Apple’s big risk with Snowy (is it Apple’s Vista?) | Comments | McSolo by Ron McElfresh </head> <body id="comments"> <div id="wrapper_comments"> <a name="top" id="top"></a> <div id="wrapper_header"> <div id="region_header"> <div class="Leaderboard-Top-728x90"> <script type='text/javascript'></script> </div> <div id="logo"> <a href="http://mcsolo.com/" title="McSolo Home Page"><img src="http://mcsolo.com.s3.amazonaws.com/logo.png" alt="Logo" /></a> </div> </div> </div> <div id="wrapper_middle"> <div id="region_left"> <div class="region_pad"> <div id="navmenu"><ul class="buttons"> <li class="active"><a href="http://mcsolo.com/" title="McSolo Home Page">Home</a></li> <li><a href="http://mcsolo.com/mobile" title="McSolo Mobile Home for iPhone">Mobile</a></li> <li><a href="http://mcsolo.com/index.php/mcsolo/news/" title="News Links Archive">News Links</a></li> <li><a href="http://mcsolo.com/index.php/mcsolo/archive/" title="McSolo Article Archive">Articles</a></li> <li><a href="http://mcsolo.com/index.php/mcsolo/search/" title="Advanced Search">Search</a></li> <li><a href="http://mcsolo.com/index.php/about_mcsolo/" title="About McSolo">About</a></li> <li><a href="http://mcsolo.com/index.php/mcsolo_projects/" title="New Projects">Projects</a></li> <li><a href="http://mcsolo.com/index.php/mcsolo/rss_atom/" title="McSolo RSS Atom Feed for Articles and News Links">RSS Feed</a></li> <li class="lastitem"><a href="http://mcsolo.com/index.php/mcsolo/contact/" onclick="window.open('http://mcsolo.com/index.php/mcsolo/contact','popup','width=440,height=550,scrollbars=no,resizable=yes,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0'); return false" title="How to Contact McSolo">Contact</a></li></ul></div> <div class="byline">By Ron McElfresh</div> </div> </div> <div id="region_main"> <div class="region_pad"> <div class="frame_article"> <h1>Apple’s big risk with Snowy (is it Apple’s Vista?)</h1> <div class="date">Tuesday, September 8, 2009 | Articles | Read or Post a Comment</div> <p>Snow Leopard is a necessary risk for Apple. A very big, calculated risk. Chris Gaylord of <a href="http://features.csmonitor.com/innovation/2009/09/04/will-snow-leopard-be-apples-windows-vista/" title="The Christian Science Monitor">The Christian Science Monitor</a> asks if <em>Will Snow Leopard be Apple’s Windows Vista?</em> Mitch Wagner of <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2009/09/snow_leopard_co.html;jsessionid=XJEBL1KWS0SRJQE1GHPSKHWATMY32JVN" title="Information Week">Information Week</a> pointedly says, <em>Snow Leopard Could Be Apple’s Vista?</em> I won’t use weasel words or question marks. Snowy is not Vista. Here’s why. </p> <h3>The Vista That Wasn’t</h3><p> Windows Vista’s adoption rate by the home user who purchased PCs in the past few years is nearly 100-percent. That’s a good record.</p> <p>Business and enterprise, on the other had, were content with Windows XP, because Vista came with plenty of bugs and even more incompatibilities with older software and hardware.</p> <p>For business and for Microsoft, Vista was a disaster; uniformly panned by the press, hated by early adopters, and considered a pile of pop up interference for the users.</p> <p>Is that what awaits Snowy? It is if you believe the poorly informed technology pundits in mainstream media who regurgitate distorted facts like the editors of a tabloid rag.</p> <h3>Pure Problems?</h3><p> To read pundits Gaylord, Wagner and a few others who apparently are more interested in catchy headlines to drive up readership that balanced and accurate reporting, Snowy has lots of problems, Vista style.</p> <blockquote><p>Between the list of more than 100 Mac programs that no longer work because of the update and the rampant reports of bricked machines seemingly tied to Snow Leopard, Apple has had a rough week.</p></blockquote> <p>Massive problems? Nothing could be further from the truth.</p> <p>Every new release of any desktop operating system comes with a few inherent problems and incompatibilities, Snowy included. Mac software developers have had a year to update their applications, utilities, and games to match the changes in Snow Leopard?</p> <p>Did they? And do the vast majority, the tends of thousands of apps work fine on Snow Leopard? No, and yes. </p> <p>No? Apple slipped everyone a curve by announcing that Snow Leopard would ship to customers in September. In Apple talk that usually means late September, if not very early October. Apple surprised everyone, developers and customers, by shipping Snowy in late August.</p> <p>Some Mac developers were caught by surprise and were not quite ready to release their Snowy compatible software updates. Chris Gaylord:</p> <blockquote><p>But the flood of articles, blogs, and forum posts this week has some drawing comparisons between Snow Leopard and a certain infamous Windows OS.</p></blockquote> <p>Flood? Hardly. Both Apple and those in the know, not the hit-whoring malicious headline grabbers, have already dubbed Snow Leopard as the most compatible OS X release to date.</p> <p>Comparisons? Hardly. Only by those media pundits who love to stir up conflict and comparisons where none exist.</p> <h3>The Reality and the Risk</h3><p> In reality, in the 10 days since Snowy’s release, most of the so-called incompatible software, which actually numbered in the dozens, has been updated to run fine using Snow Leopard. Any comparison with Windows Vistas disastrous launch and slow adoption rate is ludicrous.</p> <p>The reality is that Snow Leopard is a necessary step toward improved performance and capability, which will not even be noticed by most users for another year. That also means a break from the past. Snowy won’t run on older PowerPC Macs. It’s Intel Inside or nothing. </p> <p>Unlike Windows Vista on PCs, all new Macs going forward will run Snow Leopard just fine. In the future we’ll see iLife and iWork updated to 64-bit versions, along with Apple’s Pro apps, and more utilities.</p> <p>Snow Leopard’s Grand Central Dispatch technology will make it much easier for Mac software developers to create 64-bit versions that take advantage of Intel’s multicore processors. We won’t see much of that capability for a year.</p> <p>What’s the big risk? Change. Any time a software maker tinkers with the basics, problems will arise. Microsoft didn’t do a good job with Vista and reaped the scorn of users and media.</p> <p>Apple has been more willing to make calculated, graduated, but sometimes disruptive changes to Mac OS X as it progresses. Does Snowy have hiccups? Very, very few. It’s been the easiest upgrade I’ve made since my first venture into OS X in 2001, and my Mac is loaded with hundreds and hundreds of apps and utilities.</p> <p>Snow Leopard is not Apple’s Vista. </p> </div>  <a name="read"></a> <div class="wrapper_comments"> <h3>Reader Comments</h3> <div class="frame_comments_one"> <p><strong>Constable Odo</strong> said:</p> <p>I had installed Snow Leopard on my two-year-old MacBook Pro 2.33 GHz and only a couple of programs had any significant problems with it. Newer program updates fixed those couple of programs and everything works just fine. What I’m most happy with is that Snow Leopard takes up less disk space and doesn’t use any more RAM or processor resources than when it was using Tiger 10.4. I think Snow Leopard is a simple and worthwhile upgrade. </p> <div class="posted">#1 | Wednesday, September 9, 2009</div> </div> <div class="frame_comments_two"> <p><strong>Pistol Pete</strong> said:</p> <p>Isn’t all this kind of media publishing just a digital version of Yellow Journalism? How is it <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism" title="Yellow Journalism">defined?</a></p> <p><em>Yellow journalism is a type of journalism that downplays legitimate news in favor of eye-catching headlines that sell more newspapers. It may feature exaggerations of news events, scandal-mongering, sensationalism, or unprofessional practices by news media organizations or journalists.</em></p> <p>I wish I could say that Yellow Journalism was visible only on the Fox News Channel. With the rise of blogging, it’s everywhere. </p> <div class="posted">#2 | Tuesday, September 8, 2009</div> </div> <div class="frame_comments_one"> <p><strong>kelly</strong> said:</p> <p>You nailed it. I’ve noticed a few trends in recent years. Mainstream news media is less about news than they are about opinion and sensationalizing. The blogosphere has two factions: those that regurgitate both news and hysteria, and those who provide thoughtful perspective and analysis with reliance on facts. The latter is in the minority. </p> <div class="posted">#3 | Tuesday, September 8, 2009</div> </div> <div class="frame_comments_two"> <p><strong>Glenn Beck</strong> said:</p> <p>Amen. All I can say about that whole journalistic integrity thing is three words.</p> <p>Fox. News. Channel.</p> <p>Which can be summed up in two words.</p> <p>Glenn Beck.</p> <p>Which can be summed up in a single word.</p> <p>Idiot. </p> <div class="posted">#4 | Tuesday, September 8, 2009</div> </div> <div class="frame_comments_one"> <p><strong>Andrew K.</strong> said:</p> <p>Spot on. So much of what passes for journalism is regurgitation. What passes for perspective is actually sensationalizing. </p> <p>Some of these so-called journalists should be ashamed, but who hires them? </p> <div class="posted">#5 | Tuesday, September 8, 2009</div> </div> <div class="frame_comments_two"> <p><strong>filecat13</strong> said:</p> <p>Right on Ron. </p> <p>The lack of journalistic initiative is still shocking to me. One idiot writes a falsehood that generates hits and all the wannabe’s jump in with their own version. It’s all made up BS with no journalistic integrity and no basis in fact. The Web is wonderful for a lot of things, but when it comes to journalism, it’s nearly destroyed the profession. </p> <div class="posted">#6 | Tuesday, September 8, 2009</div> </div> <div class="paginate"> </div> </div> <a name="post"></a> <form id='comment_form' method="post" action="http://mcsolo.com/index.php/mcsolo/comments/apples_big_risk_with_snowy_is_it_apples_vista/" > <div class='hiddenFields'> <input type="hidden" name="ACT" value="1" /> <input type="hidden" name="RET" value="http://mcsolo.com/index.php/mcsolo/comments/apples_big_risk_with_snowy_is_it_apples_vista/" /> <input type="hidden" name="URI" value="/mcsolo/comments/apples_big_risk_with_snowy_is_it_apples_vista/" /> <input type="hidden" name="PRV" value="mcsolo/preview" /> <input type="hidden" name="XID" value="5945070c0edb867d8371ecf56666c75020682adf" /> <input type="hidden" name="entry_id" value="502" /> <input type="hidden" name="site_id" value="1" /> </div> <h3>Post A Comment</h3> <div class="frame_comments"> <p>Your name:</p> <input type="text" id="name" name="name" value="" size="40" /> <p>Your email address:</p> <input type="text" id="email" name="email" value="" size="40" /> <p>Your location:</p> <input type="text" id="location" name="location" value="" size="40" /> <p>Your home page:</p> <input type="text" id="url" name="url" value="http://" size="40" /> <p>Enter your comment below:</p> <textarea name="comment" cols="50" rows="10"></textarea> <p><input type="checkbox" class="buttons" name="save_info" value="yes" /> Remember my personal information! <br /> <input type="checkbox" class="buttons" name="notify_me" value="yes" /> Notify me of follow-up comments?</p> <p>Please enter the “Magic Word” from the image below:</p> <img src="http://pixobebo.com/images/captchas/1283668841.05.jpg" width="140" height="30" style="border:0;" alt=" " /> <br /> <input type="text" id="captcha" name="captcha" value="" maxlength="16" /> <br /> <input type="submit" id="post" name="submit" value="Post" /> <input type="submit" id="preview" name="preview" value="Preview" /> </div> </form>  <div class="search_box"> <form method="post" action="http://mcsolo.com/index.php" > <div class='hiddenFields'> <input type="hidden" name="ACT" value="19" /> <input type="hidden" name="XID" value="40110f46af60205d2bf4ea2c4674e880b0164196" /> <input type="hidden" name="RP" value="mcsolo/search_results" /> <input type="hidden" name="NRP" value="" /> <input type="hidden" name="RES" value="30" /> <input type="hidden" name="status" value="" /> <input type="hidden" name="weblog" value="mcsolo" /> <input type="hidden" name="search_in" value="everywhere" /> <input type="hidden" name="where" value="any" /> <input type="hidden" name="site_id" value="1" /> </div> <label for="keywords"></label> <input type="text" name="keywords" id="keywords" value="" size="40" maxlength="130" /> <input type="submit" id="gobutton" value="Search" class="submit" /> </form> </div> <div id="Feature-Rectangle"> <div class="Feature-Rectangle-336x280"> <script type='text/javascript'></script> </div> </div> <div class="backtotop"><a href="#top" class="anchorLink" title="Back to the Top of the Page">Back to Top</a></div> <div class="logo_small"></div> </div> </div> <div id="region_right"> <div class="Sidebar-Skyscraper-160x600"> <script type='text/javascript'></script> </div> <div class="region_pad"> </div> </div> </div> <div id="wrapper_copyright"><div id="region_copyright"><div class="region_pad"><p>Copyright © 2008 - 2010 <a href="http://mcsolo.com/" title="Ron McElfresh">Ron McElfresh</a>, Honolulu, HI. 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