Thursday, August 27, 2009

I'm alergic to cats

Apple's new OS, 10.6 comes out tomorrow. While I love apple (run Revit on my Powerbook), I have to ask if anyone buys into the marketing. Let's review:

Revit release names:
2009, 2010, 2011 - ok, they're a year off, but before the ribbon, I could argue it was forward thinking.

Windows names:
95, 98, 98Me, 2000, XP, Vista, Window 7 - for a while anyway, clear. you understand which was better (let's say more recent) than the others. For all the options to buy all the flavors of windows 7, so far I've been using it on the Mac, it's been quick and responsive and a good upgrade to XP.

Apple:
Cheetah, Jaguar, Panther, Tiger, Leopard, Snow Leopard. uh, what gives? Is a tiger somehow better, faster, more productive than a cheetah? what's next? Meerkat?

oh, PS.
Apple's new OS didn't change the UI, they just made it faster.

3 comments:

ixxx69 said...

Huh? They do have official version numbers that are often used to let you know what the latest release is, i.e. 10.4, 10.5, 10.6.

You see them all the time in software system requirements.

I think Apple understands that most people out there have an easier time associating with a cool name than a version number. I have no idea whether Cheetah is newer than Jaguar, but who cares?... that was over five years ago. Apple's been very smart about this and it's worked well for them. A lot more than I can say for "Vista"... (I have no beef with the OS, but the name sucked from the get go, which I honestly think was a major part of the public perception problem).

I will deduct one point for "Snow Leopard" though... that's going to make google searches a major pita when you're searching for something specific to Leopard and instead get info related to SL (and everyone abbreviating it to "SL"!).

And Microsoft doesn't seem like a very good example... to someone unfamiliar with Windows, which is newer, '98, XP, Vista or 7?

p.s. love your "p.s." Brilliant!

Anonymous said...

Perhaps enjoy it while it lasts?

Snow Leopards are an endangered species.

http://www.snowleopard.org/

DaveP said...

True they didn't change the UI.
Then again, they got it right the first time....