The news that broke just hours ago surprised a lot of people. Another big cat is joining Apple's Mac OS X family. Apple once again proved how secretive it could be. News virtually exploded when the embargo ended and the tech bloggers were free to hit the 'Publish' button.
What matters the most to me here is how quickly Apple manages to iterate. Mac OS X is apparently switching to an annual-ish release cycle (similar to iOS). Compare this with Windows' much more prolonged cycle: Windows 7 was released Oct 2009 and Windows 8 is expected sometime during the fall (beta is coming in just two weeks). And this is going to be a short time by Microsoft's standards (XP to Vista took solid 5 years).
Of course it's not fair apples to (hmm) apples comparison. Apple benefits from producing its own hardware and thus having much less trouble with backwards compatibility and unreliable partners.
But still, the release cycle is very important. Much more than it was just a few short years ago. And it gets harder and harder for Microsoft to excite everybody about Windows 8 not because it is bad (it is not) but just because things seem to happen so slowly.
To be fair, Windows 8 with Metro and Windows on ARM ability are a much much bigger upgrade than Mountain Lion is going to be. Still, Microsoft must learn to move more quickly. It is already doing so with Windows Phone 7.
