If you want a new Mac, but don't want Lion, you better get one quickly.

Don't forget that Lion will be released within two to six weeks.

<http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11/06/16/apple_may_freeze_new_mac_intr
oductions_until_release_of_mac_os_x_lion.html>

AppleInsider | Apple may freeze new Mac introductions until release of Mac
OS X Lion
By Kasper Jade and Neil Hughes
Published: 01:15 PM EST

Apple management is so pumped up over the advantages presented by its
forthcoming Mac OS X Lion operating system that the company has been
holding back the release of at least one new Mac refresh until the software
is finalized, AppleInsider has learned.

For instance, new Thunderbolt-enabled Sandy Bridge MacBook Air models
expected to go into production this month have been ready and waiting for
some time, according to people familiar with the matter. But management is
currently unwilling to usher the new models into the market with the
current Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard operating system.

Instead, the Mac maker is said to be locked on waiting till it can image
the new notebooks with a Gold Master build of Lion so that buyers are
afforded the latest and greatest Apple experience. This includes
complimentary iCloud services that will come built into the software,
offering a means of automatic data synchronization that is both
unparalleled in the computing industry, and paramount in an age when
consumers are adopting a digital lifestyle in which they own and operate
multiple mobile devices.

The same methodology is believed to be in place for Thunderbolt-equipped
versions of the Mac mini and LED Cinema Display, and will carry over
Apple's forthcoming iOS devices like the next iPhone and iPod touch, which
the company is similarly unwilling to ship without the iCloud-enabled iOS
5.0 software due this fall.

Any decision to relent on this approach would need to be prompted by
unexpected delays in the release of either operating system that would
prove disruptive to the company's fundamentals by preventing it to push out
new hardware in-line with its internal models, according to other people
familiar with Apple's thinking.

This strategy follows a company objective first revealed by AppleInsider
prior to Apple's disclosures regarding Lion and iCloud at this month's
Worldwide Developer Conference, in which it reported that management was
determined to price Lion extremely aggressively and give away iCloud
features for free in an effort to get the software into the hands of as
many consumers as quickly as possible.

During his keynote at the conference one week ago, Apple chief executive
Steve Jobs confirmed that Apple would price Lion at $29.99, rather than the
company's historical $129.99 fetching price for new versions of the Mac OS
X operating system, and that users would receive the majority of its iCloud
features at no cost, the exception being some enhanced storage and music
functionalities that will cost a nominal fee.

All said, while the Cupertino-based company's strategy continues to evolve
with the times, it remains rooted in the same principle that Apple is a
software-driven company that makes its money on the sale of proprietary
hardware designed to best leverage its software expertise.

Apple's investment in unique, cutting-edge notebook designs has paid off
for the company, and in particular with the redesigned MacBook Air released
last fall. In February, a person familiar with Apple's supply chain told
AppleInsider that the thin and light notebooks were selling in volumes
roughly half that of MacBook Pros -- a major change from the relatively
niche status the MacBook Air previously held in the company's product
lineup.

Even before the new MacBook Air, Apple had outgrown the PC market every
quarter over the past five years. But the ultraportable Air was singled out
last week by Apple Senior Vice President of Worldwide Product Marketing
Phil Schiller during Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference keynote.

"It's beautiful, it's thin, it's light, it's fast," Schiller said during
the keynote. "The whole PC industry wants to copy it."

It's the PC industry that has been caught in a standstill while Apple has
seen industry-leading growth. With an install base now at 54-plus-million
active users around the world, the Mac saw 28 percent year over year growth
last quarter, while the entirety of the PC market shrank 1 percent.

AppleInsider was told earlier this month that Apple is prepared to build
nearly 400,000 of its next-generation MacBook Air this month. But with Mac
OS X Lion set to go on sale on the Mac App Store in July, Apple's initial
production run could lie in wait until the software is made publicly
available.

"Whether you want a great new notebook or a killer desktop with the new
iMac, these Macs are the best that we've ever made in the history of
Apple," Schiller said. "And they're great not just because of the hardware
they run, but because of the software."

Expanding further on its software and services, Apple is also looking to
increase the value proposition of its product line and surrounding
ecosystem with the new iCloud service, which will be free when it launches
in its entirety this fall. Some features of iCloud, including the ability
to redownload content, is already available using iTunes 10.3, or the App
Store for iOS devices.

In addition to seamlessly syncing data, contacts and calendars across
multiple devices -- including Macs and PCs -- Apple's iCloud also promises
to simplify users' lives, making it easy to access photos, videos and
personal files without the need to manually transfer or back up. Apple has
boasted that its offering will be more full-featured than its rivals,
namely Google and Amazon, as well as third-party services like Dropbox. And
no PC maker that competes with the Mac lineup offers an integrated solution
such as Apple's.

 

Figures. I don't want Lion. Reasons why:

1 No Rosetta. This is a deal-breaker, as a _lot_ of our legacy hardware uses
drivers which are PPC-code, and will never be updated as the vendors are no
longer with us. We're not about to toss literally hundreds of thousands of
dollars worth of equipment just to use Lion.

2 Indications from our guy who is part of the seed group are that Active
Directory under WinServer 2003 is extremely unreliable. Another deal-breaker.
We're not about to completely re-do our in house network just to use Lion,
either.

There are other problems, (Resume! The incredible ugliness of iCal and
AddressBook! The incredible RAM appetite of Safari! The even more incredible
RAM appetite of kernel_task!) but they don't really matter as those two are
the big ones. Both of them must be fixed or we can't use Lion. Apple is in
the process of completely re-writing its networking code, thanks to Samba
being placed behind the GLP3 wall, and seems to be encountering major
problems which might or might not get fixed. Until they are fixed Lion is
useless to anyone who has a WinServer 2003 network. (It seems to work with
WinServer 2008. This might indicate that part of the problem is with
Microsoft. Is there anyone, anyone at all, who thinks that Microsoft will
update an older NOS to help out Apple? That's what I thought.) Maybe the
network problem gets fixed, maybe it doesn't. What's _certain_ is that there
is no Rosetta in Lion, and there never will be Rosetta in Lion, and that
means that our legacy hardware is dead, dead, dead. Yes, we were planing on
updating in the near future, but 'near future' meant 'two-three years' not
'two-three weeks'.

We are due to buy new computers this year, but the budgeted dates are in the
August-October timeframe. We _will_ require machines which can talk to our
legacy hardware and our network, which means that either we'll be buying
refurb Macs with SL (assuming that there are any such available) or we'll
have to hold our noses and buy Win7 boxes; we _know_ they'll work.

There is absolutely _nothing_ in Lion which makes us want to buy it, and it
breaks our legacy hardware and our network. It will not be purchased here. At
least not until we have replaced our legacy hardware (two-three years) and
our NOS (starting next year).

I am quite sure that we will not be alone in this.

 

J.J. O'Shea:

You don't need to justify yourself. But I know that venting one's
frustrations provides temporary relief.

Everyone's got problems. The economy isn't coming back as we had hoped.
So many people in my neighborhood have stopped buying lobster and
truffles that my stockist no longer carries these salad-making
essentials. That's a deal breaker. I may have to drive a bit farther,
but I've found another place to buy food staples. It's like you and
Lion; no choice in the matter.

Davoud

 

I'll sell you a SL disk for postage and $1. (I have three disks but
want to keep two of them).