Leopard's doing upgrades right

Every major Apple OS release has been snapped up by an overwhelming majority of mac users within a matter of months - something I’m sure Microsoft would love to emulate.

I recently came across this quote from Will Shipley, of Delicious Monster fame:

“I would never switch Delicious Library 2 back to Tiger — not with CoreAnimation and Objective-C 2.0. The changes to Cocoa are so fundamental that I feel I’m learning to program again, at yet a higher level. Going from 10.5 to 10.4 would be like going from 10.4 to Windows — it’s just not worth any possible monetary gain.”

By adding a new pile of outstanding features for developers to Leopard Apple recruits them to promote an upgrade path; when all your day-to-day applications become Leopard-only within a matter of months, you have no option but to upgrade. That’s when Apple steps in and goes “hey, you want our latest and greatest? It’s only $100 - no multiple versions to sort through, no upgrade edition; just buy it, will you?”