There’s something about competition that ignites a fire in all of us to work harder, work better, and work with more passion.
And it looks like Apple and Microsoft are lining up for what could be the race of the decade: Who’s going to release their next operating system first?
Will Apple launch its new Intel Macs first? In Apple’s favor: they have their Intel developer beta program underway.
Or will Microsoft leverage its last two years of honing the Longhorn foundation and steam past Apple?
Microsoft has publicly stated that they are aiming for the holiday season in 2006 and Apple has said they are focusing on 2007. In the world of product development schedules, both sound sooo close to me. This could be very interesting.
For us online onlookers, the coming months are sure to be filled with some entertaining banter as advocates from both sides cheer on their respective team. I’m going to be a bit of a contrarian though and root for both Microsoft and Apple–though I’ll still be decidely Tablet biased. I want to see them both deliver stellar products that inspire the next round of competition. I’m a little selfish here. There are so many things I want to be able to do with my computers and we’re not there yet in terms of hardware and software–and I’m hoping a little friendly competition will help.
Haha I’m hardly the one to ever take Apple’s side on such issues but there is hardly a race. OSX has beaten Longhorn to the punch WAYYYYYY early. The race is not OSX86 vs Longhorn. It’s how long will Microsoft take to catch up with OSX and when they finally claim they have, how much will they have cut from the OS.
Train wreck!
Yep, Apple has a bunch of new desktop features that Microsoft doesn’t have yet, however, I think the real battle is not in these cool-feature trenches, but rather in new usage scenarios such as for example sharing/collaboration with ad-hoc networks. As computers go more mobile (smaller, faster, longer life) with greater and greater broadband the world will change. That’s the race I’m most intested in. In my book, Microsoft is ahead courtesy of the Tablet PC and Apple is ahead with respect to multi-media content creation. Both are playing catch up with the rich ways that users want to share content.