Real Kato Blog: Apple Watch: On the Leopard Delay

It's not the end of the world.

So, as you may know by now, Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard has been delayed to October. The official reason given by Apple: Engineering and QA resources had to be shifted to work on the iPhone to get it out in June.

Some Mac web sites and bloggers are up in arms about this. The degree of windy hyperbole is staggering: "Now, Apple is going to take some serious hits from analysts, investors, and even the PC camp," says an article on The Mac Observer.

Let's be clear on a couple of things. First of all, this isn't that big a deal. The number of people who will base their Mac purchasing decisions based on the version of Mac OS X is miniscule. Unlike Microsoft, whose revenue depends on software sales, Apple's revenue depends mostly on hardware sales. Will some people buy a Vista-based PC because they don't want to buy Tiger? Probably. But I just can't see that having a significant effect on the bottom line. The Mac base will remain faithful, and iPod and iPhone sales will remain just fine.

Second, a lot of people apparently don't have a clue as to the real cause of software project delays. That same Mac Observer article (written by a former Apple marketing manager) suggests that Leopard's delay is because VPs and middle managers aren't empowered to make staffing decisions, and because Apple is paying too much attention to operating expenses (and thus not hiring enough engineers). That's typical manager-think there. "If we only had more people, the project would get done faster."

It's a plausible story to tell analysts, but a simple fact of software engineering is this: large, complicated projects take time. There are two main reasons that software projects are late: one, because of poor planning up front (leading to poor engineering decisions), and two, because of feature creep (the desire to keep adding extra unplanned functionality to the system). The larger a project is, the more likely it is that there'll be a delay. So for something on the scale of Leopard, a delay was inevitable. Apple's biggest mistake was announcing the "spring 2007" deadline so far in advance.

So yeah, the delay is disappointing, and we Mac users who derided Vista for its lengthy series of delays will have to eat some crow. But really, let's not lose our heads, OK?

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