Microsoft can only blame itself

Apple has a long history of competitive marketing one-upmanship. Major tactic is the artful leak timed around someone else's major product announcement or event. How many times has the company stolen CES participants' thunder without ever attending the event, for example? Occasionally, the showstopper is accidental, as is the case with OS X El Capitan.

I wonder: What were the Microsoft development and marketing teams thinking when they chose July 29th as Windows 10's release date? It's like stepping off the curb in front of a fast-moving, energy-efficient, gas-powered bus. Apple almost certainly will release the OS X 10.11 Public Preview before Windows 10 drops. The company promises July and has every reason to rub Microsoft's nose in the stink.

Someone at Microsoft must have known this was coming, or at the least suspected. Apple announced WWDC 2015 dates months ago. New OS X version reveal is typical. The guesswork isn't rocket science, then. However, Microsoft also is one of the platform's biggest developers, with Office 2016 for the Mac already testing. Surely someone in Redmond, Wash. knew enough to counsel caution.

So why step in front of that bus? Unless perhaps you think you can beat it?

Good luck with that, Microsoft. Anything that Apple does grabs huge media attention. The tech press just can't write enough. Bloggers and journalists pull out their laptops with the lighted bitten-fruit logo and bang out adoring copy that makes the sweetest press releases seem bland. The adulation is a puke-easy moment for the rest of us.

The Public Preview will be an event, and one likely to overshadow Windows 10's release. El Capitan will lead away a horde of analysts, bloggers, investors, and journalists -- and anyone listening to them. Sure, there are many die-hard Microsoft platform fans among BetaNews readers who will, ah, think differently rather than the other side's grammatically incorrect think different. But buzz will be Apple's, as it has been about so much else over the past few years.

All that comes not from OS X 10.11's release but its beta. Apple gets another swipe at Windows 10 when El Capitan releases sometime in autumn -- perhaps about the time new PCs running Win10 arrive on store shelves.

What a strange turnabout. Apple debuted OS X in March 2001 and released the first major update in September -- around when Windows XP shipped and stormed the market. Fourteen years ago, Microsoft commanded investors' and the media's attention. Sure, in 2015, Windows leads volume sales, in a race to lowest PC selling price. Apple gets more respect. How do I know? Because the fruit-logo loving tech press tells us so every day -- whether or not we want to hear it. Eh?