Some are apparently viewing Apple’s surprise announcement of Mountain Lion last week as if it were that needle of Apple weakness they always knew was there, but just couldn’t find in the haystack of cash.
Some guy at some site with a truly terrible icon wonders “Is Microsoft Making Google and Apple Nervous with Windows 8?”
A .Net developer that BetaNews decided was the perfect person to turn to in this situation says “Steve Jobs is gone, Windows 8 is coming and Apple panics.” Seriously, you could replace BetaNews with a video of clowns honking horns and spraying each other in the face with seltzer bottles and no one would know the difference.
Into this august company flies Robert X. Cringely who thinks “OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion is damage control.”
Which leads the Macalope to wonder: What, exactly, is this “damage” of which Cringely speaks? It must be lying under all that tremendous profit share and those phenomenal quarterly results.
Cringely and some others strangely seem to believe that the announcement of Moutain Lion now means it’s going to be the basis for the mythical Apple television everyone seems to have decided is already named iTV.
It’s my belief OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion doesn’t represent an Apple triumph but is more damage control and preparing us for iTV.
…
Certainly Apple will be rolling into Mountain Lion all the cool touchscreen, digital media management, and distribution features along with hardware support for iTV and other new hardware platforms. This virtually guarantees, I guess, that the TV is on its way for Christmas 2012.
Is it just the Macalope or is technology coverage really weird? None of these people should ever be allowed to disparage astrologists.
The Macalope supposes it’s possible Apple would use Mountain Lion in a television, but after it went to the trouble to switch the Apple TV’s operating system from OS X to iOS, he doesn’t see why a television would need OS X.
Cringely goes on to disparage Lion which he says “still feels like beta software,” a charge he levies without supporting evidence.
Further, I’ve heard that customers have complained about iOS features they don’t see in Lion and wish were there.
What, Siri? Slide to unlock? A phone? People want all kinds of things—it doesn’t meant that they’re reasonable.
While these pundits seem to see the Mountain Lion announcement as reactionary, the Macalope thinks it and the move to a yearly update schedule is just good business. Ever since shipping Windows XP, Microsoft seems to keep finding itself playing catch-up. Apple’s squeezing Redmond on price and now on timing. Get a Mac and you’ll get your new OS releases faster and cheaper.
That certain people still view things from a lens of “Microsoft always having the upper hand” probably shouldn’t be surprising. It does make you wonder what fight they’re watching, though.
[Editors’ Note: In addition to being a mythical beast, the Macalope is not an employee of Macworld. As a result, the Macalope is always free to criticize any media organization. Even ours.]