Lion
Well, I think we all saw this coming; I did, about eight months ago:
Expect Apple to eventually bring the Ecosystem culture from the mobile community to computing at large–either by bringing it to laptop and desktop computers, or by having mobile devices become primary computing machines. I doubt very much that they’ll want to stop with the iPad–this system is too good for them, if they can make it work.
And as we found out today with Apple’s presentation, that’s exactly where they’re headed, bringing iOS to the Desktop. Even with the hardware, which is leaning toward mobility–Jobs insisted that the MacBook Air is where the whole line is headed. Certainly, I no longer have to steer people away from the Air like I used to; it is far less about paying a premium for mere millimeter-shaving.
As for the OS, at least for now, it’ll be a hybrid system–allowing the closed-ecosystem App Store security, simplicity, and ease-of-use, but also keeping the more open, do-as-you-like, classic OS system where you’re free to play around with things.
How is this important? Well, as I teach my students in our Introduction to Computers class, the goal of a user interface is to make computers easier to use. That’s its #1 task. And one thing that you can say about the iOS interface, it’s dead simple. And with the new stuff, from the iLife programs to the new OS core features, the philosophy seems concrete and solidly adhered to: make it simple. Make it easy.
LaunchPad is a fantastic idea, long overdue. App launchers have been around since the Classic OS, I don’t know how far back. This one is both old (copied from the iPad and iPhone) and new (it’s a great new way to launch your Mac OS X apps). I am definitely going to be using that, arranging screens of apps–and may use my Dock a lot less, or at least clear a lot of the clutter that makes the icons so small. While it may seem so much like what we’ve seen before, it’ll prove to be a surprisingly new feel, with simple usability. I never use the Stacks pane view to select apps–LaunchPad will be much different, however reminiscent it is.
The App Store is going to do a lot, too. It’s just too easy and quick to ignore–and will help do for the Desktop what iOS did for mobile, which is to make it far easier for individual or small software publishers to create and market apps. Don’t be surprised if the Mac OS starts to leave the Windows OS in the dust in terms of new apps authored for its OS–one of the key advantages Windows has enjoyed for a very long time.
But you keep coming back to simplicity–like I said, the goal of any UI–and how easy it might be for all generations to use this. Yes, the complexity is still there (for now), but Lion looks like it’s going to bring the simple and sheltered experience to the Desktop in a way that grandma will find easier to deal with.
What’s more interesting is the shift toward windowless interfaces–full-screen presentation of apps that leaves switching around to the “Mission Control” conglomeration of current features for window switching, kind of a jazzed-up Exposé. This is not new–we’ve had full-screen reading views for quite a while–but now it’s becoming more prominent, and with bigger screens and better resolutions, more relevant as well. And instead of a side feature that some people may or may not use, it has become a direction.
Why is this interesting? Partially because it’s been rumored for some time now. Back in ’07, it was supposedly a possible feature of Leopard. And more than three years later, after almost everyone forgot about it, here it is–but just like the iPad grew on iPhone and iPod familiarity, so does Lion grow in all mobile familiarity. But, as stated in the previous paragraph, it’s a direction–and so you have to wonder, what’s the destination? Will Apple try to eventually close the laptop/desktop OS ecosystem as well?
One last word: what else? Well, I’m not betting on much. I hope there will be more, but what they presented would certainly qualify as the bread & butter of a new OS release. Jobs and others kept on insisting that these are “just a few of the many” new features, but I will not be surprised if we have seen at least half and maybe two-thirds of what most people will find significant about Lion. I am used to Apple going on about “hundreds” of features in a new OS when in fact there are maybe half a dozen that most people would really care about or be aware of.
Still, I could be surprised. Hopefully.
And oh yeah–how long before Microsoft copies a lot of this? Maybe a couple years, but you can bet good money that they will. With this, though, it’ll be harder to pretend that they were planning this all along.
One more thing: I am still long on Apple stock, but not as long as I was last week. After several years riding the roller coaster, I sold just over half my holdings. I did it Monday, when the stock was at $316. After the market closed, Apple released its earnings report, and the stock plummeted about $20 or so. It’s back up to $312 now, and I’m sure it’ll rise higher. I might sell the rest before the year is out and the capital gains tax rises to 20%, or not, depending on how things go. But I’m happy having bought in at about $92, and not as disappointed as I could be that I didn’t buy in much earlier, like I wanted to, but wussed out. In any case, I’ll be glad to finally be off that wild ride, investing the earnings in a down payment on a house. Thanks, Apple.
wtg on the sale. Apple may go to $500, but selling to secure the money you needed while leaving enough riding on the table to stay with the action — it’s all free money for you now. Nothing wrong cashing out a clean triple, especially unleveraged.
The new app store is not a surprise, other than they’re opening it up NEXT MONTH. F—! I’ve got to drop my iOS stuff and populate that instead. I’ve been hoping for this move for YEARS, and it’s awesome that my dream is true now. This is really going to help out the Mac platform’s software availability. Apple’s 30% cut is *well worth* it for the services they provide — customer-facing marketing, customer billing through iTunes, order fulfillment and point-update upgrade infrastructure. Totally awesome.
Not terribly impressed with the Macbook Air. Seems my MBP from two years ago will run rings around it. ‘Course it weighs 10X as much or whatever. Need to get an SSD for it still : )
The Apple-bashers have never understood the Mac. Bashing the Apple II was kinda understandable — it wasn’t that much better than a TRS-80 or Commodore 64 or IBM PC (though it was generally better than the TRS-80 series, slightly more polished with better productivity apps than the C-64, and much less costly than the IBM, so it hit something of a sweet spot for the hobby/technology, 1979-1984).
But the messiness of the PC — suck ISA, suck CLI OS, suck API (or lack thereof, people actually had to write to *proprietary* API — Hercules, SoundBlaster — back in the pre-Windows 95 days) gave Apple its entre to keep on improving the Mac as the computer Mac people could like. KanjiTalk was the sh– back in the late 80s and early 90s and it itself made my $6000 Mac IIcx purchase more than worth it to me.
These days the Apple tax is hundreds of dollars, or less. Macs even run Windows and Linux dists out of the box so going Mac doesn’t mean you have to abandon the mainstream any more.
“Well, as I teach my students in our Introduction to Computers class, the goal of a user interface is to make computers easier to use. That’s its #1 task. And one thing that you can say about the iOS interface, it’s dead simple.”
I think the goal of an interface ought be be to enable a user to use the computer at a level which is appropriate to his experience. To use a car analogy, it should be easy for a novice to drive, but an expert driver can also race it at high speed.
Too many times, computers are “dumbed down” to make them easy for novices. Expert users then find them excruciating to use. Right now, Macs have a Unix cli interface available, so that isn’t an insurmountable problem. But I can imagine Apple turning the Mac into a sort of giant iPad and making it useless for serious work. You seem to be welcoming that change for some reason.
On a different topic, Apple will be heavily controlling what goes into the MacOS App store and censoring apps based on content, appearance and numerous other criteria (as they do in the IOS store). There are other sources for Mac software, so it’s less harmful here, but it still galls me that Apple decides what’s “safe” for me to see and use. I guess people must like having other people make their decisions for them.
Right now, Macs have a Unix cli interface available, so that isn’t an insurmountable problem.
CLI is a design failure. That you think it is a feature just tells me you’re stuck in the 70s. Apple is not investing any more of its talents into CLI-level BS. They’re working on how to make the windowing paradigm work for all users. It is a difficult problem and one they’ve been iterating on continuously since before 1984.
But I can imagine Apple turning the Mac into a sort of giant iPad and making it useless for serious work.
Um, yeah. Whatever dude. You *do* realize that all the thousands of developers working at Apple use Macs 24/7 to develop Mac OS X, right? Apple didn’t get to be the only computer maker to survive from the 70s to now by being permanently retarded.
You seem to be welcoming that change for some reason.
You think we want to lose the capability to do serious work on our Macs now? Yeah, OK.
I guess people must like having other people make their decisions for them.
There’s a couple of things going on here. One is the “Tyranny of Choice” (google it).
Secondly, people who say a walled garden is bad have apparently never had the opportunity to enjoy an actual “walled garden”. Since you are based in Japan you’ve probably seen the nice gardens of Kyoto . . . that’s what the OS X ecosystem is to us Mac people. When you’ve got the best you don’t need the rest of the crap out there.
Apple may soon pass XOM to have the highest market cap of the Fortune 500.
They did this with their walled garden — less is more — approach.
In the consumer space, the Linux world has just been bumblefucking around with whatever you guys waste your time on while Apple has been inventing the future, just like they’ve done in every decade since their founding ~35 years ago.
Tell you what–let’s have a race. I’ll identify every file on your computer that’s been accessed in the last 30 days and then append the last access time to the file name. That’s one line of Unix code–or a few hours of clicking on icons (assuming the GUI even shows you that data).
If you think power users don’t need a cli, you’re kidding yourself. Coders and Power users use Guis to hold more cli windows. I’ll bet those Apple developers don’t use a Gui much when they’re writing core system code.
But more power to you. Just don’t try managing hundreds of servers or thousands of files with your gui. It doesn’t scale.
Nope. You’re reading too much into what I wrote.
First, I wrote that “the goal of a user interface is to make computers easier to use,” and I stand by that. Easier for the novice and easier for the expert; nothing Apple has developed or shown recently makes the general UI harder for an expert to navigate, nor do I see anything they unveiled yesterday making it more difficult to use or develop for the Mac. Your take on it is implicit in my more general statement; unspoken but included, not incorrect or inaccurate as your reply seems to suggest.
Second, your read that I am “welcoming” a complete dumbing down of the system is assuming too much. I laud the ability to simplify, but nowhere did I write that I want the power tools to be shut out. I simply said that the complexity is still there “for now,” and asked if Apple was planning on closing the ecosystem entirely.
One thing which is indisputable is that the complexity will always be there at some level. Apple may eventually want to make a closed user ecosystem and then create a more complex playground outside of that for developers and power users to play in. But Apple would not be able to survive if they cut off the power users entirely, and I don’t think they intend to.
It’s more like what they do with some of their apps, like iMovie and Final Cut Pro. One is ‘dumbed down’ for everyday users, the other is an app for experts. The expert stuff will always be there.
What I don’t really go along with is the idea that ‘dumbing down’ a computer interface is a bad thing. A disproportionate number of people who join the discussions on computers on the Internet are power users, and the conversation tends to pay more attention to the needs of that crowd. The fact is, most users are novices. Make it so grandma can use the system, but the young hacker can delve into its guts as well. Easy for everyone.
But these higher-level discussions actually look down on novice use, as if it’s something which should be tolerated at best. But in your own analogy, it’s novice drivers vs. race car drivers–and race car drivers make up only a tiny percentage of all drivers. Ford probably spends a lot more time and money making a dashboard that any idiot can navigate, even though professional drivers would undoubtedly like much more. The pros buy professional equipment, and the major corps try their best to appeal to the non-professionals. Do you think Apple should not?
That’s one line of Unix code–or a few hours of clicking on icons (assuming the GUI even shows you that data).
Actually OS X can do the display part trivially.
CMD-F, click “+” button, set Last Opened Date to “within last 1 month”
Gives you a nice scrolling display of matches.
That you would then want to mangle the filenames just shows how you’re stuck in the 70s. The traditional Mac solution would be to either create a folder with this tag and move the files into this folder, or with OS X 10.5 and newer we can add a metadata tag to the files via a custom droplet or Automator action.