In other news of Cupertino, Apple reportedly pulled developers off its new Mac operating system in order to finish development of the iPhone. That new version of OS X, code-named “Leopard” (presumably using the predatory cat moniker to distinguish it from Windows Vista, formerly code-named “Longhorn” as in the cud-chewing bovine) is thus said to have had its release date pushed back to October.
Missed OS launch dates might bring to mind the travails of Vista, whose oft-delayed birth may have foreshadowed a somewhat troubled youth, albeit with decent, if discounted, sales (see “Vista And The Vox Populi,” “Vista Achieves Touted “Wow” Effect, Albeit Through Massive Price Drop,” and “So I’ll Take Vista, And Guess I’ll Need More RAM, And Some New Peripherals – Aw, Just Give Me A New System…” ). And indeed, as a colleague of mine quipped, letting the world know all your programmers are preoccupied with what may well be the hottest new product of the coming months would be great cover for slipping the target date on a bug-plagued OS. The iPhone is reported to be slated for release in late June.
owever, Apple is in a very different position then Microsoft when it comes to the next generation of its operating system. In a sense, Jobs & Co. are blessed with the strength of the weak, in that Apple’s low single digit slice of the market represents a relatively closed ecosystem of peripherals and applications. This make issues of back-compatibility far more tractable, with fewer third parties to accommodate. And if Apple decides not to support a particular legacy technology under the new regime, well, the firm’s loyalists have learned to live with some adversity as the price of the Mac’s elegance. Indeed, older Mac zealots were hardened under harsher conditions, before web browsing and internet applications indifferent to one’s operating system made OS selection less critical. And, of course, it’s not like the competition is free of back-compatibility issues.
ut the decision to put what seems like maximal effort and resources behind the iPhone may signal the strategic importance of the new product. If Apple is for real in stepping away from digital rights management (“So The Whole Digital Rights Fight Is Over A Lousy Thirty Cents?”) and if it is successful in persuading content providers to follow its lead, then a great deal of emphasis is placed on the quality of the Apple hardware/software experience. Further, and in contrast to the firm’s paltry OS market share (compared to Windows), the firm enjoys a commanding lead in portable music players. If they can leverage that position into dominance in computing-enabled wireless communication devices, Apple could present a competitive threat to cell phone makers, Blackberry and the already challenged Palm. Indeed, with Mac sales already rising faster than those of the overall PC industry, it’s not beyond imagination that an iPhone with Mac OS might produce a stronger catalytic effect on the acceptance of Apple’s operating system that the current iPod line has generated.
Of course, it’s all in the execution, and for all the difficulty of making the iPhone live up to expectations, it’s still possible that it’s just a lot easier to turn an iPod into a phone than it is to debug Leopard.
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