Mac OS X 10.7 delayed?
Not much is known about Mac OS X 10.7, and many in the Mac community have been operating under the assumption that we’d all get a glimpse into the future of Mac OS at Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference in June. But that may not be so this time around, at least according to the always interesting John Gruber. Posted to DaringFireball, Gruber made a rather interesting note on Mac OS X 10.7:
A few months ago, I heard suggestions that Apple had tentative plans to release a developer beta of Mac OS X 10.7 at WWDC this June. That is no longer the case. Mac OS X 10.7 development continues, but with a reduced team and an unknown schedule. It’s my educated guess that there will be no 10.7 news at WWDC this year, and probably none until WWDC 2011.
Apple’s company-wide focus has since been focused intensely on one thing: iPhone OS 4.1 The number one priority at Apple is to grow mobile market share faster than Android. Anything that is not directly competitive with Android is on the back burner.
While somewhat disappointing, I wouldn’t be terribly surprised by this. The potential of dominating the mobile market share with iPhone OS powered devices and the iPad is probably a far greater opportunity for Apple than expanding the relatively small Mac desktop computing market share, especially when more and more computing is done on the go. Combine that with all the excitement surrounding iPhone OS 4 and I think it makes sense that WWDC 2010 is going to be an iPhone OS centric event as Apple is heavily focused on their mobile platform.
Does that mean we definitely won’t see anything of Mac OS X 10.7 at WWDC? No, certainly not, at this point this is a prediction at best and a rumor at worst. John Gruber is often right with his predictions, but everything with Apple is always a mystery until the last minute. Even if Apple has paired back focus on Mac OS development for the time being, keep in mind Apple is a large company with plenty of resources. They have roughly 35,000 employees, so what exactly a “reduced team” means in that context is anyone’s guess. Regardless, I’m sure Mac OS X has many exciting things in store for it’s future, whether it has been delayed by the iPhone OS or not.
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screw you gus and your genuine macs, i have a hackintosh and when 10.7 comes out Im gonna install it ok bai.
mac osx 10.7 might as well come out soon, when i buy a macbook pro i want it to be at least 10.7/10.8 even though 10.8 might take another 5 years or so…
there is a bad thing about apple, everybody noticed how when jobs took a vacation once, apple’s earning plummeted, but when he came back they almost duplicated… what will happen when jobs retires?
I’ve been a dedicated Mac user since the 80s. Although I have an iPhone and an iPod, I’ve been saddened by Jobs’ and thus Apple (Computer) Inc’s deterioration of interest in the Mac brand ever since the iPod became popular.
I saw the writing on the wall when OSX got delayed because of the iPhone. Without OSX there would be no IOS. It’s sad to see baby slapping mommy.
Snow Leopard made a lot of under-the-hood changes that need time to bed in for developers, and it’s also now a highly polished and finessed platform – it’s stacks up very well against the nearest competition (Windows 7) and there really isn’t any pressing need to change it any time soon.
I’m guessing 10.7 is a couple of years away at least, and that’s probably the way it ought to be.
I don’t mind 10.6 being around for a while so that projects like MacPorts, and the upstream, could catch up. 10.6 broke a lot of things in the free software world, and given limited manpower it will take a while to fix.
Things like wxWindows and Gimp/GTK simply don’t work natively via MacPorts right now, even though they did work just fine on 10.5. Some other things are kinda-broken too, for example Octave + aquaterm is starting up X11 for no good reason when you plot, even when aquaterm is compiled as a native quartz client.
I don’t expect 10.7 top be out until later 2012, possibly 2013, because Remeber, although this may not happen again, Tiger was Apple’s flagship OS for 4 years, and if that’s also going to be the case for Snow Leopard, then I still wouldn’t be surprised if it was 2013 right now and apple released Mac OS X 10.6.11.
uumm… thats not true.
The Tiger 4 year part i mean…
tiger was released 29 April 2005, leopard was released 26 October 2007.
Note that this was intentional too. Before 10.4 Apple had been releasing every year and developers were freaking out because the APIs and platform were changing so fast. They intentionally slowed down to release every 2 years to let developers get situated.
I wouldn’t be surprised if they let 10.6 hang around for 3 years to get people onboard the GCD technology and 64bit bandwagon.
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@Michael,
You are genuinely missing out especially if you have a MacBook Pro with 2GB of RAM or more. Snow Leopard is not only faster and more stable, it’s just much better. It’s not like Windows XP to Vista or something, it’s a genuine improvement and worthwhile upgrade. It was the cheapest performance boost I gave my mac, for $25 it felt like a new machine.
I am resolute about not updating my Mac Book Pro to another OS until 10.7 comes out. I just really like the number 7! Right now I’m still on Tiger, number 4. I got my Mac in summer ’07, right at the end of Tiger’s life. Tiger has suited me fine for like coming up 3 years now. It doesn’t feel out of date, and I have no urges to get Snow Leopard… well maybe tiny ones. As long as they continue updating Tiger frequently, I’ll stick with it until… Lion? Bobcat? Lynx? Cougar? Mountain Lion? House Cat? LOL Whatever it’s called… I hope it’s out by 2011 :)
@Michael
Don’t discriminate on numbers! Lol.
Major reason you should upgrade to 10.6, is Time Machine.
If you’re still on Tiger for some idealogical reason (rather than you have PPC or something), you’re doing yourself a disservice.
Get Snow Leopard and get on with it already.
You should upgrade. 10.6 is a lot faster and stable then the previous versions.
small urges? hmm so why you reading news about new version of OS X? :P
Snow Leopard just came out not too long ago really. I get the feeling 10.7 Mystery Meow is a long ways off