-up is not about animals, but operating systems; Apple and Microsoft just happen to have named each of their major system upgrades after beasts of the realm. This Monday, Bill shows off the future of Windows, a.k.a. Longhorn, at a developers’ conference. The oohs and aahs may be tempered by the fact that the hundreds of millions of Windows users won’t get their hands on it until holiday season, 2006. (Unless it’s even later.) On Friday, Jobs proudly presents the latest Macintosh OS X upgrade, named after that big striped cat that he always seems to have by the tail. When can the 25 million Mac users get their hands on Tiger? This year. This month. That day. Growwwl,” Steven Levy writes for Newsweek. “That’s a big point for Apple in the latest matchup in high tech’s equivalent to the rivalry between the Yankees and the Red Sox.”
Related MacDailyNews articles:
Red Sox and Apple vs. Yankees and Microsoft – October 29, 2004
Apple CEO Steve Jobs told Levy, “‘Microsoft has followed our taillights for a long time. Maybe [in the ’90s] we stopped innovating for a while, but now they’ve been copying OS X the same way they copied Mac.'”
“Longhorn is not only years overdue but missing what was once going to be its keystone feature, a revolutionary way of handling files called WinFS. [Windows czar Jim Allchin] contends that the breadth of Longhorn makes it a much weightier project than Tiger, which he describes as ‘a peripheral to the iPod.’ Furthermore, he suggests that some of Apple’s ideas (like the Dashboard mini-programs) were inspired by early demos of Longhorn. Jobs considers that charge ridiculous. ‘We’ve been showing pieces of Tiger for 18 months,’ he says, insisting that all of Apple’s ideas came from within Apple. ‘And you can be assured all these things have plenty of patent protection,’ adds Jobs.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: “Longhorn” is actually named after a saloon located at the base of Whistler mountain, which makes sense, because you’d have to be soundly drunk to believe any of Allchin’s B.S.
We don’t know what the heck Allchin means when he calls Mac OS X Tiger ‘a peripheral to the iPod,’ but it sounds like you 15 million (and rapidly growing) Windows-patching iPod owners need to order your “peripheral” and a Mac to run it on. Moo.
Allchin and Microsoft desperately want to make this a war of words simply because they have nothing to compete with Mac OS X Tiger. Wanna hear something funny? It’s Windows XP SP2 vs. Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger for at least the next year-and-a-half!
Related MacDailyNews articles:
Nearly every segment of the PC food chain needs Longhorn to succeed – April 22, 2005
Microsoft’s new mantra: ‘It Just Works’ ripped straight from Apple’s ‘Switch’ campaign – April 22, 2005
Apple CEO Steve Jobs on Microsoft’s Longhorn: ‘They are shamelessly copying us’ – April 21, 2005
Apple shows off Mac OS Tiger in Microsoft’s backyard while Microsoft previews Windows XP ad push – April 19, 2005
Apple’s Mac OS X reality vs. Microsoft’s Longhorn fantasy – April 19, 2005
Microsoft’s Windows Longhorn will bear more than just a passing resemblance to Apple’s Mac OS X – April 15, 2005
Analyst: ‘Microsoft’s Longhorn is going to have hard time upstaging Apple’s Mac OS X Tiger’ – April 13, 2005
Analyst: Apple in ‘position to exploit Microsoft missteps, claim leadership’ with Mac OS X Tiger – April 13, 2005
Apple’s Schiller: Mac OS X Tiger ‘has created even more distance between us and Microsoft’ – April 13, 2005
Will Mac OS X Tiger add fuel to Apple’s recent momentum in the computer business? – April 13, 2005
Why doesn’t Apple advertise Mac OS X on TV? – April 12, 2005
Analyst: Tiger proves ‘Apple is light years ahead of Microsoft in developing PC operating systems’ – April 12, 2005
Apple to ship Mac OS X ‘Tiger’ on Friday, April 29; pre-orders start today – April 12, 2005
Apple Announces Mac OS X Server ‘Tiger’ to ship Friday, April 29 with 64-bit application support – April 12, 2005
Analysts: Apple’s new Tiger operating system could really impact Mac sales – April 12, 2005
Piper Jaffray raises Apple estimates on Mac OS X ‘Tiger’ release news – April 12, 2005
Apple’s Mac OS X ‘Tiger’ vs. Microsoft’s Windows ‘Longhorn’ – March 31, 2005
New Microsoft Longhorn chief was former Pepto-Bismol brand manager – March 18, 2005
Red Sox and Apple vs. Yankees and Microsoft – October 29, 2004
Microsoft’s Longhorn fantasy vs. Apple’s Mac OS X reality – September 14, 2004
Is Microsoft’s stripped-down ‘Longhorn’ worth waiting for? – September 10, 2004
Silicon Valley: Apple CEO Steve Jobs previews ‘Longhorn’ – June 29, 2004
PC Magazine: Microsoft ‘Longhorn’ preview shows ‘an Apple look’ – May 06, 2004
Microsoft concerned that Longhorn’s look and feel will be copied if revealed too soon – August 25, 2003
Windows ‘Longhorn’ to add translucent windows that ripple and shrink by 2005 – May 19, 2003
Wondering about steve’s quote about “all ideas came from apple”… didn’t dashboard widgets come from that Konfabulator or something? It’s mac, but it didn’t start as an apple project right?
Just wondering… 😎
To Charlie:
http://daringfireball.net/2004/06/dashboard_vs_konfabulator
http://daringfireball.net/2004/07/konfab_confab
Desktop Accessories hails from the original Macintosh software, more than 20 years ago. Konfabulator made a decent program, but Dashboard will be much more than Konfabulator could hope to be.
Magic Word: Million. I like the sound of that.
Nice of Bill to hold some media events about Longhorn this week. ‘Cause us ravin’ Macheads will be pissing and moaning about this or that aspect of Panther that’s messing up, and it’s just so very kind-hearted of Bill to remind us of how fortunate we really are. Here’s wishing good luck to everyone with the new cat.
Let me get this straignt – Tiger (Release 4/05) is a copy of Longhorn (release 12/06?). What does that say about MS’s productivity if people can copy their ideas and still have the copies available 18 months ahead of the original? Even if this BS were true – it STILL makes MS look bad.
>Wanna hear something funny? It’s Windows XP SP2 vs.
>Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger for at least the next year-and-a-half!
I beg to differ…
It’s likely that MacOS X 10.5 will be out before Longhorn is – so it’s likely to be “Windows XP SP2 vs. MacOS X 10.5” for several months as well.
MW: “about”, as in “Longhorn is really much ado ABOUT nothing.”
Allchin describes [OSX Tiger] as ‘a peripheral to the iPod.’
Could somebody explain to me what on earth that even means?
Oh, and enough of the Yankees-Red Sox analogies. Yankees spend $200 million, Sox spend $150 million. The rest of the teams in their league spend on average $60 million, or 2.5 to 3 times what everybody else paying. So quite frankly both the Yanks and the Sox equally anti-competitive, Microsoft-like, and bad for the industry.
/bitter Blue Jays fan
I thought this was a news article until I got to the link at the end and realized it is just an advertisement.
Jobs is not helping Apple’s cause by ranting that Longhorn is a copy of OSX. Why switch, Longhorn will be just like OSX.
Jobs… think before you talk. You are playing right into Bill’s plans of confusing the public and comparing vaporware with reality. I am starting to think Bill is smarter afterall.
Teflon is right! Jobs could be saying a lot of positive things about Tiger. Microsoft’s ploy is pretty transparent, to everyone here.
my previous post should read that the Yanks and Sox are paying 2.5 to 3 times what the rest of the league is paying in salaries.
Tiger vs. SP2 for a year and a half. M$ is very worried. Witness the smoke and mirrors ad campaign.
SJ has said they are going to slow down the rate of OS updates, so based on that, I would be surprised if their next OS is released on or about the same time as Longhorn.
However, if I were SJ, I would push my developers as hard as I could to get the next major OS release out by December, 2006. How cool would it be if Apple could really release another OS at the same time as Longhorn. That would be a *major* coup.
So…now that we know what Tiger holds, I wonder what the next OS will be? Frankly, I think we’re running out of improvements to make on the current OS. If you think about it, most of the features in Tiger aren’t really core OS features, but nifty add-ons designed to make applications run faster or do cooler stuff (CoreImage, CoreVideo, H.264). The actual core itself–manipulating files, lanching applications–hasn’t really changed much.
Though, I suppose Spotlight is the first step towards completely ditching the Finder. And that would be a welcome evolution.
So yeah…what will “Lion” have?
same as it ever was.
remember a few years back when windows 95 was released and the motto was: “windows 95=macintosh 84”?
Hairbo, Tiger is more than a few “nifty add-ons”. More than ever, Tiger integrates separate aps by allowing them to share data. This is no small feat. And the advancement of complex core functions is a huge design advancement for ANY computer system.
Okay, I’ll admit that Mac OS X can’t make your car fly or your dog sing, and Apple still has a few bugs to work out with the interface between the core systems CoreInternet and CoreMatterTransporter, but the 200+ improvements and additions they were able to implement will bring an ease-of-use and new functionality that no other computer OS has had before.
On a personal note, my boyfriend is blind and I think the VoiceOver function being part of the Core system ( just as the mouse and keyboard are) in Tiger is a HUGE advancement. Couple it with Spotlight, a Google-like internet service, and the yet untapped power of 64-bit data manipulation, and we’re moving much closer towards a Star Trek-like computer interface for EVERYONE. A two-button Mac mouse? Screw it! How about NO MOUSE OR KEYBOARD at all?!! …or an iPod with a speech-based universal translator? …access your home Mac by just talking on your cell phone and output the display to a particular monitor at the airport? (But MS Windows will STILL need a floppy drive to boot.)
These are all possible with the CURRENT Core functions. Apple is making the building blocks, you just haven’t seen what they plan on doing with them.
” ‘And you can be assured all these things have plenty of patent protection,’ adds Jobs.”
And lets hope if Microsoft violates those patents, that this time Apple will not cave in as it did over the violation of its QuickTime patents.
On Friday, April 29th, I will buy a copy of Mac OS 10.4 from an Apple store in Seattle. What’s important about that is Apple will sell and profit from a real product sold to real people. What’s Microsoft selling? A promise? An idea? Perhaps even the stuff of dreams.
Seems to me that any company would rather sell a product that you can make money off of instead of wasting millions on an ad campaign for something that nobody can buy.
Then again, I never did understand the logic behind Windows.
Red Sox vs. Yankees?? Freaking hardly! More like NE Patriots vs Green Bay Packers– old guard vs new guard, plain and simple. MS has the $$– Apple’s got the brains.
It’s TIGER vs promises. In 2006 or 2007 It’ll be the next big cat-
-PUSSY vs Longweeny.
I won’t be shocked if Longhorn is pushed all the way back to when OS XI comes out.
Jobs is not helping Apple’s cause by ranting that Longhorn is a copy of OSX.
—-
Pfft. Yeah, besides the patent-protection part you missed, when have MS ever gotten a ripoff job right?
Wondering about steve’s quote about “all ideas came from apple”… didn’t dashboard widgets come from that Konfabulator or something? It’s mac, but it didn’t start as an apple project right?
They had the dashboard back in System 7 on the Mac.
winmacguy,
Dashboard is not a rip-off of Konfabulator:
http://daringfireball.net/2004/06/dashboard_vs_konfabulator
Mac OS X is an iPod peripheral. Most iPod users use iTunes on Windows XP.
That makes WINDOWS XP – THE NUMBER ONE iPOD PERIPHERAL.
Two can play that game, Idiot.
For those of you who haven’t already, go back and read L1km1ør65’s post again. In my opinion that post is spot on. Apple is indeed laying the groundwork for unimagined creativity in future years. If MS isn’t in fact extremely worried about these changes they are roadkill on the info highway. My guess is that five years hence MS will be a classic business school case of a monopoly who got pummelled when they didn’t realize that the rules of the game changed from “market share” to “innovation”.