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Analsys & Opinion My Shout Leopard and Vista a tale of two developments
Analsys & Opinion My Shout Leopard and Vista a tale of two developments | Leopard and Vista a tale of two developments |
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| by Stan Beer | |
| Tuesday, 15 August 2006 | |
  
So many millions took up the offer, that Microsoft eventually decided to charge a nominal fee of US$1.50 for downloads. Yesterday, reports started appearing about how a preview version of Mac OS X 10.5 (aka Leopard) is circulating on internet file sharing networks. No doubt, some applications developer who was provided with a copy of the Leopard preview for development purposes at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference has been naughty. Also no doubt, if Apple finds out who was responsible, the company will sue, as is its right, given that all the developers reportedly signed non-disclosure agreements. Regardless of the merits or otherwise of Leopard and Vista, the contrast of the approach to development between the two companies could not be more stark. Although Vista is just as much a proprietary operating system as Leopard, Microsoft has taken a much more collaborative approach to the development of the product. As it did with previous versions of Windows, Microsoft has freely made available preview versions in order to get the user community involved with the debugging process. On the other hand, Apple, as always, will keep its product tightly under wraps until launch day. There will be no millions of users involved with the debugging process - presumably just a dedicated team of developers in Cupertino and perhaps a few thousand users throughout the company. The results of the two differing processes is in fact quite surprising. One would think that the collaborative approach taken by Microsoft would produce a more stable, secure, and bug free product. After all, it has been tested by millions, while the Apple product would have only undergone a fraction of the testing. Without prejudging Vista, it is fairly obvious that Windows XP is not exactly the epitome of stability and security. It would be kind to say that it is no more stable and certainly not more secure than Mac OS X 10.4. As the science teacher asked, why is this so? Perhaps Microsoft has tried too hard to make its operating system all things to all people and therefore has had to make too many compromises. It certainly has helped the company sell more software than all the other IT companies combined but the software itself is loose and buggy. Apple never makes compromises. Its operating system is designed under dictatorial rule. You can either take or leave it but it works and it works well. Unfortunately for Apple, most people seem to prefer to live under the open and imperfect system developed by Microsoft than the rule of dictatorship. Perhaps, Apple's move to the Intel platform will change that. {moscomment} |
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