[psmith2.0]

Maccentral, MacMinute, MacRumors, etc. are all running a piece on how amazon.com has a listing for March 31, 2005 as the release date for Tiger, with a price of $129 and no info on upgrades.

El gato might be out of the bag?

If this is the case, does Amazon join Toshiba, ATi, Time Canada, workerbee, Newsweek, etc. on Steve's ever-growing "can't you a-holes keep a $&#^! secret?!?!" list?



From MacMinute.com

On a happier note, some German site speaks of new iBooks Tuesday with reduced prices across the board.

Meow.

[Paul]

no, Apple has no IDEA what the release date will be.
They have a goal and a development schedule, but the only way to stick to that is if you don't run into bugs that take longer then expected to fix...

I'd say that the release date will either be a little before or a little after this date, but it is unlikely (unless it is a tuesday, I'm too lazy to look) that they guessed right.
If I had to give a reason for the date it would be something along the lines of a requirement in the Amazon product database for the unreleased products grouping...

[Brad]

Does it really matter? That still puts it half a year away, nothing that exactly gets me all excited.

I seem to recall Amazon once before arbitrarily putting up something Mac-related for sale with a date; though, I can't remember the specifics. IIRC, it generated a bit of hype too. It was bunk.

Could it simply be that someone working at Amazon is a Mac user who is smart enough to tap the vein of the rabid speculators? I mean, just look at what you said. It's garnered the attention of several "mainstream" Mac publications. That's a lot of free advertising, folks.

[psmith2.0]

a) I'm not "excited" about it either. It's not like I'm sitting here, unable to get anything done in Panther and NEED Tiger (hell, I don't even understand half the crap listed among its marquee features, to be completely honest!). No, it doesn't "really matter". Just thought it was kinda interesting, but no...my Mac-using life is not exactly hinging on it, nor am I viewing it as any sort of "whew...finally, a proper OS!"

I likes Panther just fine.

b) I don't know the computer leanings of any Amazon employees. As Paul (the other one) said, perhaps it's just a placeholder that they needed to fill in for whatever reason? They just picked a nice "middle ground" date, seeing as how March 31 is the halfway point into the "first half of 2005"? The more I think about it, the more likely this sounds.

c) If all the major Mac sites stumble across it and decide, independently, that it's worth commenting on and adding to their news roster, then it's worth noting here, for anyone who might be interested. But mainly I did it for "oh man, AGAIN?!?" leanings. Kinda amusing to me that such a secretive company seems to be routinely "out-ed" by various publications, individuals, companies, etc.

d) If the thread is a total washout in one hour's time, feel free to lock it.

[Moogs]

Amazon knows people use their site for this type of purpose now; I think they just popped a date in there to draw more traffic. Paul's right, Apple has no idea when Tiger will go GM, they only have vague time-frames for such things. Besides, it's not the stuff Apple is shipping with it that I'm really hungry for, it's the stuff developers are going to create with technologies like Core Image and QT 7 (?).

And THAT stuff won't be around until months after Tiger ships anyway...

[ast3r3x]

Core Video is all done on the graphics card in real time right? Does that mean that many of the photoshop filters that Core Video can duplicate can be done in real time?

Although I was on a dual 2.5ghz G5 today, and even in photoshop shit was realtime.

[applenut]

yes, if adobe implements core image. which i don't see them doing anytime soon.