Apple made an interesting mistake with Leopard - they pulled a Microsoft, believing that an artificial release deadline was more important than a stable release. Now, they're seeing stories like this one:

A month of using Leopard with the same software I had under Tiger and the OS has dumped six times. That's six cold reboots for Oliver. Apple isn't even honest enough to admit that Leopard is crashing: The OS just grays out my desktop and pops up a dialog box telling me I've got to reboot. Like the whole thing is my fault. I even snapped a picture of it. After all, I HAD PLENTY OF CHANCES! And all my complaints, mirrored by online forum traffic, are the same complaints I heard about Vista when it first reared its unbaked head.

Microsoft is mostly immune to stories like this one now - they've been pushing unbaked releases for so long that the market is mentally prepared for it. But Apple? What's they're entire marketing campaign about again?

It Just Works

Except, it apparently doesn't, and that's a problem. Say they had delayed Leopard another 6 months - would anyone have cared? Tiger was (and is) still a hands down winner over XP and Vista - there was no good reason to rush. Now they've rushed, and taken a hammer to their most important advantage over the competition.

Technorati Tags: marketing, pr