Is four Mac OS launches in 5 years really a good thing?
When I read "Apple taunts Microsoft with faster OS launches", I did sort of a double take and wondered what in the world they were talking about. I mean it can't be the Mac OS boot times they're talking about since Windows XP boots in under 30 seconds and Microsoft is tuning Vista to boot in similar times for the full production product. After reading the Mercury news article, it turns out that Apple is actually touting their fourth OS launch in the span of 5 years while Microsoft hasn't released any new operating system in the same period of time. Now is this really a good thing?
I suppose if I were an Apple investor and I heard Apple gets away with selling a new OS to its customers nearly every single year, I would be extremely delighted. But since I'm not, I have to wonder how delighted Microsoft users would be if Microsoft had done the same thing and charged for Service Pack 1 and Service Pack 2 which not only fixed security bugs but also added new features such as leading edge Wireless LAN management technology. Most IT departments that I know are loathed to do operating system upgrades and I can say with near certainty that there would be mutiny against Microsoft among the Microsoft administrator ranks if there was a new version of Windows every single year. Of course if I owned stocks in Microsoft (Full disclosure: I do not own any individual stocks and only own index funds like the S&P 500), I would probably be upset that Microsoft will have taken nearly 6 years to sell a new Operating System and was forced to give away two incremental upgrades.
But if you bought Microsoft Software Assurance back in 2001 hoping for an OS upgrade, you're probably going to be fairly angry that you haven't gotten a new official OS release in 6 years. Then again that's probably a lot better than buying four operating systems in five years but it's probably little consolation to anyone who's been waiting 6 years on Software Assurance. Microsoft admits that they cannot continue at this six year pace of major OS releases and will move to a three year cycle and most people probably agree that three years is a good number with a few service/feature packs in between. Now if Microsoft can actually meet their current revised deadline in November 2006 to go gold and deliver a subsequent OS three years later, that remains to be seen.