“On April 12th, Apple announced that Mac OS X 10.5, Leopard, will be delayed from the original ‘Spring 2007’ ship date. Now it won’t ship until October,” John Martellaro writes for The Mac Observer.
“Considering that Apple had until June 21st (1806 UT) to ship Leopard, this is only a four month delay. In terms of OS releases, in general, this is no big deal some have said,” Martellaro writes.
“Well, yes it is,” Martellaro writes. “It’s actually a big deal because Apple had it within its power to avoid this setback.”
Martellaro writes, “Apple could have avoided this Leopard delay with good old fashioned management leadership. They could have allowed themselves to grow and mature a little. They could have empowered their key VPs to figure out what it would take to ship Mac OS X/Leopard on time, with excellence and exercise some authority. Unfortunately, many of Apple’s key VPs aren’t Lieutenant Generals. They’re Lieutenant Colonels.”
“Alas, Apple’s psychology and operating style is trapped in the $6B Valley of Death syndrome and not moving into a 21st century consumer electronics company that’s poised to move from $25B to, perhaps, $40B in just a few years,” Martellaro writes. “To get there in good shape, Apple will have to spend some money on something besides a half billion dollar new campus, forget the ghosts of the Michael Spindler and Gil Amelio eras, empower their VPs, and let their VPs become responsible for their own products, staff and OPEX.”
Full article – highly recommended – here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “LinuxGuy and Mac Prodigal Son” for the heads up.]
Martellaro, as usual, makes a lot of sense. Obviously, Jobs knows what he’s doing, but nobody’s perfect. The bottom line is that the failure of Leopard to ship when promised is a failure. Perhaps it’s a minor failure, maybe just a one-time failure, but it’s a failure nonetheless.
Related articles:
Apple’s Mac OS X Leopard delay is a (somewhat) big deal – April 16, 2007
Apple buys 9 more acres in Cupertino – April 14, 2007
Apple’s latest Mac OS X Leopard build shows unified interface, buh-bye brushed-metal – April 14, 2007
eWeek’s Morgenstern: Apple’s Mac OS X Leopard delay is no big whoop – April 13, 2007
InformationWeek blows it again: reports second delay of Leopard this year due to Vista compatibility – April 13, 2007
Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Piper Jaffray: Use Apple’s Leopard delay as buying opportunity – April 13, 2007
Analysts unconcerned over Apple’s Mac OS X Leopard delay – April 13, 2007
Apple delays Mac OS X Leopard until October 2007, blames iPhone – April 12, 2007
Latest Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard build still accompanied by lengthy bug list – April 12, 2007
RUMOR: Apple to release Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard in June – April 02, 2007
Apple’s Mac OS X Leopard to feature ZFS? – March 29, 2007
Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard’s top secret ingredient: 3D everywhere, including new 3D Finder? – March 27, 2007
Apple to delay Leopard? Digitimes.com’s poor Apple rumor accuracy – March 23, 2007
Apple to postpone Mac OS X Leopard until October in order to support Windows Vista? – March 23, 2007
RUMOR: Some Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard ‘top secret’ features leak out – January 26, 2007
RUMOR: Apple Mac OS X Leopard to replace ‘Aqua’ with ‘Illuminous’ – December 11, 2006
Apple confirms ‘resolution independence’ and more coming in Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard – October 23, 2006
Cost of Apple’s second 50-acre Cupertino campus could top $500 million – April 25, 2006
Video: Steve Jobs meets Cupertino City Council – April 22, 2006
Transcript: Apple CEO Steve Jobs addresses the Cupertino City Council – April 20, 2006
Apple CEO Steve Jobs plans new 50-acre campus in California – April 19, 2006
Yet another blogger who thinks he can run Apple better than Apple can. There is a reason these people are lowly, insignificant bloggers and not visionary CEOs of multi-billion dollar companies.
This guy’s arguments have no basis in fact. He is commenting on that which he does not know because only Apple knows what goes on inside of Apple. I’d rather Apple admit that Leopard isn’t ready and delay it then ship it and “pull a Vista” on us all.
To the Mac dudes and dudettes that have been with OS X since it’s intro back in mar ’01. How many times have we gone through this process of getting the latest and greatest release, only to find that there are parts of the OS that are still not complete. I am glad that Apple is late here. It will save all of the users the hassles that come with being an early adopter of new technology. I say that the tech writers should quit over-reacting to this because they will probably be made to look like fools in the end by his Steveness.
Kudos to Apple for having the balls to get it right rather than releasing a piece of shite.
MDN must be desparate for stories to put this up. Probably why I come here so rarely, craptacular headlines like this that deserve no reading.
The real story here, and the one that Apple couldn’t really say in a press release is that the competitive threat from Vista is so amazingly small, that Apple didn’t NEED to hit the spring 2007 date.
Yes, I would like Apple to never miss a date. They’ve become so dependable that it is indeed a bit disappointing that June won’t be hit. I was getting excited about Leopard, too. However, if Apple was not seeing the market share growth numbers continue after Vista was released, then they would have figured out a way to still get this done.
The other logic here has nothing to do with development schedules. It has to do with market concentration. Steve is very good at making sure that folks can FOCUS on a new marketing message.
So, AppleTV gets limelight for 2-3 months, then iPhone 2-3 months. The problem was that between AppleTV and iPhone, two products dependent on the FCC process, there was no open window of time for the market to FOCUS on Leopard. Now, when Leopard comes out, it will dominate the holiday buying season for Apple (no coupons like Vista either).
Finally, I fully expect Leopard to be the first of a new breed of OS, an OS ecosystem and not just another desktop OS release. I would suspect that the top-secret features have something to do with desktop, notebook, AppleTV and iPhone, and since not all of these platforms are in the market yet, the “top-secret” stuff wouldn’t have made sense without them….
There is always a bigger picture with Steve!!
Overcoming our failures in life is what makes us better. We can’t improve unless we face actual failure.
I personnally think that postphoning Leopard is a good idea. Why? So that it won’t compete with iPhone. They should launch iPhone successfully, then after all the hub-bub dies down, launch Leopard before the holidays. Nice combo if you ask me.
Right enough, but perhaps a litle harsh.
After all, this is leading edge science, not chocolate drops
Sometimes things just do run late, not through incompetence but because of unexpected and – importantly – unquantifiable problems on the way.
No excuses you understand, just a little understanding. I too want Leopard and Time machine!
And of clourse, an iPhone
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I’ll just add myself to the list of people who think all these whiners should just shut up. It will be ready when it’s ready. You may want it now, but you’ll just have to wait. Get over it.
Could be Apple knows more about what’s going into Leopard than he does.
He might be right, but he shouldn’t be so quick to judge until it’s released.
This guy needs to read the Mythical Man Month.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man-Month
The simple fact is programmers were switched from leopard to the iphone
2 big products at once, simply a one off
though one which could have been avoided
Oh nice. More business advice from someone whose management experience is probably limited to the morning shift at the local arby’s. Why is everyone blowing this way out of proportion? Yea it sucks.. but this is software.. for a project this large, you don’t even need a good reason to be 4 months late.
I don’t know if the iPhone is the real reason. For all we know, they chose 4 months to give people a “breathing period” so they don’t have to decide if they want to shell out $500 for the iPhone or $130 for the OS upgrade. Whatever the reason I wish people would take a deep breath and relax. It will be okay.
TT
Global warming is actually caused primarily by Rush Limbaugh opening his mouth.
Sure Apple needs to expand. And those apparently useless campuses that Apple are building are going to be housing more engineers so that Apple can meet their goals in the future.
Apple started this expansion a year or two ago with buying more land in Cupertino and re-developing it.
This stuff takes time to put together. Plus Apple don’t necessarily want to hire people who suck at their job simply to put more hands on the job. They need dedicated people who will bust their arse for the man.
I absolutely disagree with the majority of the posts on this page. Of course none of us know exactly what is going on with Leopard, but on the face of it the decision to delay and to delay for four months, is in all probability not only the right decision, but an example of strong and good management.
This is an example of basic sound management. Projects often do not run smoothly. This is a fact of life in every field of business. And the reason(s) can be one of many. The key to good management is how you respond. The biggest mistake is to panic and shout. To throw (often the wrong) resources and to demand that problems are solved quickly. The result? Usually more delay, more wasted money and often disaster.
The right way is to calmly identify the problems and what needs to be done. make sure the right people (not necessarily different or more people) are working on the project; and then, crucially, give them a realistic time frame to work within.
I think that this is the approach Apple is taking, and more power to them.
Isn’t that the kind of setup that Microsoft has? And how has that been working for them?
He does seem to be allowing ‘management’ some sort of credit it, oh, so often, does not deserve. Indeed, the elevation of ‘managers’ to something other than paper-pushing status is a symptom of the decline of the real ability to do business. More managers is practically always a sign of ossification, stagnation, and hubris on the part of a company. More organization, perhaps. More managers? No.
Wait a minute, isn’t this Bill Clinton’s fault?
One word to fix the Apple management problem: cloning.
Alas, we will never know how to look at this until Daniel Eran blogs on it.
semi-serious, stop it.
1. Releasing a product on time but filled with bugs and postponing a product release with less bugs are not the only two options, so people should stop acting like those are the only two scenarios.
2. You don’t need to have certain qualifications in order to recognize problems or make criticisms. If that were the case, then none of us would be qualified to criticize anything about the government or even Microsoft, which I know plenty of people here do, even though they don’t run billion dollar companies.
I agree that this is an example of good management. Delaying a product because what you have is not ready for prime time is a good decision. Sometimes, unanticipated issues arise. UN-ANTICIPATABLE, as well. When M$ delayed Vista because what they had was inadequate, that was a good management decision. Unfortunately for them, it followed a management failure to recognize the major limitations of their vision until it was too late.
Apple is not in that position now. Apple’s vision is enormous and achievable, but not without some extra effort.
Did anyone actually read the article? It actually makes some good points, which MDN recognizes. For example:
“First, Apple hates to increase what’s called operating expenses, “OPEX”. You’ll hear Tim Cook talk about this at Earnings Calls. It’s a Silicon Valley obsession that as OPEX goes down, profits go up. Wall Street loves this. Investors love it. CFOs love it.
The effect is that it’s virtually impossible for an Apple manager to significantly increase their staffing based on their own judgment. Instead, each year, managers are asked to figure out ways to maintain or reduce their OPEX.
As a result, when a product comes along, like the iPhone, that’s based on Mac OS X, human resources remain constant while the demands of coding and QA grow and grow.”
Steve may have mellowed a bit, but, he has not changed. He will quit being the El Commandante when they pry Apple from his cold dead hands.
Lieutenant Colonels and Lieutenant Generals. Hooy! Not going to happen. I am glad for it.
The world is full of well managed mediocrity. There is so little quirky greatness. I savor it.
Waiting is such sweet agony.
One of the side effects of being perfect is that anything less than “perfect” every time out appears to be a failure. Apple has been as perfect as it is possible to be in the last few years. So if it says the Sun will rise from the South tomorrow, and it doesn’t happen until two days later, the lapse is painted as a major failure! While Martellaro brings up some valid points regarding Apple’s future, there is no reason to believe Apple is suddenly fallible just because of a few months’ delay in releasing the next OS.
Complete and utter bullshit. The company that grew from a $6B to a $20B did so with the philosophy management he attacks.
Writing software is a tricky thing, don’t fool yourself that throwing more manpower would have solved this. Last time I checked, Apple had 11,000 employees, that has grown to 18,000 by now. It’s not a management problem. There’s a price to pay for the awesome softwrae that Mac OS X is. It’s a 4 month delay, get over it.
Make no mistake: that 3 hour WWDC keynote will be HISTORIC.