Apple has released two updates to Mac OS X in eight days, and three in the 46 days since Mac OS X was first released on March 24th. I would like to offer up my praise to the company for doing so, especially for yesterdayis 10.0.3 update which was relatively minor. For years, Apple has kept its updates fairly infrequent except in the case of important bug fixes that cropped up on occasion. With OS X, the company is so far keeping to an aggressive schedule of releasing updates as soon as they are (presumedly) ready. End users benefit greatly from this, especially those of us who are considered "early adopters." The improvements in each of the three updates (10.0.1, 10.0.2, and now 10.0.3) we have so far received has quickly turned Mac OS X into an outstanding platform for Macheads to use as their main OS. Speed and stability in particular have improved what seems like three-fold, though that is not easily quantifiable.

Perhaps this is the Unix foundation and heritage upon which Mac OS X is built. Updates in the Unix world have often been frequent, especially in the Open Source community where updates to known bugs and security holes have often appeared on the same day they were found and reported. Mac OS X as a whole is hardly Open Source, though its Darwin kernel is, but whatever the cause, itis nice to see Apple taking this course.

It is my guess that sometime sooner, rather than later, the pace of updates will slow as there are fewer and fewer bugs left to squash. Perhaps even as soon as this summer when Apple starts pre-loading Mac OS X on its machines. Certainly the company is keen on making the new OS as fast and stable as they possibly can by that time. Thankfully they arenit making us all wait until then to enjoy the benefits, and thatis my point. Apple is pursuing the path that offers the greatest customer benefit as opposed to saving up each incremental update in preparation for this or that super-duper mega special press event or keynote speech. For that, I thank them.

There are no doubt those whose trigger fingers are itching to fire off a "well, they had better update OS X quickly since it was nothing more than public beta 2 in the first place" comment. Since these are the same kind of people who have the audacity to insinuate that two banners are too much on a site they read for free, I just have to laugh. The initial release was certainly more of a 2nd Public Beta than we all wish, but it is here now, and it is real. Appleis updates make it seem even better with every release.

What do you think?