Karma is a bitch.

Yesterday, Apple announced that they will delay Leopard’s release from Spring 2007 to October 2007. As soon as I heard this news, I thought of Steve Jobs on a big stage making fun of Microsoft. My memory is that Jobs made fun of Longhorn’s delays (before it was dubbed Vista). Maybe someone who wants to watch a few keynotes of Jobs in Quicktime can confirm it, but that’s my memory.

The next thing I thought of is all the times I made fun of Microsoft myself for having to pull engineers off of Longhorn to get XP SP2 out the door. Apple has stated they are having Leopard engineers working on the iPhone. Karma.

Over at some Mac sites, the Mac zealots are screaming “The sky is falling!”. People feel betrayed and dirty and common, which is a sin to a Mac user. What is worse in life than to feel like a common Windows user waiting for Vista? Nothing is worse.

After I had these amusing thoughts, I didn’t really get upset. The truth is I haven’t been all that excited about Leopard anyway. The one thing that excites me the most about Leopard is Safari. There are some very useful additions to that, it seems. Time Machine (an automated back-up system) is about as exciting to me as really good home owner’s insurance. If it hails on my roof and it gets replaced quickly and painlessly, I’ll like it. Until then, it’s just something I have that doesn’t affect my daily life.

My opinion right now about Spaces (a multiple desktop feature) is it’s not going to be like Exposé. When I saw Steve Jobs demonstrate Exposé before Tiger shipped, I thought, “Hmm, well, it looks cool, but I doubt I’ll ever use it.” It turns out Exposé is probably the single feature that has positively affected my workflow more than any other feature since Undo. I don’t think Spaces is going to do that. I’ve never bought the “tasks” method of working on a computer where you separate your applications and documents based on specified tasks. Gee, in this space I’ll have Photoshop, Safari, Mail, Flash; in this other space I’ll have Photoshop, Safari, Mail and Flash…

Of course, the biggest potential for glory in Leopard is a new Finder. While I find the overall experience of OS X Tiger to be superior to anything else I’ve used, the Finder is probably the weakest point. Being able to assign the same view to all of my folders in one click is something file browsers did back in the 80s, yet it’s something Tiger can’t do. While that is not something I do every single day, it’s annoying. The Mac experience is about all the small, nice touches adding up to a better experience. Apple usually thinks about the small things. That’s what hits me in the face every time I log into my Windows PC. Microsoft does the small things horribly, usually. Apple has a passion for making all of it easy.

So the Finder needs a bit more polish. Putting in tabs, smart sorting (folders first, then files), global view change, and a few other small things will improve the Finder greatly. Add to that some more columns in List view so you can list your Quicktime movies by codec or size would be nice too.

OK, so Leopard is delayed. Mac users are feeling betrayed. But why did this happen? Mac users are wondering why Apple would betray them, the faithful, for a stupid cell phone. Well, one quick look at Apple’s last quarterly financial results will tell you. Apple made $3.4 billion in revenue from a single gadget - the iPod. They made $2.41 billion from all the Macs. Their software sales totaled $347 million and that includes “services and other”, which I’m guessing includes Apple Care, photo sales from iPhoto, .Mac subscriptions, etc.

So obviously it’s very smart to prioritize another gadget that is likely going to make you billions in revenue over a $129 OS update that will be purchased by a fair percentage of the Mac user user base, which is a small percentage of the computing base.

The iPhone is a much higher profile product than an OS update for Mac users.

So Mac users are starting to feel like PC gamers waiting for Halo 2 while Xbox 360 users are gearing up for Halo 3 beta. “Hey, I thought I was your favorite?! I made you! You can’t walk out on me!” This is business and nothing personal and it makes total sense. It’s disappointing, sure. I’m probably not going to even buy an iPhone. I like my unlimited plan from MetroPCS and I’m not about to pay twice as much a month to get a better phone. Hopefully when Leopard ships, it will have some very exciting features.

Steve Jobs learned the hard way not to proclaim your computer will be at 3 Ghz next year during a keynote. Maybe now he’ll think twice about making fun of Microsoft’s troubles.

Karma.