Leopard Support: When?

[jwhitley]

Originally Posted by stokessd

The problem that SuperDuper! is not available immediately is as much or more an Apple issue than a ShirtPocket issue. [...] It's the result of Apple and Steve Jobs' cloak and dagger method of product announcements.

Actually, this isn't Apple's "problem" as such, and has nothing to do with Apple's (and many other companies') penchant for holding their cards close before announcements. This is a basic reality of commercial software development. Before release of a product that supports Leopard, third-party software houses must test, verify, and fix any issues against the final "golden master" build of the new OS. Nothing less is satisfactory.

For the OS release to be time-on-target with third-party products, Apple would have had to not release Leopard to the general public at the same time as developers. The developers would need to have gotten it before the public, with some time-delay to allow final QA.

This model has a bunch of problems; I'll mention two. First, it (incorrectly) assumes that a new release of Mac OS isn't useful without some arbitrary mass of third-party product available with the respective seals-of-approval on the day of release. Second, it (incorrectly) assumes that there isn't a lot of software that will "just work", and even more that will work except for a few easily patched quirks.

Apple has done the right thing here, the only real problem is with some people's impatience. One could argue that increased frequency of developer seeds could help this, but few shops have the resources to continually adapt their code for unreleased versions of an OS. Worse, this approach can make more enemies than friends, since features that are in flux can cause a lot of churn for impacted developers.

For my part, when a new major Mac OS upgrade is out, I make a checklist of all of my apps (use your favorite Mac outliner) where I mark whether the app is supported on the new release. Once in a while, I go and update my list, and when enough critical apps are good-to-go, I'll consider upgrading.