stevenberlinjohnson.com: Apple On Speed
I’d been thinking a little recently about Apple and speed, though not speed in the sense of window redrawing, but speed in the sense of upgrade cycles. It seems to me that Apple has managed to release a prodigious amount of new software in the past two years: two significant upgrades to OS X, each with hundreds of new features (along with the performance increases.) But also think of all the new applications. Start with the iLife package — major upgrades to iTunes including the Apple Music Store; upgrades to iMovie and iDVD; entirely new applications in iPhoto and iChat AV. And then somehow they’ve managed to produce what basically amounts to a complete productivity suite, built from scratch: iCal, Address Book, Mail, Keynote, iSync. And on top of that, in a year they’ve managed to assemble what a lot of people seem to think is the best browser on the market — Safari.
Am I missing something, or is this a significantly faster development cycle than Microsoft’s?
What makes Steve run? I commented on the above-referenced post, so I won’t repeat it here. I think the rest of the post is worth reading, as well.