By Jo Best, 31 August 2004 14:10
NEWS With work on its latest OS, Tiger, wrapping up, Apple is permitting itself a dig or several at arch-rival Microsoft over its development record on the long-awaited Longhorn.
Speaking today at Apple Expo in Paris, corporate VP of marketing Phil Schiller, showed off the work-in-progress OS with a tour around its search feature, Spotlight, and some of the other 150-odd new additions that will appear in Tiger.
Apple has announced that Tiger is due to hit the shops in the first half of next year but needled Redmond over the constant delays that have plagued the prospective shipping date of Longhorn - recently Microsoft developers were moved from the OS to working on XP SP2, putting the delivery back even further.
"Microsoft's date [for shipping Longhorn] seems to keep changing - we just want to say how far ahead of Microsoft we areĀ we're years ahead of Longhorn," said Schiller.
Despite the unconcealed schadenfreude - "They're in turmoil over where they're going; there's no need to tease them over their problems" - Apple is doubtless hoping to win the search war over the war of words.
Spotlight is Apple's big move in the search scrap - "the next big revolution in commercial operating systems", according to Schiller - which is getting investors and acquisition-makers hot under the collar.
Spotlight works across apps and will search both content and metadata - even matching search terms to corresponding text in PDFs. It started life as a feature in iTunes - the little magnifying glass that appears in the top right-hand corner of the screen - but Apple has ramped up its capabilities for Tiger.
But for all the Gates-baiting, Apple was forced to admit that even they can't escape the Redmond orbit. "We have to fit into a Windows world - they're out there and they're all around us," Schiller added.
Comments
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1. Richard Wells
Of course masOS is more advanced than microsofts offerings, apple makes the OS for their systems, they also design and build their systems so know exactly what they have to work with at all times. Microsoft have a much more complicated and broader workload.
I'd like to see apple try microsofts job.
Also why are people complaining about waiting for longhorn , i'd rather wait until its ready, WinXP is a fine and stable system and I dont really want to upgrade to a half finished longhorn, though the most people seem to want to.
2. anonymous
Mac OS X is definately more advanced than Windows. Apple make a much more advanced, not to mention easier to use OS than Redmond. As far as your comments about MS having a much more compilcated workload, yes they have to make sure their OS is optimized for AMD and Intels CPUs. I don't think it is fair to say that their workload is more complicated, i mean look at Linux. Take Debian for example: Debian have much less resources to work with than MS, yet they manage to get their OS not only running, but fast, stable and SECURE on 11, yes 11 different Architectures!! Microsoft only have to develop for ONE! (x86). And that seems a task they have a lot of difficulty with at that.
Even companies such as MandrakeSoft make Mandrake their OS compatible with lots of other architectures.
However I would agree with you one one thing, Yes I would like to see Steve Jobs as head of MS. He would scrap that bloated pig known as Windows and the Mac OS X would become a major player next to Linux in the market.
Longhorn is yet another *promise* from Microsoft. A promise to be "more secure, stable and faster than any Windows ever!" COME ON people how many times have we heard this before every MS release and again not been delivered on. WinFS sounds like a fine idea, however Apple have already implemented it in the next version of Mac OS "Tiger" and from what i've seen seems to do a much better job than Windows could ever do.
Take a look at the Longhorn delay. Delays, delays, delays. Maybe if Microsoft spent less time spreading propaganda, (which by the way is damaging their reputation) corrupting global protocol standards (MS Html/Java etc. anyone?) in order to force people to be locked in to their software so they pay renewal fees for licensing and generally causing global IT headaches they would be successful long term.
Kudos to MS for getting to where they are, their business practices have worked this long however, they are going to become a niche player in the market, 6-8 years it's looking like Microsoft are going to be on the outer, and because no one trusts MS they will never be on top ever again.
3. john trapp
Now that they have abandoned the incredibly inelegant ilamp, I plan to buy a new imac. Apple is a great company doing great work, but they really need to focus on their own computers/software and quit with the Microsoft baiting. Their digs at Gates and Company come off as petty and petulant; build a better computer and people will buy it. A marketing campaign that consists of "we're not Microsoft" will not break them out of their two percent market share.
4. anonymous
"With work on its latest OS, Tiger, wrapping up"
Is this Apple's words or the authors? Considering the product won't ship until as late as next summer, I certainly wouldn't say it is wrapping up.
And Apple shouldn't be too smug. They have a great OS now but they wasted years on Pink & Copeland and never shipped a product (despite claims by Senior Mgmt that it was going to ship Real Soon Now).
So while I'm sure Tiger will ship long before Longhorn it hasn't shipped yet and perhaps they too will have to yank out features to ensure it ships on time.
5. Joel Watson
at the end of the day, its still a mac. Mac users may be on the up but they are still a minority. Apple have a long way to go before they even begin to make inroads to any mentionable market share. And so what if it can search quicker? i'm sure this is useful to some people, but planning an IT infrastructure around an OS you have chosen based solely on that point? madness.
6. john hauxwell
......so basing your infrastructure around BSD Unix based solution it is a bad idea ??
7. Joe
When you don't care about backward compatibility, it is indeed pretty amazing what you can do.
EVERY SINGLE TIME that Apple has released a major OS upgrade they broke a large percentage of existing applications, which then had to be re-written so they would work on the new OS. It happened with OS6, OS7, OS9, and OSX.
The other day I downloaded the ORIGINAL VisiCalc program from Dan Bricklin's web site and ran it on my XP machine.
Let Apple crow about how many years ahead they are. Microsoft is still about 90% ahead where it counts - in market share.
8. Mike Robson
Apple's problem has never been its computers... IBM selected an open-architecture almost as a last resort, and look where it got them.. Apple's the company that, ironically, IBM meant to be..
But I digress.. Besides price perceptions pervasive among PC users, Apple still has to educate people about what's going on here.. most PC friends are stunned when they actually see what Mac OS X looks like--it's important to point that out for Apple. Longhorn will be Apple's Jaguar.. except they're rolling it out over the course of 2 years. Too Bad.
9. Mike
"So while I'm sure Tiger will ship long before Longhorn it hasn't shipped yet and perhaps they too will have to yank out features to ensure it ships on time."
Hmph. Not even close.. Apple's Tiger is already being seeded to developers in nearly complete state.. and it will be released 1st Half of next year.
Longhorn won't be completely rolled out.. uhm.. until around 2007.
And by then Apple will have a few more OS's out. So Apple will be about 6 years ahead of MS.
Scary.
10. David Birtwhistle
I thought mac users were on first name terms with each other. I was surprised to see they had as much as 2% market share, as I only know two people with a Mac, one in NY and one in Birmingham UK.
They tend to appear in film sets such as ER, but I doubt that they are actually used in US hospitals.
11. anonymous
I've read a lot of you saying Apple will be 6 years ahead just because they are releasing more often. This is simply impossible. Just because they release their OS more often does not mean that it is ahead of anything. The other thing to note is that they are not exactly isolated, since they are based on BSD they benefit from open source and other development going on outside of their own efforts. The real truth of it is that Apple's OS is a pretty GUI slapped on top of BSD and Microsoft is competing with BSD/linux. This just means that Microsoft needs to roll out their Avalon pillar and Apple's GUI goes bye bye. Have ANY of you ever actually looked at Longhorn on MSDN at all? http://msdn.microsoft.com/ I suggest you go read about it.
12. Max W
I just hope Microsoft's Longhorn becomes the greatest software fiasco of all time... How cool would that be?
13. David
That would be cool. And while we are at it maybe Linux would be able to get out there a bit more!!!
14. Billde Joy
Aqua is far more than a UI slapped on BSD, it points the way people will use a UI in the future. Avalon will run on less than 1% of the installed PC base, in other words, Stillborn. Wait for version 3.0 in 2011.
Get real... MS still doesn't have a PDF based screen! How can they even be serious at this point in the game. Time and again, open standards win, and Apple is the KING of supporting standards. While MS continues in it's propietary ways, Apple people will be laughing at anyone attempting to program or use Windows based PCs. We could wipe out the National Debt, and get back to an Clinton Economy if people switched to the Mac, let's go for it!!!
MS is the past, Apple is the future... you can see it here:
http://www.apple.com/macosx/tiger/
http://developer.apple.com/macosx/tiger/
http://www.apple.com/macosx/architecture/
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Microsoft needs to roll out their Avalon pillar and Apple's GUI goes bye bye. Have ANY of you ever actually looked at Longhorn on MSDN at all? http://msdn.microsoft.com/ I suggest you go read about it.