The Coming Leopard Letdown? Hardly.

Hadley Stern over at Apple Matters (good blog, but come on guys full feed please) has an interesting post today entitled "The Coming Leopard Letdown" which boiled down is a bitter Apple Fanboy's diatribe on how he would fix the upcoming Leopard OS by focusing more on innovations rather than refinements. He goes on to critique John Gruber's post that the iPhone is the next generation for Apple, and OSX is so good it simply doesn't need any wondrous UI re-invent. Naturally Apple Matters (whom recently lost media invite status with Apple, gee I wonder why?) says this just ain't so - and Apple needs to champion new innovations daily or; and I quote

All I know is that if all we can expect from Apple right now is John’s visions of refinements for OS X the company, in the long-term, will be in trouble.

I found this rather ironic, as today two of the top stories on Techmeme are about Apple. The first is how 1 in 6 computers shipping in North America are Apple, and the other on how the stock gained about 4.00$ on above average growth. Another post that really grabbed my attention was from Microsoft uber Fanboy Alec Saunders, whom is so frustrated with his Vista experience (I share your pain Alec) - actually wrote to Microsoft senior management expressing basically a WTF guys? letter. To which they promptly responded - 'yeah we know, sorry - we are working on it'.

So to the good folk at Apple Matters, whom think a dark cloud is descending over Cupertino - I offer the following reality. Apple has an OS in Tiger that is already light years ahead of its closest competition in Vista. They are shipping 1 in 6 computers in North America, and M$'s biggest proponents are jumping ship, cause' they are sick of the hellish experience they are having with Vista. Apple has NO where to go but up, as they are not going to lose a single user to Vista - so if I were them I would leave well enough alone and concentrate on getting to 2 in 6 computers sold. Their continued growth is in converting PC users, not keeping their existing customers and they know this too well.

The experience you get when you first use a Mac is much like the feeling you get the first time you make an overseas calls on Skype. You are just blown away - it is so good. Leopard won't be a letdown in any way shape or form, the purists will love it, the newbies will drool - one thing is for certain however; it will get guys like me and Alec to make the jump. Oh yeah, btw - I don't even own a Mac yet.

How do you like d'em Apples.