According to a number of news sources, Apple is going to slow down the development cycle of Mac OS X in the future, because it's not sustainable to release updates every year. I can understand this reasoning, but I don't think Apple should slow down the development cycle. It should be doing its best to make Mac OS X THE BEST operating system out there. Even though Longhorn isn't due out until 2006, it is looking pretty good (technology-wise), and Apple needs something to compete with that.
Paul Thurrott posted something about this, and for once, I agree with him when he says: "With Microsoft getting ready to ship Longhorn in two years, now is the time that Apple should be churning out the upgrades…" He's also right in saying that Apple shouldn't be charging US$129 each year for the upgrades. Even though it's not a great amount of money in the greater scheme of things, it's still a fair bit each year to shell out.
I find the rest of his post utter crap, though, I'm happy to say. I especially like this comment: "Microsoft, with its mountains of cash and steady corporate licensing fees, has been improving XP over the years, and not charging customers for the privilege (or charging them very little, such as the $20 fee one would pay for Plus! Digital Media Edition)." I'm sorry, WHAT? How has Microsoft been improving XP over the years? There's only been one Service Pack (with a second due out soon), and no real new features or improvements that I can see. The reason they haven't been charging customers for the improvements is because there haven't been any! Funny that.
Another comment: "Apple doesn't benefit from Microsoft's economics, but I find it odd that the company would soak its most loyal customers so readily: Only the true diehards have been using and upgrading OS X every year." Another gross generalisation. I used to work at an Apple Store, and we'd have students, teachers and all sorts of people with different skill levels coming in and asking us when Panther was coming out, and many of them bought it when it was released. These people are not "true diehards", as Paul says, but users who just want to use the latest features offered in Mac OS X.
Anyway, enough of a rant. I don't think Apple should be slowing down development. With the number of vulnerabilities recently (and yes there are some, such as the help:// vulnerability. I don't count the Microsoft Office "Demo" one, as that's just plain stupidity. The guy was searching on LimeWire for a "demo" of Office 2004, and he downloaded a file that was a couple of hundred kilobytes in size at most. Anyone with a brain could figure out that it was not the right size for a demo/beta of an office suite. This happens on Windows, too, and it was bound to happen sooner or later.), Apple needs to make sure Mac OS X is secure and reliable, and to put features into the OS that will take it far ahead of Windows XP and Longhorn.
Well, I don’t think the speed they are going at now is necessarily good for the long term morale of the team. 18 months per release is quite fine, especially for big solid updates.
As for Longhorn, it seems Microsoft has cut more out of it than they are putting in.