Snow Leopard? You Have Got to be Kidding Me
Monday 9 June 2008 - Filed under apple + osx
This year’s WWDC feels like Apple’s waking up from the coma that was last year to finally kick ass and take names and not the other way around. When you think about it, the only thing they got right was the iphone and ipod touch and those were sold high on promise and potential. Case in point, the 3G iphone finally has a headphone jack opposite of the dock connector (if I saw the photos correctly) where it should have been to start. Mobile Me sounds promising despite the corny name though it’ll take more than a name change and 2GB of capacity to shed its sordid .mac past.
Then the icing on the cake is Snow Leopard. The should just call it OS X 10.5 Service Pack 1 because that’s what it is. Knowing Apple, they’ll probably charge the full price for those of us who endured the past six months faithfully testing their buggy as hell beta ware that they just had to rush out the door so the iphone could play nice with its docking station. Since when did stability, performance and security come as an after thought in an operating system from an established player?
Of course, I can appreciate the fact that forking their main operating system into a mobile branch (that powers the ipod touch and iphone) is a very involving endeavor and that’s where their focus was this past year. Still, Apple will always be about computers to me even with the name change explicitly removing “Computer” from the company name. I guess they weren’t kidding there.
As for buying the iphone when it hits Japan, I’m a little conflicted. I actually don’t use my phone much these days. While I’d love to consolidate my ipod Touch and phone into one device, I’m not motivated enough to ditch my relationship with my current carrier. Not for an iphone with the same capacity as my current ipod (16GB). I’ll think about upgrading when capacity goes somewhere in the 64GB neighborhood for sure.
All in all, I will buy Snow Leopard if they do in fact mean business when they say stability and not the current upgrade scheme of trading in two old bugs for one new one.
Apple posts details about Snow Leopard – The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)2008-06-09 » baron
9 June 2008 @ 2:47 pm
MobileMe is promising 20GB, not 2GB (shared between e-mail and files). Not sure if that makes a huge difference, but the service itself seems pretty promising.
9 June 2008 @ 10:03 pm
I am guessing the 2GB remark was a typo, as it is 20GB. Not earth-shattering for storage space or anything, but a far cry better than 2. ___
Also, in regards to 10.6, while I can see where you are coming from, I have to say that we Mac users have been spoiled with so many new features in each .X release. Truth be told, however, OSX is the first operating system for Apple which charges a full OS price point for each .X release. Unless I have missed a subsequent press release, we still don’t know what the cost will be for 10.6 – if anything at all. 10.1 was free, if memory serves – and it was a rather new feature-poor update. Last but not lease, it is also a year away from now. When does Apple ever just release something in the form they announce a year prior?
If everything occurs as you say (full price, no new features, etc.) then frustration is warranted. But we still don’t know enough yet.
What irks me about WWDC is the fact that we still have to wait until (probably) July 11th before we can start using the 2.0 FW with all the new apps. I was hoping that shit would be out today. I’m just glad I didn’t stay up all night for the keynote.