MacDailyNews Take: Clouded Leopard.
Steinberg continues, “The real question, however, is whether there’s a crying need for a successor to Snow Leopard, and therein lies a tale.”
“While Microsoft appears to be doing well with Windows 7, in terms of early adoption and potential business migrations, there’s little evidence that they have managed to stem the gradual erosion of their operating system’s market share,” Steinberg writes. “They haven’t slowed Mac sales, and making the swichover from XP to Windows 7 so difficult isn’t helping matters.”
“This isn’t to say that Apple will not stage a [Mac OS X 10.7] technology demo at the WWDC. It’s possible they will, just to indicate what they’re working on, and provide a 15 to 18 month estimate for shipping a final version,” Steinberg writes. “That step would move the full feature rollout to WWDC 2011, which would seem a more sensible move.”
Steinberg writes, “It would also help developers if Apple assured them that they could continue to deliver Snow Leopard upgrades without having to confront major compatibility problems when [Mac OS X 10.7] finally ships. But there’s no rush for them or us.”
Much more in the full article, including a discussion of the slow progress of apps supporting Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard tech like Grand Central Dispatch, OpenCL and more, here.