Geek factor aside, it occurred to me that this is exactly what Apple should be doing; building up momentum by regularly releasing significant improvements and upgrades to its software. After all, it was only a little over a year ago that the current version of the OS, Jaguar, was released. In effect, they’re following a consumer sales cycle that’s closer to casual software purchasing — like video games, for instance — than traditional operating system sales. Such frequency improves revenue and generates real excitement, making Apple seem much scrappier than Microsoft, which seems to be on a much longer update cycle with its Windows software.
I’m willing to bet that this activity also drives hardware sales… I started thinking seriously about upgrading my hardware almost immediately after I realized that ‘tomorrow’s Mac’ would be here before the end of the month. With the end of both the calendar year and our fiscal year at Behavior coming up soon, it’s not outside of the realm of possibilty that I could be running Panther on some new hardware before too long — certainly sooner than I promised myself I would wait until. Maybe Santa will look kindly upon me in December.
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