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Entry 378, on 2006-08-08 at 14:21:29 (Rating 1, Computers)

The first thing I did this morning (Tuesday morning in New Zealand, Monday in California) was check the Mac rumours and Apple sites for announcements from WWDC, the Apple World Wide Developers' Conference. If you have read previous blog entries you will know I was supposed to be at this conference, but now I have to make do with Internet coverage.

The new products look nice. Faster professional level Macs and completing the transition to Intel chips is important, but the thing that interests me most is the extension and enhancement of the operating system. After all, anyone can make a half decent computer, but no one apart from Apple seems to be any good at operating systems.

The other fact which makes Leopard important to me is that it will be available, relatively cheaply, to anyone who already has a Mac. Getting an Intel processor requires buying a whole new computer, and in the end gives no extra functionality at all, unless running Windows software is important to you.

The only problem I have with the new Leopard features is how far ahead of the mainstream software developers Apple is with the OS. What is the point of having all this cool new stuff if big companies like Microsoft and Adobe aren't using it in their products? Its getting to the point where you need to use Apple and some smaller developers' products to get the new features.

There's nothing wrong with that - I prefer not to use products from the big companies anyway - but it does mean Mac users either don't get a "true Mac experience" or have to use software which might cause compatibility issues with their PC using colleagues.

Well that's the price of progress, I guess. Now that software needs to be created using Apple's Xcode system to ensure Intel compatibility its a good chance for Microsoft and Adobe to make a real Mac version of their programs instead of the stuff we have now. Whether that will really happen is yet to be seen!

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