Microsoft Delays Vista Release Until 2007--Does That Help Mac?

The release of Vista, the next version of Windows, will be delayed from the second half of 2006 to early 2007 according to yesterday's Microsoft announcement. This is just the latest schedule slip for the successor to Windows XP. Vista was formerly code-named "Longhorn" until the "long-" jokes got to be just too much for Microsoft. The Microsoft claim is that the schedule slip is being done to increase quality. Why should we care? Well, some have written that this helps Apple's Mac OS X and computers. But does it?

How does this latest delay help the Mac? Supposedly, according to the argument advanced by some, there are all these Windows users out there just salivating to drop a wad of dough on a new computer during the 2006 holiday season and just because there won't be any new Windows OS, they'll be really upset and buy a Mac instead. Okay, it would be nice if that happens but we don't think it will in any significant numbers. No one with even half a brain "looks a gift horse in the mouth" no matter how small but, in general, rebound relationships are not likely to be stable ones.

What if Apple uses this delay to release its new Mac OS X 10.5 "Leopard" first, beating Microsoft to the market with a clearly better OS than Vista? This is an unlikely timeframe, in our opinion, because Leopard is likely to be first released to developers in August at it's Worldwide Developers Conference. Our guess is that Leopard will be specifically optimized for 32-bit and 64-bit Intel-based Macs with all major third-party software running on it natively. Apple's conversion to all Intel-based Macs may not be complete until the quad-core Intel CPUs ship early in 2007. Besides, we know that Mac OS X 10.4 "Tiger" is already a better OS than Vista will be, with features that Microsoft had to drop from Vista to get it to market at all--right?

We also think the slip in Vista's schedule will benefit Apple. Not because it gives Apple any sort of early jump but because it gives Apple more time to develop Leopard and combine it with new fabulously-designed, blow-me-away, Intel-based hardware that leaps the slothful Microsoft and its BUB-makers in a single, well-timed bound! [Bill Fox]