Saturday, March 13, 2010

The death of Mac OS X

The days of Mac OS X is numbered. The writing is on the wall. With the introduction of the iPad, running a larger iPhone OS, it's clear where Apple is going with this.

iPhone OS is the replacement for Mac OS X.

But, you say, iPhone OS doesn't have all the features of Mac OS X?
If you remember the transition from OS 9 to OS X, you remember how many features were missing? They slowly added them back in over the next releases.
In this same way they are going to have iPhone OS running on every mac, macbook, iMac etc.

Remember DOS? And the command line? If we call that difficulty of 10, on a relative scale of 1 to 10, and you could say Windows was a 8, and Mac OS X was 6, then iPhone OS is like a 2. It's that much easier for the common person to use.

Why is the system so closed? Why does Apple reject so many apps? Why have such a closed system?
Simple. They want simplicity. Each developer is given a manual, with required reading, that has nothing to do with real programming, called the Human Interface Guidelines. This document does a wonderful job of creating a unified system of layout and controls for your applications.
Some developers do not read this. Some try to make their own way of doing things. This would result in an inconsistent user experience. Imagine… if someone made a Mac OS X program, and they decided that you have to press Control and then click to do what normally just clicking the mouse would do? People would be confused, needlessly.
By laying out a unified system for developers, they are making a super simple and intuitive user experience.

Example: iTunes.
I have many friends that use iTunes. All with varying degrees of computer using knowledge. One time a friend told me how he wished you could burn discs from iTunes, he was tired of having to find the songs, putting them into Toast and burning the discs. He never realized the features were built in.
But iTunes does so much, it's a music store, it's a music organization and listening tool, it's a cd ripper, cd burner, App Store… the list goes on.
Now we have the iPhone OS, which takes it and cuts it up into the iTunes App, iPod App, the App Store.
This sort of simplification, and more focused on task aspect of the iPhone OS apps, make them faster and easier to use.

No comments:

Post a Comment