Coming on Friday the 26th is the next major release of Mac OS X-- version 10.5, a.k.a. "Leopard"
Those who have Apple ADC Select or Premier memberships have been working with pre-release versions of Leopard for some time now. Apple periodically seeds a new version to those who get these versions, both so that developers can be ready and so that they can provide Apple with feedback on bugs and performance issues and such.
But when it's release time, a curious thing happens. The pre-release seeds stop. When Leopard is released on Friday, developers will not have had any time to work with it. Those who have been getting seeds will have done their best, but ultimately will be playing the odds that their software actually works with the release version. Every seed differs from the last as the operating system evolves from alpha quality to beta and finally to release, and there's no telling yet how the release version might differ from the ones developers have right now.
A common question recently has been, how much advance time will developers have to work with the final version of Leopard? The answer, unfortunately, is negative time. Despite paying $500 or more for an ADC membership, the best a developer can hope for is to rush out on Friday for a retail copy of Leopard, install it, test, and hope that it works. In other words, they find out if their software's ready at the same time their customers do.
This is exactly what happened when Tiger was released and it didn't make any more sense then than it does now.
The reason, apparently, is that Apple's more interested in getting feedback on pre-release seeds than in helping developers prepare. Once the update goes "golden master" further feedback on it ceases to be useful, and so the seeds stop coming. Some have suggested that piracy concerns play into it, but that's BS, because anyone who would pirate it will only be briefly delayed in doing so.
I expect to have a busy week, but my software will be just as ready for Leopard as it's actually possible to be.
Wed, 10/24/2007 - 14:41
I resent paying $500/year for seed release access, but not having GM access - and only getting a DVD some time after the software's been released. (:-( For testing, this really sucks. I encourage more Mac testers and developers to make (more of) a fuss with ADC about this.
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