Why I don't believe TUAW's 10.6 rumour

Stephen Withers
Thursday, 05 June 2008 11:34

Opinion and Analysis

Mac OS X 10.6 in January 2009? No way!

TUAW's suggestion that developers will receive an early build of Mac OS X 10.6 at next week's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) makes no sense to me, even though Ars Technica claims to have confirmed it. Here's why.

First of all, it's too soon.

Mac OS X 10.5 (aka Leopard) shipped in October 2007. TUAW's tipping a January 2009 release for 10.6 - that would give 10.5 a lifetime of just 15 months if the reports are true.

10.4 (Tiger) appeared in April 2005, two and a half years earlier. The delay to 10.5 was blamed on the need to divert development resources to the iPhone project.

10.3 (Panther) made its debut in October 2003 and had an effective life of 18 months.

Didn't Apple previously indicate its intention to update the operating system at intervals of 18 months or more? Just because 10.5 was late, I can't see why 10.6 would be early - unless there's some new hardware just over the horizon that requires substantial changes to the OS. 

What else doesn't make sense?

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