[morisy]

Briefings like that aren't unusual ... just highly unusual for Apple. I've sat in dozens of similar ones unveiling new versions of hardware, software or services for both consumer and business. It offers less launch-day spectacle, but it also offers the chance for more thoughtful analysis that can still be coordinated with embargoes.

It is, of course, a very large departure for Apple, which generally doesn't even return calls from anyone but Pogue or the WSJ, and even then doesn't generally comment.

[gkefalas]

Right, I meant they're unusual for Big Fruit. And also, the period between this reveal and release this summer is equally unusual...

I'd say that the lag between announce & release is a little more worrisome and something that I wouldn't want to see become a trend at Apple. I've always felt that a big part of their press was their general tendency to release right at announcement of a product or soon thereafter. Though, now that I think about it, I guess their OS releases have, by necessity, had to have some lead time associated with them.

[gyardley]

Yep, OS releases have a lot of lead time vs. physical products.

OS X Lion was demoed on stage in October 2010, made available as a developer preview in February 2011, and launched to the public in July 2011.

[morisy]

The lag time surprised me, too, but if you're going to tell your app developers they can no longer sell directly to their customers without jumping through a few hoops, you definitely at least want to give them a long head's up. I'd bet the trend of early preview windows correlates very strongly with how much it impacts developing on OS X.