Writing for Microsoft Watch, Matthew Rothenberg and Mary Jo Foley, think Panther, Apple’s next major upgrade of Mac OS X, may emerge as “king of the desktop OS jungle” instead of Longhorn, Microsoft’s upcoming revision of Windows.
An article entitled ” Why Panther May Tear Up Longhorn ” says that Apple isn’t underestimating Microsoft on the operating system front. Company insiders say that Apple is aware of areas where Windows XP is ahead of Mac OS X and is working to deal with the situation.
“On the performance front, Apple is reportedly working to match XP’s GUI [graphical user interface] responsiveness as well as launch, boot and log-in times,” Microsoft Watch writes. “For features, Apple is burning the midnight oil to add capabilities that will rival Windows Terminal Services’ access to multiple desktops, XP’s ability to create profiles that travel with them among machines, and extensible help-system features that allow third-party developers to provide support and updates from within the OS. Add in such niceties as transparent, file system-level compression and encryption, and Apple has a sizable task list in front of it.”
However, as the article points out, the confrontation may not be between Panther and Longhorn. The former is due this year, while the latter isn’t coming until 2005.
“The real question isn’t whether Longhorn will take the hide off Panther, which sources said is due to ship in September,” Microsoft Watch says. “Instead, it’s whether Longhorn be able to best Civet … or Bengal Tiger … or whatever feline Apple has in store for 2005.”
Meanwhile, developers will get an in-depth look at the upcoming Apple Worldwide Developer Conference. It runs June 23-27 in San Francisco.
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