Apple lacks lustre

NEWS FROM the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference ( WDCC) in San Francisco has led to many Apple aficionados feeling underwhelmed and disappointed.

Even Apple's core prophet, Steve Jobs, failed to impress the majority of delegates at the conference - inspiring a columnist to dedicate a whole article on the loss of the magic he usually conjures via the trademarked 'reality distortion field'.

Previously reported news that Apple has opened up the kernel source for the Intel-based OSX build, had been highly anticipated by developers, as the PowerPC source has been available for some time. Apple also released various other application source code, as well as a new community driven web site to enable developers easier access and instructions for the source builds.

Embracing the open-source community will certainly enable them to market to a much wider mind-share within the IT community. Open source advocates are likely to flock more and more to OSX, and push less-technically minded people towards an OS that is much easier to use than a standard 'nix distribution. Open sourcing the server version of the OS allows Apple to ensure a deeper relationship with server admins, who are empowered with source they can fine tune (and debug) to their own requirements and needs. These are good, forward steps for Apple.

Unfortunately OSX will only work on Apple produced computers, and they've been lagging in the desktop and server space for some time. Multi-processor systems based on PowerPC were once amongst the cream of the crop, but with the advent of much faster competition from Intel and AMD CPUs Apple have been left wanting.

Apple has managed to reinstate its place at the top of the performance table with the Mac Pro which is based on two dual-core Intel 'Woodcrest' processors, and it will be a formidable workstation. Interesting schematics of the underlying architecture of the Mac Pro can be seen here. Xserve servers based on Intel based architecture have also made an appearance, and this can only help the Apple cause within the server market space. Its just a shame it has taken them so long.

Considering these developments, you might be left wondering why so many developers were so underwhelmed. Well, all of the above announcements didn't come as much of a surprise - Apple always intended to ship the Intel-based OSX source code, and shifting workstation and server production to Intel CPUs was always a complete necessity once the move to Intel had begun.

What was more surprising to attendees was the unveiling of the sixth incarnation of OSX, 'Leopard'.

At a hefty $129 a shot, a new edition of an OS should be more then a bog-standard bug-fixing point release, and Apple failed to show anything of much worth (it should be noted that Steve-o did say that some features were being kept quiet so they couldn't be copied by competitors, but this seemed somewhat of a fob-off). Here is a quick overview of some of the new features (it seems someone else had similar questions to us about the originality of the new upgrades)

• Spaces is nothing more than virtual desktops (currently available in Windows XP PowerToys and standard Linux gui's)
• Time Machine appears to be a comprehensive backup management system, similar to what's in Windows Server 2003 and what's to appear in Vista, but with a ridiculously convoluted interface.
• The update to Mail adds notes, to-do's and RSS. Hardly awe-inspiring.
• Core Animation adds native support for the new animation development framework for devs. Something that could probably be downloaded as a plug-in.
• iCal adds a shared calendar application, looks like a nice simple calendar app similar to what Outlook (and even Google) have supplied for sometime.
• 64-bit support finally - but only for Mac Pros.
• Spotlight, Dashboard and iChat get incremental upgrades which are hardly worthy of much marketing time, but due to the lack of other interesting additions, they still received quite substantial press from Apple.

Overall it seems to be a slightly polished offering of what has come before, with the odd new app that has appeared in other OSes for some time - albeit the majority of new features come with a souped-up marketing name, the sort that Apple just loves to spew out.

At a first glance this may not appear to be much of a problem. OSX was a decent, comprehensive, polished operating system as it was, a relatively minor upgrade should be sufficient to keep the masses happy. The problem is, Apple advocates have been touting this upgrade as the final nail in the coffin for Vista, and Apple has had the opportunity to utilise the frequent delays to Vista to ensure OSX came out head-and-shoulders above the Microsoft alternative. Instead it seems Apple has rested on its laurels and not fully attempted to hit Microsoft where its currently hurting most, despite what some analysts are saying.

Interestingly, Apple still seems to think it has done enough to fend-off any further competition from Vista, but we find this highly unlikley.

Leopard is not Vista 2.0 (as promotional signs for Leopard in the Moscone Center lobby would have you believe). But OSX is a damn fine competitor to Vista, and arrived way earlier than the much maligned Microsoft OS.

But Apple could've done so much more - the humble response from the press and Apple advocates alike, shows that everyone's disappointed Apple hasn't gone further and attempted to win some of the desktop market share on the back of the iPod's success, subsequent halo effect, and major Vista delays. µ