“Steve Jobs’ minimal contribution to his annual WWDC keynote yesterday amounted to little more than handing over the proceedings to his lieutenants. Jobs himself concentrated on doing something we already know he does quite well: bash Microsoft. ‘You know, our friends up north spent over $5 billion on R&D,’ said Jobs, “but these days all they seem to be copying is Google and Apple. Shows money doesn’t buy everything,'” Andrew Orlowski writes for The Register.
Orlowski writes, “There are days when taunts can backfire, however, and yesterday was one of them. Apple chose only to offer a ‘sneak preview’ of some of the features of Leopard, but these failed to match the taunt that the OS was ‘Vista 2.0.’ On the basis of the evidence so far the sixth release of Mac OS X is, to put it bluntly, a point release… Jobs hinted that some features may be disclosed nearer the launch next spring. ‘There’s some top secret features we’re going to keep a little close to the vest,’ he said on stage. He meant to say ‘close to the chest,’ but perhaps the stock investigation is weighing heavily on his mind.”
Full article here.
No, Andy, Mr. Jobs meant “close to the vest.” Look it up. Perhaps they don’t have that particular saying in Snideville? Now, what’s the point of this immeasurably small article when Orlowski clearly reports that Jobs is keeping parts of Leopard secret, so that Microsoft won’t do the usual botched copy job of said parts? Given that, Apple’s taunts were obviously reinforced, not undermined. Orlowski’s article is rendered pointless by none other than Andrew Orlowski himself.
So, in the end, as is often the case, the esteemed hack Mr. Orlowski has told us nothing: Apple bashed Microsoft, but that was wrong because Apple didn’t show anything special in Leopard even though it’s clear that Jobs is keeping certain top secret features of Leopard “close to the vest.” Oh yeah, Orlowski also somehow faults Jobs for using the phrase “close to the vest” appropriately, no less. At least he didn’t call Jobs “skinny.”
After all of that pointlessness, Orlowski ices his crap cake and wishes for Leopard’s topmost secret to be Apple’s 14-year-old idea known as “Piles.” Orlowski even drags out diagrams and everything. Sheesh.
Stick to writing 500 words of weak, conflicting, and meaningless snideness, Andrew. Leave the OS features to the experts in Cupertino, California.
Related articles:
Apple previews Mac OS X Leopard featuring Time Machine, Spaces, enhanced Mail & iChat, and more – August 07, 2006
Microsoft to use Apple’s ‘Piles’ in Longhorn? – March 22, 2005
Mac OS X 10.3 Panther ‘Piles’ screenshots posted online – April 26, 2003
The Register goes deep inside Apple’s Piles – April 23, 2003
The dude can’t write. Can anyone over in the UK confirm that The Register is equivalent to The National Enquirer? I think this guy just wanted to read his own writing on the web.
Meanwhile Apple stock drops by $2.43….
The stuff that was shown yesterday was okay…nothing over the top. The biggest news is Steve´s health.
How many things are being held back waiting for him to decide? Only one person at Apple makes decisions and if that person is sick…well…
They are definitely the UK’s version of the supermarket trash tabloid. All fluff and absolutely no substance or facts. Geez, the idiots can’t even coin a phrase properly!
Clearly the author doesn’t realize that most of the features Vista boasts have already been realesed under Tiger.
I really think MDN is nit-picking here.
The guy had his own set of expectations and they were different from what he got out of the keynote.
I guess if you’re not all that impressed with Time Machine and Core Animation, what was demonstrated could be underwhelming.
He was looking for the Piles feature and wondered what Apple will do about developing a media-hub for the living room that simplifies, rather than complicates life.
His last statement was:
“It’s unlikely that come next Spring Leopard will look as spotty as it does this week. But whether Apple chooses to launch technology in search of a problem, or better technology that fixes some problems, we’ll have to wait and see.”
So, since I was impressed with the announced features of Leopard, I will disagree with Andrew Orlowski, but that is the most that should be said IMHO.
“To recap, Apple just announced that Leopard is a seriously minor update.”
http://www.internet-nexus.com/2006/08/leopards-ten-new-features-dissected.htm
I have read those new from Inquirer and register for some time and it looks like those guys do not have a clue write an article. Every body knows that Vista “wants to be” (hasn’t came to that yet, but they are trying) like tiger, So Steve Jobs does not need to show how similar is Vista with Leopard, because Vista en far behind trying to look like Tiger.
But I did not like the presentation made by that other guy that shows “Time Machine”, he does not make a good presentation, I believe that he even make look some feature less impressive that they are.
Orlowski probably never wore a vest in his life.
Touche´
What the analysts and even MDN consumer readers are omitting over and over is that WWDC is a _developer_ conference. Now certainly Apple knows it is watches world-wide by consumers, but come on…1 day out of 365 Apple devotes to things that Developers are interested in and people are shouting “Where are the iPods? Where is the iPhone?”
Core Animation is huge for developers. Time Machine is not nearly as huge – though saving iterations of development code will be a time saver for sure – but the hardware anouncements are really big – 5x Xserve speed leaps are not something to write off. The completion of their transition to Intel in 210 days is not something to write off.
Where the “Dell” is the Sony conferece releasing new desktops, servers, and OS improvements? What’s “HP” with the lack of a Google conference on their platform improvements? It isn’t just Microsoft – no one does it quite like Apple.
@ Too Hot: I was impressed by Time Machine and Core Animation, but still underwhelmed by the preview.
But i did note the theme of collaboration yesterday, and so hope to see even more cool stuff along those lines as we learn more about Leopard. Also noted that it sounded like a new Finder was in the works (based on a comment made during the Keynote about an “ordinary Finder window,” or something like that).
Hey look who is back – it’s Stockboy. Yowza! You have balls showing up back here. You were bashing AAPL back when it was in the mid $50 range. It’s now up to $64+ and you are talking about a $2.43 loss. So what if it fell today and yesterday. I hope you were shorting it, boy, because you would have lost your ass!!! Stockboy at Wal-Mart is my guess!
I was at the keynote yesterday, and something felt wrong. I do not know what it was, but many perceived it. Leopard looks good, there are interesting discussions about other technologies that should make it in the final release, but Steve’s enthousiasm just wasn’t there and that worries Apple fans.
Oh, by the way “stockboy”, if you know anything about the markets, you know that you can’t just look at one stock for one day and determine squat. Take a look at the rest of the market – all down. Oil issues didn’t help our market today. Duh.
veleeeta –
Your link reinforces my previous comments – #10 Core Animation “not important” because it doesn’t impact the end user directly.
WWDC IS A DEVELOPER CONFERENCE !!!!
Come on, Stock Boy, why don’t you mention to everyone here that you’re still short on AAPL at $47?
Um, and by the way, when do those options come due for you, O Financial Genius? (Of course, when you can afford to keep only 10 shares of APPL in your portfolio, what’s a $170 loss, huh?)
Dutch – say more about your impressions of the conference. What was the mood of the 1000 Apple staff on hand? Is there other insight you can give us to What’s up with Steve? (I’m being serious)
“The biggest news is Steve´s health. “
No it isn’t. The only people talking about it are people with nothing better to do on Mac forums.
I believe he meant that he’s been sitting at his PC for so long that he has gotten piles (hemorrhoids).
Interesting article. The most interesting part was that it got published … must be a short news day. Or they had nobody else with a take on Leopard and the copy to back it up.
If what we saw of Leopard was all there is to see,
a) it’s STILL more than a “point” release.
b) it’s not likely to sell very well.
I expect more for my $129 and year-and-a-half between upgrades. Sure, Mail-plus-iCal and Spaces are each excellent updates, but not $129 worth. The new Widget thing will sell a lot of Macs, but not me, and the Core Animation demo set off my vertigo. Time Machine is a Good Thought, but I have yet to need to do a restore from the backups I’m already keeping! We know they are changing iSync – they had the new orange icon on the banner – but they never mentioned it. I like what they’ve done with iChat (why no “white board”?) but I can’t get to use the AV part NOW!
Good grief. Orlowski is one of a great many who share these sentiments.
Why is it so hard, MDN, to give at least a little credibility to notion that what we heard yesterday does not constitute the kind of OS upgrade that we should have to pay anything for?
We’ll see what the secret stuff is, then maybe it’s worth something. At the moment, it’s not.
@ veleeeta: Paul Thurrott seems to think Vista is a shipping product, in the article you linked. Pretty funny, if not just a little pathetic.
And he was so over zealous in his Apple bashing, he got a number of things wrong. Sort of amusing, in a way, but i felt guilty for being amused by someone with such obvious mental disabilities.
Enough about my health already!
Here’s the truth about my appearance at the Keynote: I had a fight with the wife night before last and didn’t get a good night’s sleep. Jeez, you guys have me all but dead and buried!
Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated!
The only Piles Orlowski knows about are the ones on his mama’s ass.
Geez, people are kinda spoiled aren’t they? I’m glad to not have to upgrade the OS every year. 10.5 is still, potentially, another 10 months away, exercise patience my little grasshoppers. I’m sure his Steveness is saving the best for last.
Until Vista makes it to market:
Vista = DukeNukem
Geez, people are kinda spoiled aren’t they? I’m glad I don’t have to upgrade the OS every year. 10.5 is still, potentially, another 10 months away, exercise patience my little grasshoppers. I’m sure his Steveness is saving the best for last.
It looks like Apple wanted to show us a few Leopard features to keep our interest going. The interesting reasons to make it a paid upgrade so far:
1) 64bit application support, XCode 3.0 with Objective-C 2.0
2) Time Machine – no more lost files
3) Greatly improved Spotlight – booleans, multi-account, etc
4) Boot Camp (current one is just an open beta)
5) Greatly improved iChat with shared desktop capability
6) Greatly improved Dashboard Widgets – load in background on boot, tie-ins to Safari, etc
7) Spaces – virtual desktop as part of the OS instead of a hacked-on third party utility
The Core Animation framework is needed for Time Machine and other new features. It is a new part of the OS that makes things possible that were not in Tiger.
If you don’t want to pay $120 for Leopard, just delay your new Mac purchase until next spring and stop whining. Apple spent millions of dollars developing Leopard, so you don’t get it as a free upgrade to Tiger.
@ Rainy Day:
Good points. I still am impressed though. Maybe because I’m part end-user and part developer (not entirely one or the other).
If I was mainly a developer, I would appreciate the new hardware, the new programming frameworks (64bit, core animation, the new Xcode and widget niceties including the debugger) but would probably have expected some more (perhaps virtualization instead of Boot Camp, translation tools for visual basic and .net generated codes, updates to the OS-wide GUI ala brushed metal etc.). Develpers are likely to be focussed on what the OS, rather than other Apple apps is offering.
If I was mainly an end-user, I would probably be most impressed with Time Machine and iChat enahancements, maybe also the updates to Mail. But I could imagine wanting more (such as Front Row updates that include media-hub TiVo-ish features, a more complete office suite, a corporate-aimed mail/calander/colaboration framework ala exchange/outlook, etc.). End-users are less likely, IMHO, to focus so much on what is OS and what is an added application. They just need easy to use, easy on the eyes, functionality.
So I’m getting bits from here and bits from there, with a promise for more later… I’m happy!
I really hope the Top Secret features are going to actually be worth it. Because, otherwise, this is pretty underwhelming. The link posted in one of these comments makes the point clear: All of these changes are unoriginal. Look at it this way:
Time Machine sounds great…IF YOU HAVE A DESKTOP COMPUTER! (Why does NOBODY else see this?) I have an Apple laptop (a 17″ Powerbook 1GHz…we go way back). Time Machine will only work if I have a server (which I conveniently don’t have in my dorm room) or an external hard drive, which doesn’t remain attached as I wander around. In fact, it gets attached about once a month, at best. That renders useless the only real inventive piece of software.
Updates to iCal, Mail, etc. are all pretty basic. In fact, they should’ve all been there in the first place. Other minor updates are also underwhelming. Hell, as cool as the iChat backgrounds are, are they really useful? Would ANYBODY use them consistently?
Let’s face it: Apple needs to have a breakthrough idea. A media center PC with special Leopard features? Would be cool. A radically improved Finder? I wouldn’t mind. Better file management? Yeah, would help, since Spotlight really doesn’t cut it.
But not this, which to me is the real lipstick. It’s 10.4.Leopard.
I just don’t get these people who say the preview was not enough. Maybe they should stop listening to the rumor boards prior to the show. There’s a lot of great stuff in there. Time Machine was awesome, Core Animation was amazing – it will be interesting to see how it’s used. 64 bit is a huge, etc. These morons said the same thing about Tiger and Panther before that. There’s just no satisfying some people.
As for SJ handing part of the show off to others, pay attention people, he’s been doing that all along. Phil Schiller takes part in nearly every keynote. Jon Rubenstein used to be a common presenter too. They’ve always invited people from other companies up in the past (Roz Ho, Paul Otellini, etc.). I think now it might be done more to get SJ to take less of a front seat and allow Apple to take on a bit more of an anonymous persona. It’s dangerous for a company to let one person be the face for too long, especially when that person is getting older and closer to retirement. It doesn’t mean he’s sick.
About the “close to the vest” phrase; you have to remember that The Register is British and in British English the phrase is actually “close to the chest”.
From a British point of view the Register was correct but they were incorrect in failing to realise that His Steveness was speaking US English.
As the old saying goes, “Britain and America are divided by a common language” or words to that effect.
And, there’s this: The discussion boards over at apple.com have been shut down all day.
Wonder why?
Russell:
I’m not as sure as you that Time Machine needs an external drive. I don’t think there’s as much disk space involved in Apple’s solution compared to traditional backup and recovery software. Time will tell. Maybe some WWDC attendees will be able to shed some light without breaking NDAs.
Orlowski is a bigger pussy than any leopard…
ndelc
Those notes and calendar integration sure would be handy to access on a cell phone…
TowerTone,
I agree. I forgot about those. The changes to Mail and iCal are two of the things I’m looking forward to most.
Jimbo von Winskinheimer – lost a lot of money on Apple stock -eh.
Bought in at $85 and now you are only down $20 a share on the 10 shares you bought.
Clueless as usual.
If I remember Stockboy´s predictions he said Apple would trade around the $55-$65 range for at least six months. He said that about five months ago. Lookin´ wise.
Orlowski is publishing his usual Apple trash piece. Par for course. Seriously, he’s so predictable that it’s become totally unnessary and redundant to read his articles anymore.
I hope MDN stops picking up on his article. Maybe the Register will finally dump him when it realizes that everything he has to say is proved flat-out wrong in 12 months, and everything else he has to say is just bitter bile from a sad little man.
It looks like by some of the other comments that some of you don’t get it either. Underwelming? Time Machine was underwelming? What exactly were you expecting? Leopard isn’t done yet but I wouldn’t call this underwelming. You want underwelming go check out Vista. If you don’t have the fastest processor with the biggest badest video card and at least a gig of memory try Vista and see just how underwelming that is.
PC people like things to be overly and unnecessarily complicated which is why they don’t “get” Apple. They’ve been conditioned by Microsoft to accept things as they are. Sad.
I really would like to see this Volume Shadow Copy feature that’s supposed to be in a not-yet-shipping-delayed-by-years operating system that Apple allegedly copied. I can guarantee that its implementation will be nowhere near as elegant or simple.
PCs make me sick.
If you’ve ever tracked Orlowski’s statments about Apple, you’d realize that he rarely misses the chance to bash Apple — warranted or not. Sometimes he even openly flames the company and Steve Jobs without justification.
It just is NOT worth paying any attention to him when it comes to Apple, the company. Occasionally he’ll say something halfway nice about about an Apple product, but never about the company or Steve Jobs.
Maybe you need some pc-cillan. A high dose of anti-Vistatics should help.
I tell you what, I’m upset too!!!
All these rumor sites spread stories that Apple was going to unveil a major, MAJOR upgrade to OSX, a new iPod video, an iPhone, an iTablet, new MacPro desktops with a complete outer design overhaul… video services, new Nanos… new EVERYTHING… and then Apple failed to deliver on all off these rumors… How could Apple do this to us!!! What a flop of a Keynote… We tell Apple what we’re expecting, get all excited about it, and then Apple goes and shows us what they were actually working on instead! Hmph… I don’t know if I can ever trust Apple again.
By the way, that’s sarcasm for those that don’t get out that much…
Stock Boy, the people who REALLY got burned in the tech sector over the past year are those who bought DELL and MSFT.
Can you deny that FACT, sir/madam/child/imbecile? Why do you NEVER address the moribund performance of these two equities in your rantings and ravings here?
DELL is down 40% from a year ago, from $36 to $21.50 today.
MSFT is down 10% from a year ago, from $27 to $24.30 today.
AAPL, on the other hand, is up 40% from a year ago, from $46 to $64.75 today.
Only a complete moron could possibly witness these FACTS and still vomit the kind of inanity you do on this site.
It would behoove you to change your medication–or diaper–soon.
>MDN wrote: Stick to writing 500 words of weak, conflicting, and meaningless snideness,
Not everyone strives to be an MDN editor.
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Up until yesterday, I somehow formed the impression Leopard was going to knock everyone’s socks off, that it was going to be so far advanced of Vista that any comparisons would be laughable. It’s too early to come to any sort of conclusions, but I certainly didn’t see any promise of that yesterday. Frankly, so far it doesn’t seem to me to be worth the price of the upgrade. Not even close, actually.
A lot of people were complaining on this infantile site and elsewhere that Tiger was merely an evolutionary release (rather than the hyped-up revolutionary release) after Panther. To me Leopard is the same, but even moreso. Just a couple of new flashy minor apps I didn’t need, and some overall enhancements. Big frickin deal. 64-bit may be huge one day, but it sure ain’t now for most people, and I see no reason I should be footing the bill for it now, so I won’t.
Unless those secret features are REALLY something special, but something tells me they won’t be.
>Leopard isn’t done yet but I wouldn’t call this underwelming.
I would, and it seems that many others do too.
I hope they add 2 or 3 additional useful things beyond Time Machine, beacuase it looks to be as incremental an upgrade as Tiger was (Spotlight). The flashy stuff (Dashboard) wears off pretty quickly.
—
My recommendations:
1. Finder: C’mon, you’re Apple. This is the best you could do? Even a direct copy of XP’s Explorer would be a vast improvement!
2. Better Media Management app akin to ACDSee. This could be part of the above. Something that lets us view our libraries of pictures quickly – thumbnails are not our enemies. Make it easy for us to see them, a double click shows a full-screen view, and editing in iPhoto takes a right-click or something. We don’t edit our photos every day. But we do view them quite often.
3. Temperature Monitor/Active cooling: Face it. The ultra-tight fitting portables run hot. Apple pushing the envelope in portability without sacrificing power will always equal a hot-running notebook.
@Too Hot!: I too am part developer, part end-user. When i spoke of being underwhelmed, i meant the Leopard preview. Not much meat on that cat just yet. The new hardware toys were interesting and impressive, though.
@Russell: It looks like one might be able to use Time Machine without an external HD, but if not, one can certainly partition a drive (as you can select which volumes to use with TM). Also, it looks as though you can have multiple backups, so nothing is preventing you from using a partitioning scheme for mobile operations, a local HD for external backup (e.g. when you’re back at your desk), and/or to a server as well. Btw, i don’t know of anyone carrying a server around with them; usually one would connect to it via an IntraNet or the InterNet, so if you can check your eMail, you can backup your HD.
Stockboy – You are wrong as always. Go back and review my posts in these forums – way back. I bought into AAPL at various price points. Most of them have split at least twice since then. My holdings in AAPL fluctuate but have been very high for a number of years. I probably made more money since the mid-$50s price point than you make in a year. Not selling because of a few down days, though.
You keep stocking those shelves, stockboy. One day you’ll move up from out of that Wal-Mart and you’ll be able to afford a real computer instead of one of those Acers or e-Machines you no doubt own. When you need investment advice, you come talk to the big boys, OK?
C’mon, all of you criticizing the Leopard preview. The release of 10.5 is still 3-6 months away. If you don’t like it, don’t buy it!
Ever since I switched to the Mac platform in the late summer of 2001, I’ve upgraded OS X from 10.0 / 10.1 (which came on my first machine) to Jaguar, Panther, and now Tiger. My original Mac, a dual-800 PM, is still in service, used by one of my kids (including usage for video-editing). Each OS upgrade has IMPROVED the performance of my older Macs and newer Macs as well as providing new features. I will gladly pay $129 ($69 with educational discount) for even the “incremental” upgrades to existing programs (Mail, etc) if the OS can extend the life of my Macs — not to mention the new features. I can’t imagine many PC users being able to still use a 5-year-old machine to run the latest OS software AND accomplish the same tasks as we can using Macs!
What’s the cost of hassle-free computing, simple video-editing, etc (e.g., iLife apps) and total integration between the ‘net and multiple computers? For me, the hassle-free factor is priceless! (Like the credit card commercial!).
MW = “total” — For a total computing experience that’s hassle-free, get a Mac!
The Register is a far better site than this one could ever hope to be… they actually research and report instead of compile and comment snidely.
The article isn’t entirely fair though. It is about 90% correct; what they have shown us of Leopard IS just a point upgrade, let’s hope that what is up SJ’s sleeve is better than what he showed us yesterday.
It was a keynote, to be consumed by the general public, either by watching it online or as reported by the various media outlets. There are surely hundreds of significant improvements that are too technical to make a good visual impact. So Jobs picked the “top ten list” of non-tech friendly features. They were pretty good ones, and I’m sure there are many more in store for the real Leopard release.
In the linked article Andrew Orlowski says, “these failed to match the taunt that the OS was ‘Vista 2.0’.” I tend to think Tiger is already “Vista 2.0.” He also says, “On the basis of the evidence so far the sixth release of Mac OS X is, to put it bluntly, a point release.” Yes, 10.5, is a “point release.” This guy can’t even blurt out accurate insults.