Anticipation

Although it probably has trailed its January competitor on overall fame, Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) comes out tomorrow, and the buzz and general excitement, both my own and those around me, feel like an indicator both of how good I can expect the upgrade to me, and throw into light the differences between where Apple and Microsoft have been going with their software.

I named this blog post "Anticipation" for a reason; my entire office is ripe with it. The upgrades and enhancements in Leopard look awesome. I fully expect to be significantly more productive and have a happier user experience overall (and don't get me wrong; Tiger is a great operating system). Everything about it just looks cool. All of the reviews I've seen are stellar...which is in stark contrast to Vista, which was poo-pooed for months before its release.

I didn't see or hear of any lines outside doors to upgrade to Vista. In fact, Vista adoption has been so underwhelming that Dell resumed selling PCs with Windows XP on them a month after its release, and Microsoft had to extend XP's end-of-life. By contrast, every Mac user I know is really, really looking forward to Leopard. Because of that (as well as the massive price difference between the operating systems), I expect Tiger to more or less die overnight. Hell, I was able to put together 5 people to buy a group license in about five minutes...three IMs and one person asking his wife...and...done.

I'm very much looking forward to upgrading my box tomorrow. Apple is proud of their work, and it looks like they have reason to be. I'm looking forward to see if they have, in fact, done as good of a job as everyone is claiming.