Leopard not ready for April "Barely beta"
Posted: 2007-03-22 03:40pm
Not suprised
There have been a lot of rumors lately from "unconfirmed" sources about Leopard's expected ship date. For a while, everyone was sure it was going to ship mid-to-late March. Then mysteriously, the ship date (according to these anonymous sources) got shifted to mid-April—perhaps because we are already in late March. Oops.
Developers who work closely with Apple have been dying to tell the world how very, very wrong we all are. We have always maintained an air of skepticism regarding the early release speculations, but confirmation of these suspicions have been bombarding us lately. Our sources have told Ars that there is very little chance ("and that would be pushing it") for Leopard to ship in late April—that is, if Apple wants to ship with a halfway stable operating system.
Our sources say that, from past experience, Apple typically ramps up production in the last six weeks before shipping with "many seeds—like two a week." This constant seeding period continues for several weeks, and then is then typically followed by a sudden quiet period. Apple usually announces the ship date soon thereafter, and starts pressing CDs/DVDs (which in itself takes several weeks).
"If they follow the same pattern as Tiger, Panther, and Jaguar, we should start getting a lot of seeds soon, and then they'll need the 3-4 weeks to start pressing CDs," says one of our developer buds. "Which means, if they're really shooting for late April, next week is the last week before CD production starts."
Seems highly unlikely, given what we've been told from several sources about the instability of the current build.
Developers have not even entered into the constant seeding period. "We still have the same seed we got 2 weeks ago," we are told. "I'd say it's barely beta, not Final or Gold Master."
Is it possible that Apple is keeping some of its key developers in the dark by holding back a surprise, nearly-perfect build? Sure. Anything is possible. But seems like just about the worst idea ever if the company wants anyone's software to work when Leopard comes out. This is not super-insider information either, say our sources. "Anybody who has really worked with a Tiger or Panther seed will know the same stuff."
One more tip we got regarding Leopard, is that InputManager plugins are no longer allowed. That's right... no more "haxies" from anybody besides Apple. No more Apple menu hacks. No more Safari plugins. InputManager is not exactly the same as APE, but the two work together to load plugins based on which app is being launched at the time. "Apple isn't really broken up about it since InputManagers were often used for nefarious purposes anyway," our sources said, but the loss of InputManager control will break a lot of shareware and commercial software that currently makes use of that control.
So can we expect a Leopard release in late April, for rizzle? I'm certainly not, and according to our sources, you shouldn't either. "If what we have now is the final build, I am NOT buying Leopard," says one of our sources.
When do they personally theorize Leopard will actually be ready to ship? "June."