Apple has done what many expected - put out a press release on Tuesday (its favourite day for releases; perhaps it gives the people the weekend to sort everything, and then a day to check it all) saying that OSX 10.5, aka "Leopard", will ship on Friday October 26. At 6pm. Giving you just enough time to hurry home, install it, and stay up all night posting comments on the web saying "Wow, it's snappier!"
Hang on, though, what's this? "Leopard, the sixth major release of Mac OS X, is the best upgrade we've ever released," said Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO. "And everyone gets the 'Ultimate' version, packed with all the new innovative features, for just £85."
Yes, we're sure he stood there and said it for the benefit of the person with the clipboard.
But what's this on Apple's site? "Leopard, the sixth major release of Mac OS X, is the best upgrade we've ever released," said Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO. "And everyone gets the 'Ultimate' version, packed with all the new innovative features, for just $129."
Hmm, at current exchange rates $129 = £65, add VAT = £76.38. Who's walking away with the extra £9? Discuss.
Meanwhile, one gets the feeling that this has been quite a tight piece of management. As announced in April Leopard was already delayed from June to this month by the iPhone's introduction, as Apple diverted people from the computer OS team to the phone OS team. One suspects that they stayed a bit diverted, or distracted, having to do fixes (which bricked some iPhones). All in all, the "Gold Master" version of Leopard didn't circulate until last Friday evening, according to all the usually (un)reliable sources. That leaves ten days in which to sign off, create the master, duplicate the master, duplicate, box and ship the millions of copies that are surely going to ship. (If anyone knows precisely what order one does this stuff on a major operating system, enlighten us.)
However this also leaves a lingering doubt that there will be various, um, issues remaining in the software which will have to wait for a .1 fixup before everything's sorted. It's always thus - in the end, you can't make money without shipping something. (This is true of previous versions of any operating system, of course; they're all moving targets.)
There are lots of new things in Leopard; I've realised in the past week or so that I'm quite looking forward to Spaces, which gives you virtual desktops for different (user-defined) groups of applications.
Two questions for you, the reader: -will you buy Leopard at once, or wait for the .1 release? -what, if anything, are you looking forward to in it?
