I don't have any inside information about Apple's long-term operating system plans, but I'm starting to wonder if "Lion," the next version of OS X, might be the last version.
I could be wrong, but I'm starting to get the sense that they might phase out OS X in favor of a Mac version of iOS -- the operating system now used on the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch.
Although Apple has continued to innovate in its laptops and OS X PC operating system, the company is clearly emphasizing its iOS platform which has turned out to be a lucrative franchise for Apple, not just because of what they earn from the hardware, but from ongoing sales of third-party applications, cellular airtime and media including music, books, movies and TV shows.
Mac already evolving towards iOS
Apple is making no secret of the fact that it's evolving the Mac in the direction of the iPad. On a web page it posted last fall to promote the MacBook Air, Apple said, "We learned a lot from iPad" and added that the MacBook Air is "designed around all-flash storage for better responsiveness and reliability."
Lion, which Apple showed off during the keynote presentation at its World Wide Developers Conference on Monday, is an even further iPadization of the Mac. Lion features an optional interface, called LaunchPad, which Apple describes as a "new, full-screen home for all the apps on your Mac." With Launchpad running "our open windows fade away, replaced by a full-screen display of all your apps." In other words, the user interface on the new Mac operating system will look a lot like the iPad though, to its credit, Apple will continue to allow users to have multiple windows open at once if they chose to do so.
And just as is now the case on its iOS devices, Apple wants you to get those Mac apps from its Mac App Store, which will be more deeply integrated into Lion. "When you download an app from the Mac App Store," says Apple on its Lion preview page, "it automatically appears in Launchpad, ready to blast off."
So here's my unsubstantiated theory: At some point, Apple will tell its Macintosh developers that if they want to continue to run their software on a Mac, they'll have to re-write it for iOS. Apple will also start getting developers to distribute their software through the App Store -- which means more revenue for the Cupertino company.
It would be a radical shift, but it wouldn't be the first time Apple required developers to rewrite software to keep up with its latest hardware and operating system. Unlike Microsoft's commitment to keep "legacy" software compatible with its latest operating systems, Apple has been known to "break" existing programs and force the developer to rewrite programs.
Apple has a history of breaking tradition. The company was the first to drop the floppy disk drive; its MacBook Air is among the first mainstream laptops to come without optical (CD or DVD) drives. And, when Lion comes out, it won't even be available on an optical drive. If users want the $29 upgrade, they'll have to download it "from the cloud."
This article first appeared in the Palo Alto Daily News and on LarrysWorld.com.
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But how does that translate into the end of Mac OS X? I guess they could give it a new name, OS 2012 Dumb and Smart versions?
I do believe Apple will continue to innovate in the human interaction. But this journalist I am not sure about his depth of understanding, writing about tech is one thing, but it sure is a long way from truly understanding OSs, architecture for both hardware and software.
They move away from Mac OS ok, I use Linux for all my servers, my IMacs, Mini and MacBooks become museum pieces and I move to Linux on my laptop, once again.
We all know iPad and iPhone are the real growth areas, but MacBook has been growing exponentially also, and I find it difficult to believe that it is somehow uneconomical for Apple to maintain MacOs.
But what do I know? Not as much as Steve Jobs, who has been know to make to odd good business decision every now and then . . .
Closed, strictly controlled, giving end users and developers less and less control over their own data and products.
Eventually I fear that Apple will move the industry toward a model where a couple of big companies own all the Internet "cloud" infrastructure; users will be given little, or even no choice but to use corporate owned clouds; These "cloud corporations" will end up being like the recording industry where unless you hand over all rights to your IP, and 100% of your profits until the corporation feels it has made enough of its own profits, your distribution channels will disappear.
The ONLY real difference between MacOS and iOS is, MacOS is compiled to run on the IA64+ hardware platform (which is what Windows and Linux will be running on later this year), whereas iOS is compiled to run on the ARM hardware platform. If a ARM virtual machine is included in MacOS, then a MacOS system could easily run iOS software.
Internally, the code base for the two versions are nearly identical.
That being said, I would not be surprised if Apple walked away from the desktop/laptop personal system market segment. Apple has been perfectly willing to abandon their users at the drop of a hat.
Apple basically told MacOS 9 users go [blank] yourselves when they came out with MacOS X. Then when apple moved from Moto CPUs to Intel CPUs they very quickly told the Moto users [blank] you again (MacOS 10.4 is the last version that runs on the moto CPUs).
So given Apple's past performance, you could be correct in a way.
OS 9 was dual bootable for years.
The halo effect for Apple means their PC business is growing at 28%! while the industry as a whole actually shrank 3%.
Magid's entire post is ludicrous.
I see this is one of Apple's strengths over the years. They are willing to let go of a technology and move on whereas MS has to be dragged, kicking and screaming away from long defunct products.
What was meant by the "Demotion" was in comparison to the 10 year old idea of the PC as the digital hub. Now, the Internet/The Cloud is the hub, and the PC just consumes data from it.
Five years ago at WWDC, jobs said it clear: OS X has set apple up for the next 20 years. There is a lot of life left in Desktop/Laptop computing and we're not going to be replacing it with overgrown cell phones any time soon. Desktops/Laptops still do most tasks better then Tablets or Palm computers do at this point and I don't think people are ready to give them up.
/wont' abandon until Mac OS X: 10.11 Ocelot puts World of Warcraft: The Legion's Last Stand on iPhone 9s.
Apple therefore does not have to say, "good bye, OS/X, hello iOS," because they are far more "one and the same thing" than meaningfully different.
What we are seeing here, of course, is the birth-pangs of yet-another new kind of computer-driven consumer electronics ... at a point where it is very much defining(!) "what it ought to be when it grows up." Apple (and NeXT, before it...) has shrewdly positioned itself such that it is able to -leverage- a single(!) technology base across three "dramatically different" platforms ... a phone, a pad, and a traditional desktop. (My hats are off to a rather large group of top-of-the-line software and hardware engineers, and, oh yeah, a rather small group of professional business executives including You Know Who.)
1. "Power user" and "Apple" (or "Mac") are oxymoronic.
2. "Maintaining a Windows machine in good working order is simply too time consuming" -- yeah, I get a real workout from clicking that "defrag" button and ALSO that "check disks" button. *phew* What a workout!
3. "computing" and "iPhone" -- also oxymoronic. But, to be fair, they finally added multitasking, so now you can pretend. And you do most of your daily tasks on the phone despite sitting next to your PC? And they're both equally useful? And that doesn't bother you at all?!
4. "computer as an appliance" -- Well, this is just me, but I I don't put my home computer on a pedestal to be illuminated with angelic beams and prostrated before -- it's why I don't use a Mac. My computers have always been appliances, unless you meant that your new iThingie cleans your floors or keeps your drinks cold. Or maybe you meant the brick-like quality of most iDevices? That aspect DOES make them useful, I admit (for keeping doors open, books propped up, etc.)
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In addition to the built-in security of Windows 7, MS provide a complete set of add-on security. The reason it is add-on instead of built-in is because MS is prevented by law from building it in because there are pre-existing anti-malware vendors. Windows 7 is now so hardened that the scammers are targeting Macs.
5. "Windoze computer users often loose a couple of times a year when malware hijacks" -- So, is this something you can back up or are you making up "iFacts" like your Apple brethren? And let's analyze your nonsense a little deeper to see how misguided you really are: "emails" (email does not live exclusively on Windows machines, believe it or not. There are these things called "mail servers" -- I'm sure Apple will be unveiling those real soon); "contacts" (I suppose that's possible if you choose a poor contact manager. Oh, sorry, I kinda assumed here...we have this thing called "choice" on Windows machines); "bookmarks" (all my Windows-based browsers back mine up to the web; I've heard tell that the Mac allows you to go into the file system and copy them to something like a CD-ROM? Clearly this is the superior option); "calendar" (again, this entirely based on this pesky notion called "choice" and "free will" that we Windows users exercise.); "other important data" (kind of true, I admit. For example, I keep my credit card info off my computer altogether. Apple users will have the advantage of being able to store all this kind of stuff online which, if Apple wasn't flawless and never had any issues, I would find extremely worrisome. But they're perfect so I guess I can't say anything).
Sure, they've been "cross-compiled" to suit the differences of the underlying hardware, but that sort of thing happens all the time (umm, "everywhere but MS-Windows"). Linux, for example, runs on more than 24 entirely-different hardware platforms and yet it still stays, "Linux."
iOS specifically takes away access to a lot of things, dumbs down others, and closes off others. Great for consumption and for handing a reasonably secure environment to your mom.
There is plenty in common between the two, and I could see them becoming much more common, particularly in the engineering of the two operating systems.
I don't see the openness and high flexibility of Mac OS X being shut off unless Apple simple decides to cede the market for content creation and development to Microsoft and Linux.
I don't see iOS for mobile devices becoming as open as Mac OS X, or providing the kinds of cooperative power either.
Both the iPad and especially the iPhone are much -smaller- machines, and much slower. They are "presentation oriented" machines. Technologies that are unimportant to their mission-statement are not installed on them at all. (Which is not to say that software geeks haven't put them there. You can run Linux on an iPhone if you -really- want to.)
I could easily see Apple moving to offer an "iOS-like" user interface to those who want it, especially as the iPad-style computers begin to take over for the traditional laptop as I believe they quickly will do. But they never have to "choose between the two," as the author suggests. The hardware norms are changing, and the software must change with it, and the sheer beauty of their system is ... it can.
Openness, to me, does not mean 100% proprietary, closed-off, and entirely unavailable for anyone outside the company.
Flexibility, to me, means the ability to run a wide variety of software, to run on a wide variety of hardware, and the ability to be customized.
And since we're on the topic:
"I don't see the openness and high flexibility of Mac OS X being shut off unless Apple simple decides to cede the market for content creation and development to Microsoft and Linux."
Which means that either Apple produces most of the content / software for their machines now, in which case "openness and flexibility" statement is contradictory, or Apple is actually open and flexible and most of their software comes from third-parties, in which case Apple can't "cede the market for content creation and development".
It's a way of further integrating and adapting advances in software made one place to another in order to evolve the product.
That said, who knows?