The future
I’ve been clickin’ away on Leopard now for almost a week and so far so good. I’m gonna drive it around a bit more before officially reviewing it, but thanks to Juan Puto (of Turdlog and Foolish Foto fame), I’ve decided to use this time to throw my prediction together for the names of the last four OS Xs (that “X” is a “TEN” not an “ECKS” for those of you outside the Apple reality distortion field… hence there are only four left).

To carry on the big(ish) cat thing:

10.6 — Lynx (Sounds cool, even though it was a lame car)
10.7 — Cougar (Yes, the Cougar and the Puma are the same thing, but Apple has the trademark and they’re not gonna miss out on using it… also a car, but less lame than the Lynx)
10.8 — Ocelot (Running out of cats. A stretch to be sure, but they aren’t gonna blow their wad with “Lion” until the last one… and “Bobcat” ain’t cool enough sounding (sorry Charlotte, Texas State, et al). And a bobcat is a lynx… they’re not gonna pull that crap again after the whole Puma/Cougar fiasco)
10.9 — Lion (Duh… the king)

The future -er
So when OS XI or 11 or whatever comes out… what will those releases be named for?

Dogs? Snakes? Birds? Sharks? Imaginary animals? (Hello!… Liger, Cerebus, Pegasus, Phoenix, Successful Republicans, Orko!)

Only time will tell (my guess is that they’ll switch to non animals… cities perhaps?).

How cool would “Mac OS 11.9 Austin” be?

Tiger was great, but its time has come. Leopard, the new Mac OS X (10.5.0 to be exact) comes out tomorrow. Unlike the Vista release, this one is reasonably on time (a few months late thanks to Apple shifting development emphasis to the iPhone for a while… sure, Steve). Also unlike Vista, most people think it’ll be great. An improvement on the existing OS and not a giant headache and hassle to install.

Madden and Mac
No… I’m not writing about the much maligned and delayed release of the monster football title to the Mac platform, I’m gonna comment the fact that, like EA, Mac has settled in on a winning formula for software release. As EA does with tons of titles, Mac has now moved into the mode of releasing “better enough” updates every 400ish days. Like the article on macobserver says, the release is “Evolutionary, not Revolutionary”. I’m sure once I get my hands on it, I’ll agree… but as a shareholder and a Mac fan, I think that’s the way it should be.

Time Machine and Spaces
After watching the demo for Leopard that Apple has put up on there site, if all Apple did was add Time Machine and Spaces, I’d be in line to get a copy already. Now Apple says they’ve added 300 new features… those of us who live on planet “see-through-hyperbole”
understand that most of them are tiny little insignificant things, like an extra system font or more desktop backgrounds… but enough of those 300 will be significant enough to make me wonder how I got along without them before. After I get and work with the new cat, I’ll report back on those. I don’t care if they are few (basically what the last section was about)… but anything worth writing about, will be welcome.
I don’t want my Mac OS to stagnate with mini-updates for years and years while Apple sits there developing the “next big thing” (a la Microsoft). Those of us who use the product all the time, don’t want titanic shifts in the way it works every half-decade. We want what we know and love to stay pretty much the same well-thought-out added features and nothing that will cause me to have to spend time getting used to for 6 months. I don’t want to be shocked by features and a new look. I want it to feel like my best friend decided to stop doing the little things that annoy me about him and starting being even cooler than ever… like buying me a beer for no reason… all the time. That’s Mac’s philosophy (and EA’s for that matter). They get it. Mister Softy and his Ultimate Makeover don’t.

History of OS X
Just for fun, let’s look back at the Feline Family Tree complete with DOBs (thanks wiki):

Mac OS X v10.0 (Cheetah) – March 24, 2001
Mac OS X v10.1 (Puma) – September 25, 2001
Mac OS X v10.2 (Jaguar) – August 23, 2002
Mac OS X v10.3 (Panther) – October 24, 2003
Mac OS X v10.4 (Tiger) – April 29, 2005
Mac OS X v10.5 (Leopard) – October 26, 2007

I remember most of these fondly. I can’t remember through the fog of years, but I think I got my first kitty when it was a Puma. I think I was a lil’ too chicken to make the switch until after the first rev. After a few days of “Where the hell is my top-right applications pull-down” I was a believer (and hated the times I had to go “Classic”). It’s been a great few years and the future looks brighter than ever.

Thanks, Apple.

—TF