Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard delayed until October

Well, there goes that prediction. Apple has delayed the 10.5 Leopard release until the fall. Apple states in their Hot News section that they have stolen resources from Leopard development and put them into development of the iPhone's OS.

Apple Statement
iPhone has already passed several of its required certification tests and is on schedule to ship in late June as planned. We can’t wait until customers get their hands (and fingers) on it and experience what a revolutionary and magical product it is. However, iPhone contains the most sophisticated software ever shipped on a mobile device, and finishing it on time has not come without a price — we had to borrow some key software engineering and QA resources from our Mac OS X team, and as a result we will not be able to release Leopard at our Worldwide Developers Conference in early June as planned. While Leopard's features will be complete by then, we cannot deliver the quality release that we and our customers expect from us. We now plan to show our developers a near final version of Leopard at the conference, give them a beta copy to take home so they can do their final testing, and ship Leopard in October. We think it will be well worth the wait. Life often presents tradeoffs, and in this case we're sure we've made the right ones. [Apr 12, 2007]

That's pretty disappointing, especially since at least one report claimed Apple reiterated privately they'd ship the OS this quarter. One might think that Apple's resources are more limited than many might have expected, if the development of a single piece of consumer electronics can hold up something as important as Leopard. We can be quite sure the developers attending WWDC this year won't be happy about this.

I wonder if the launch of the next version of iLife has also been delayed. The good news though is that the next iMac won't held up by Leopard, so we can reasonably expect it sooner rather than later, with "sooner" possibly meaning next month.

AAPL was down $1.75 (1.9%) to $90.44 in after hours trading.

Predictions for coming Apple releases

Many of us were disappointed by the lack of any significant upgrades (besides the number of cores) with the new 8-core Mac Pros, which makes some of us wonder why Apple chose to go out of its way to acquire pre-release quad-core 3.0 GHz Clovertown chips.

The easiest answer is that Apple wanted the machines available for this week's NAB 2007 meeting, to demo a new version of Final Cut Studio. Surely that can't be the only reason though, can it?

One thing that came to mind is that perhaps Apple is planning to release OS X 10.5 Leopard sooner than some expected. We can use the release of OS X 10.4 Tiger as precedence. Apple released the new G5 2.7 GHz dual Power Mac April 27th, 2005, and just two days later Apple released the new OS. And then, just a few days later again on May 3, Apple released the G5 2.0 iMac.

Apple generally does not officially support new machines with an older OS. Only versions of the OS that shipped with the machine or later are officially supported. With such a release schedule, Apple forced all new May 2005 iMac users to use 10.4 Tiger, since the older Panther 10.3 was not compatible with the brand new iMac. However, Apple gave pro users the option of using 10.3 Panther or 10.4 Tiger with the new Power Macs, since Tiger had technically not been released yet when the new Power Macs came out. I suspect Apple feels that we consumers are more flexible when it comes to new OSes, and many consumers want the latest and greatest anyway. Professionals on the other hand may be very dependent upon a specific workflow using a specific OS version, and forcing them to switch to a new OS immediately would not go over very well.

Most have been predicting that Apple will release 10.5 Leopard at WWDC in June, but taking the above into consideration, it is possible that Apple could release 10.5 Leopard by May, and then shortly afterwards Apple could release a new iMac using the Santa Rosa Centrino Pro chipset. Centrino Pro products from other companies are scheduled to hit shelves in May.

The lack of a Blu-ray recorder upgrade option in the new Mac Pros is also curious. Jobs went on stage with Sony at Macworld two years ago to promote Blu-ray, but Apple is also on record as saying it supports both HD DVD and Blu-ray. Furthermore, Apple already offers HD DVD burning in DVD Studio Pro, and non-DRM'd HD DVD playback in DVD Player.app. One might postulate that Apple may be expanding its HD DVD support in Leopard and the next version of iLife, with iDVD gaining the ability to burn HD DVD. Why HD DVD and not Blu-ray? The reason is that while Blu-ray support could also be added, Blu-ray burning requires an expensive Blu-ray burner which makes it less attractive. Contrary to popular belief, HD DVD burning does not require an HD DVD burner. Part of the specification for HD DVD is 3X DVD which allows HD DVD material to be burned onto DVD media, for hi-def playback on any HD DVD compatible player. Leveraging this technology with iDVD and DVD Player.app would allow Apple to give all existing SuperDrive Mac users the ability to burn HD DVDs, and any Mac user with a dual G5 or dual-core Intel Mac would have the ability to play back these discs.

I will emphasize that I'm just guessing, but let's hope some of those guesses turn out to be true.

[Update 2007-04-09]

My prediction about iDVD was likely based on false information. 3X DVD (or HD-9) is an official spec of HD DVD, but I had thought BD-9 (a comparable format) was not part of the Blu-ray specification. I have come across some information that says that it did indeed make it into the Blu-ray spec later on. If that is the case, then iDVD HD burning could use this format, and it would play back in any standard Blu-ray player. So, while I stick by my prediction of iDVD burning hi-def discs in 2007, it could be either HD DVD or Blu-ray or both.

[Update 2007-04-09]

I have since confirmed with a Blu-ray representative that BD-9 is in fact an official Blu-ray format. iDVD BD and/or iDVD HD here we come!

By the way, one last point: While Apple has pledged support for both formats, one cannot ignore the fact that Jobs himself may still lean towards the Blu-ray side, since he owns so much Disney stock. (Disney is a Blu-ray exclusive studio.) That said, despite Jobs' possible personal preference, Apple's mandate here is to sell computers, and potential Mac customers exist on both sides of the hi-def disc format war fence.

Panasonic UJ-215 slot-load Blu-ray burner shipping

You can now get a slim-line Blu-ray burner, the Panasonic UJ-215, for your Mac laptop. The good news is that it works natively in OS X, and Toast 8 supports it. The bad news is it costs a whopping US$800. Below are the burn speeds.

BD-R: 1X
BD-RE: 1X

DVD-RAM: 5X

DVD-R: 8X
DVD-R DL: 2X
DVD-RW: 4X

DVD+R: 8X
DVD+R DL: 2.4X
DVD+RW: 4X

CD-R: 8X
CD-RW: 8X

The UJ-215 is pictured here beside its tray-load brother, the UJ-210.

Rogers backtracks on iPhone for Canada

Three months ago we confirmed with Rogers that they will be getting the iPhone. Here is an excerpt from their response to our query:

The following is the information that we have so far regarding the release and availability of the Apple iPhone.
- The iPhone will first be introduced in North America
- Cingular is the only wireless carrier to launch the iPhone in the United States
- Rogers is actively working with Apple to launch the iPhone in Canada as soon as possible and will be the exclusive provider of the iPhone in Canada
- Apple is planning to introduce the iPhone in Europe (Q4 2007) and Asia (2008)
- Please be advised that Rogers will be offering the iPhone exclusively in Canada
- Launch date and pricing for Canada are not yet available
- Other Canadian wireless carriers will not launch the iPhone; Rogers will be the only Canadian wireless carrier to offer the iPhone

Rogers is now backtracking on those statements, according to this CBC article:

In Canada, Rogers Wireless Inc. — the only wireless service provider in the country with a network the iPhone can use — offered no launch date and dismissed the idea that it would sell the highly anticipated device as "speculation."

"We haven't announced whether we will carry the iPhone," Odette Coleman, manager of corporate communications for Rogers Wireless, said in an e-mail to CBC News Online. "Everything in the media has been speculations to this point. The only fact is that we are the only GSM carrier in Canada. That's the only fact."

Fortunately for me, I was not planning to get the iPhone anyway in its first iteration. I'm not really that interested in the iPhone until it is 3G and gets more storage space. Furthermore, I'd like to see how long the battery lasts in real-world usage, especially considering that the iPhone's battery is not removable.

[Update 2007-04-08]

Rogers has backtracked on its backtracking. Rogers confirmed again to iPhone World that they in fact will be getting the iPhone.

Rogers offering Mac-compatible 3G HSDPA laptop adapter

Rogers Wireless in Canada has begun offering the Option Wireless GT MAX PCMCIA card for its recently launched 3G HSDPA service. This allows up to a theoretical 3.6 Mbps maximum download speed wirelessly, in any area where HSDPA is supported. In areas where 3G service is unavailable, the card can fall back to 2.5G EDGE (and GPRS) as well.

Unfortunately, No MacBook Pros or MacBooks can actually use this card. MacBook Pros have a much smaller ExpressCard slot, and MacBooks have no expansion slot at all. The Option Wireless MAX card will only be useful for those mobile Mac users with G4 PowerBooks.

Apple using limited production quad-core CPU in Mac Pro

Yesterday Apple announced an 8-core Mac Pro, which made us wonder how Apple was selling them, since Intel's 3 GHz Clovertown wasn't due out yet and nobody else had them. It turns out that Apple is using a CPU in limited production to fill their needs, according to an eWeek report which quotes an Intel spokesperson.

"We are indeed shipping a 3.0GHz Xeon version [and] expect to see faster gigahertz speeds for our high-end Extreme PCs very soon, too," Bill Kircos, wrote in an e-mail to eWeek. "For now, the product is in limited production and Apple has chosen to adopt it. We will introduce another 3.0GHz Xeon SKU [Stock Keeping Unit] later on as well."

One wonders if this chip fits inside the 120 Watt TDP envelope of the slower clocked 2.66 GHz quad-core CPU (which Apple doesn't use in any of its machines), or if it runs at significantly higher power. I suspect the latter, and 120 Watt 3 GHz Clovertown quads will come out in Q3 2007 as originally planned. It will be interesting to find out just how much louder these 8-core (dual-quad) machines are compared to the existing 4-core (dual-dual) Mac Pros. Whatever the case, it looks like Apple has gotten a head start on the competition yet again.

[Update 2007-04-06]

An Intel spokesman states that the chip Apple is using is simply the Xeon X5365, and implies it isn't a special version of the chip (other than being early and in limited production). Thus, I wonder if it may in fact be 120 Watts like its 2.66 GHz X5355 brother (since I'm guessing the Q3 release version will have a maximum TDP of about that wattage), or if Apple is getting higher wattage chips in this limited production run.