Snow Leopard Early Release Ratchets Up Pressure on Windows 7
Snow Leopard, Apple's newest version of Mac OS X, is an evolutionary not revolutionary upgrade — but the timing gives Apple a couple important months to try and stick it to Windows 7. Here's the lowdown on the price battle, the PR wars and the customer wooing.
CIO —
Tomorrow's release of the next version of Mac OS X, also known as Snow Leopard, is by all accounts a minor update, containing more refinements than new features.
Yet Snow Leopard is a major release in the sense that it could take the wind out of Windows 7's sails. The August 28 launch of Snow Leopard was originally supposed to take place in September. Either way, Apple has missed back-to-school buyers, but the sudden rescheduling is a tactic aimed at rival Microsoft, say industry analysts.
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Rob Enderle, president of tech consulting firm The Enderle Group, says that Apple's rescheduling of Snow Leopard's release could put Microsoft in a vulnerable position.
"Apple will now get nearly two months to market their offering, which is in market, against Windows 7, which is not in market," Enderle says.
He predicts that the Snow Leopard hype will pass once Windows 7 ships on Oct. 22, but "until then it will hurt Microsoft in terms of measured market share."
Not surprisingly, Microsoft disputes that view. Windows Product Marketing Director Jay Paulus contends that Snow Leopard's rescheduling is minor news and will not affect Microsoft's timetable with Windows 7.
"I don't think the notion that Snow Leopard's early release will make Windows 7 look late will stick," Paulus says. "It's more likely Apple have a short span where they were in market first, albeit on a much more limited set of hardware, but that will fade pretty fast."
Two OSes, Two Different Goals
Though both Snow Leopard and Windows 7 are maintenance releases and offer fairly easy upgrades from previous versions, the OSes come from very different places.
Windows 7 has much more pressure on it to succeed, since its predeccesor, Windows Vista, was arguably the most criticized version of the Windows OS ever. Snow Leopard, in contrast, takes over for Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5), which was quite popular with the Apple base.
"Apple is cruising along at a lofty altitude," says veteran analyst Roger Kay. "Snow Leopard is a minor release, but Windows 7 is a major one, and Microsoft has a long slog in front of it to re-establish Windows."
Tim Bajarin, president of consulting firm Creative Strategies, agrees that Snow Leopard and Windows 7 have different objectives and that Microsoft is carrying the bigger burden.
"The main focus of Snow Leopard is to update UI features, speed up Safari and provide solid support for Exchange Server 2007," Bajarin says. "But the goal with Windows 7 is to take a lot of the confusing UI problems out of Vista, as well as the heavy memory demands, and make the OS easier to use."
