“Tiger, the latest version of Apple Computer’s Mac OS X operating system, debuts Friday. This is hardly news to the Mac faithful, who’ve been alerted through daily e-mail reminders and a running countdown on Apple’s Web site to the day Tiger is ‘unleashed,'” Dawn C. Chmielewski writes for The Mercury News. “The folks in Redmond are bracing as well. Tiger, Apple’s fifth major operating system upgrade in four years, keeps the competitive pressure on Microsoft, which is at least a year away from introducing the successor to Windows XP, dubbed ‘Longhorn.’
MacDailyNews Note: Microsoft themselves say “late 2006” for Longhorn. That’s really more like “at least 18 months away.” Is Chmielewski attempting to minimize the wait? We’re not accusing, just wondering. What do you think? (Please see the article “Nearly every segment of the PC food chain needs Longhorn to succeed” from April 22, 2005 in the list of related articles below.)
Chmielewski continues, “It’s not that Tiger is about to eat Longhorn for lunch — after all, Microsoft Windows runs 94 percent of the world’s personal computers. Rather, Apple’s history of operating system innovations sets the standard for Microsoft to imitate or exceed.”
MacDailyNews Note: Oh, please. Microsoft may have had a few ideas here or there (Command-Tab for Mac OS X Panther users, for example), but when exactly did a Microsoft OS actually exceeded an OS that was available at the same time from Apple? Never. Not even close. We can even make a pretty compelling case for Apple’s Mac OS 9 over Windows XP today. And plenty of people today still choose that classic old Apple OS over the latest and “greatest” from Microsoft.
Chmielewski continues, “What makes Tiger innovative, rather than merely iterative, is that it breaks down the barriers between the self-contained computer and the Internet. It is the first operating system to incorporate and expand upon the intensive hard-drive search popularized by Google. It also fetches the kind of up-to-the-minute stock, weather and flight information typically found on Web sites like Yahoo. Apple even improved on RSS news and blog feeds and integrates them into its Safari Web browser… Tiger supports the latest high-definition video compression technology, H.264, which yields bright, vivid images from even more compact files. The video trailer we watched for the upcoming ‘Fantastic Four’ movie was crisper than that found in any theater.”
“Benjamin Reitzes, an analyst with UBS Investment Research in New York, predicts the appeal of these new features will be popular with the 14 million Mac aficionados who already use Mac OS X. It might even persuade some of the 10 million Macintosh users who have yet to switch to open their wallets,” Chmielewski reports. “And that could be worth $1 billion in revenue to Apple this fiscal year, Reitzes estimates.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Our own SteveJack wrote the article, “If you aren’t running Mac OS X by now you really are one of the ‘crazy ones'” on September 27, 2002. If you aren’t using Mac OS X today in April, 2005, uhhh, well, let’s just say, “it’s time.” This Friday would be a perfect time to begin your move to Mac OS X with the release of Tiger! Now sit down in front of a mirror and repeat after us, “my old [insert peripheral here]’s Mac OS X driver will never come. It is time to stop clinging to my old [insert peripheral here]. It is time to join the majority of Mac users and move to Mac OS X. I can do this. I’m good enough. I’m strong enough. Etc., etc., etc.
Related MacDailyNews articles:
If you aren’t running Mac OS X by now you really are one of the ‘crazy ones’ – September 27, 2002
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
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
OS X 10.4 will be worth a lot more than $1 billion in revenue if Apple advertises the damn thing. Mac users know all about the operating system but for everyone else the Mac OS is a mystery. People need to know that applications like video, pictures, music, network chatting, advanced search, etc are not Microsoft-only features.
Where do you want to go today? Straight to the Apple Store, that’s where.
From the article:
“but when exactly did a Microsoft OS actually exceeded an OS that was available at the same time from Apple? Never. Not even close.”
OK that’s a bit of a reach. Remember when Windows 95 hit the streets, while Apple had Mac OS 7.x (7.5?) and was mired in Copland? Of course Win95 delivered a lot of empty promises and new headaches, but Apple desperately needed an answer to it that didn’t come until Mac OS X. My how times have changed! Now MS is mired in a Holy Grail OS and Apple is the one moving steadily forward. Fate can have some strange twists.
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Does this mean MS will renew itself around 2007/2008 and finally have a solid OS around 2010-2015? We’ll see. It’s obviously hard to draw parallels; Mac OS X actually delivers quality (versus Plug-and-Pray and “.DLL hell”) and MS hasn’t fired Gates (not yet anyway).
I’m not waiting for Tiger. I can’t even have Panther on my beige G3. I wouldn’t even have Jaguar if the wireless PCI card that I have to get online didn’t require it. I use 9 and X at work, but prefer 9. You know why? It ain’t never gonna change! What works now will work forever, and it gets me through my work as well or better than X. I can’t use Safari because I can’t find any way to turn off animated GIFs. Even IE can do that.
It’s sad that Apple has written Tiger in such a way that upgrade processors won’t work with it. Sonnet and other long time supporters of the Mac are getting shafted.
I work three 12 hour shifts per week in a high-end prepress shop. I have for over ten years. At home I have a 48-track Mac-based recording studio. My studio has grown from it’s early Mac IIci/OS 6.8 configuration to its present day OS 9.2/ OS 10.3 configuration. As someone who has spent countless production hours around Macs for the last 15 years, I find these tales of OS 7, 8, 9 “crashing 16 times a day” to be ridiculous.
Everything I do on Macs push them to their limits. If my OS 8 or 9 Macs crashed once a week, it was a rarity. Please. Stop making crap up. Unless you were using one of the few bad .x systems (i.e.: 8.4) you either had a defective machine or you’re nitwit. Mac OSes have always been very stable in 24-hour production environments. Period.
The only thing I have ever used that crashed 16 times a day is Windows ME. I have truely had Windows XP crash on me 9 times one day.
Windows crashes on me an adverage of once per 2 days. My Mac which I have been using for over a year now has crashed on me once. I am never going to buy another Wintel machine.