Leopard delayed. Too late for Apple?

Apple hoi polloi annoyed at Leopard delay On virtual soapboxes, Mac fans weighed in -- and not in a happy way, either Gregg Keizer April 14, 2007 (Computerworld) -- Mac users, whether casual or fanatic, aren't taking the bad news sitting down. When Apple Inc. announced Thursday that it will delay the release of Mac OS X 10.5 "Leopard" by four months, they jumped on their soapboxes -- the Internet's forums and news story comments and blogs -- to rant and sometimes even rage at the Cupertino machine. (ComputerWorld)

While the important users of Macintosh software gripe about the delay, there is a much more critical issue at play here. That being that if Apple is serious about playing in the personal computing market, delaying their new OS could be catastrophic if they expect to have any chance of being viable and in-play at this time next year. And I am not overstating the issues. Vista is going to be deployed, but there are already organizations looking for "something else." Microsoft, knowing that people are slow rolling Vista because of the lack of features as well as the high costs of upgrading hardware (especially in large operations like the Federal Government) today announced end-of-life for XP in an effort to spur adoption.

So what are the alternatives? Linux in some ways is clearly not ready for the desktop prime time, but with a little work and some big players, it could be very quickly. Most users do not care what the operating system is, so long as they can write their emails and surf the web, and frankly, we do not need file servers under every one's desk, so this would be a perfect opportunity for Apple, which has always made a name for itself by producing good GUIs to step up and steal away the desktop from Microsoft, but if the delay their OS, the decisions, especially for fiscal '08 and '09 monies will be made before anyone sees the Leopard desktop. And then they will be focusing on the next big problem...either IPv6 or, more likely, email retention, encryption and secure connectivity. And people will be asking "Apple who?"