Could Apple Kill Off Mac OS X? 577
Barence writes "When Steve Jobs announced last night that he was 'going to demote the PC and the Mac to just be a device,' it was the clearest indication yet that Apple is phasing out Mac OS X, argues PC Pro's Barry Collins. 'Over the past couple of months, there have been continual rumours that Apple is testing the iPad's A5 processor in its MacBook range, suggesting Apple believes iOS could stretch further than smartphones and tablets,' Collins argues. Plus, Apple would take a 30% cut on all Mac software if it mandated downloads via the App Store only. 'The only part of Apple's portfolio where iOS doesn't make sense is in the high-end. Yet, Apple's already discontinued its Xserve range of servers and... it's almost exclusively fixated on the consumer market,' he argues."
...and develop iOS on their iPads? (Score:5, Insightful)
I can't see an iOS based IDE working.
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Good point. On what platform are iOS applications going to be written? iOS is already very sandboxed.
Re:...and develop iOS on their iPads? (Score:5, Funny)
Good point. On what platform are iOS applications going to be written?
Windows.
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Should you be modded insightful or funny? I can't tell..
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Jobs has always wanted Apple to be a media delivery company. iOS is the new one-size-fits-all media consumption OS. It's his wet dream. And he doesn't give a crap if he loses all of the business clients as long as he's got a lock on the entire market share of garden-variety media consumer users. Want to do work? Buy Android/Windows. Want to have fun? iPhone Bitch!
Re:...and develop iOS on their iPads? (Score:4, Insightful)
With a Mac-only XCode Apple locked in their developers into its ecosystem and is getting a nice fee from every single one (the margin on the sale of a Mac). Actually removing that lock in would be a wise move to expand further the developers base but IMHO it would be a very un-Applish one. The way to go would not be switching to a single competitor's OS but the Android one, that is a cross platform development system. Just imagine if a Windows update accidentally breaks XCode and there isn't any working development system for iOS for a couple of weeks.
By the way, iOS 5 went the Android way by removing the dependency from a computer. You can use an Android phone without any supporting computer because you can buy and install apps directly from the store and use all the Google's cloud services. Apple still lacks some flexibility (I can attach USB pen drives to my Android phone) but it also went further in some other directions, with the backup and those synchronization little services like syncing ebook's page marks. Hopefully Google will catch up as Apple did. Competition is (often) good.
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Barnes and Noble's / Amazon's reader apps already do this ebook syncing. Firefox does bookmark syncing. Google account syncs your phonebook/email.
you are right, of course, there is nothing new with yesterdays announcements. Except.... You just listed three separate syncing services with different configurations and Fumblings to get it all to work. Apples announcement yesterday is, essentially, sync it all for free (or an extra $25.00 a year, for the songs you didn't buy from iTunes) and the configuration required is a single username and password entered on each device to sync them all.... (there is a LOTR joke in there somewhere). That's what has
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Apple could expand the OSX server "upgrade" that they are applying to OSX Lion (you turn a plain install of OSX into a server install by downloading a upgrade package from OSX store), to iPad. This then would turn the iPad into a dev version with relaxed sandboxing to testing and debugging.
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Why not? Third party developers might have trouble writing an IDE that is distributable via the App Store, but Apple themselves are under no such restrictions. iOS is basically OS X at its core, so there is no underlying technical limitations preventing development on the iPad. The form factor my be less comfortable, but the bluetooth keyboard resolves most of the problem.
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OSX isn't going anywhere. It's an article from PC "Pro" for god's sake, you'd get better advice on OSX from a vagrant in the street. Look at the summary :
"When Steve Jobs announced last night that he was 'going to demote the PC and the Mac to just be a device,' it was the clearest indication yet that Apple is phasing out Mac OS X, argues PC Pro's Barry Collins. 'Over the past couple of months, there have been continual rumours that Apple is testing the iPad's A5 processor in its MacBook range, suggesting Ap
Desktop Apple ain't going anywhere (Score:4, Insightful)
I can't see an iOS based IDE working.
First off, start at the basics: iOS isn't going to "replace" OS X, because they share the same codebase. I know some people here will balk at this description, but iOS is nothing but OS X optimized for mobile touchscreen devices. They're basically the same operating system. This is why it's so easy to incorporate iPad software into Lion. This isn't a situation like Microsoft had, where their early mobile operating systems... Win CE... were from a completely different codebase than the NT-based PC systems. So a PC-type desktop OS isn't going to disappear from Apple's product line.
Second, while I see the corporate appeal to Apple in forcing customers to their own home-brewed "A" based CPU's (and the friction they've had with Intel lately), even if they do this, it doesn't necessarily mean a "PC" is really disappearing from their product line. If it's got a USB port and a video miniport, then you can essentially make it a PC. I don't see the A processors being powerful enough for real desktop use, but that could change in the near future. I could also see Apple abandoning the truly professional-grade workstation market if they're going to focus completely on consumer devices.
But to sum it up, even as radical as Steve Jobs can be at times (remember, he wanted the first edition of the iMac to ship without a keyboard until wiser heads talked him down from that ledge), I just don't see him completely eliminating all desktop options. Some form of real desktop computer from Apple will continue to be on the market. Reduce consumer choices in that regard, yes... he'll do that in a heartbeat and demand that you love him for it. But eliminate the option itself? No.
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Well the heavy number crunching is being pushed over to GPUs using CUDA and OpenCL. This then allows the CPU to be scaled back, much as seen in mainframes (where for instance storage is handled by its own "cpu", making the CPU more of a middle manager). I think a desktop "supercomputer" was demoed at Computex, containing 6-8 GPU cards.
Also, i think that Nvidia and others where toying with cranking the ARM core to 11. This ignores power frugality, replacing it with maximum computing ability.
And lets not forg
Re:Desktop Apple ain't going anywhere (Score:4, Interesting)
First off, start at the basics: iOS isn't going to "replace" OS X, because they share the same codebase. I know some people here will balk at this description, but iOS is nothing but OS X optimized for mobile touchscreen devices. They're basically the same operating system.
They're the same operating system down at the level of things like NSString and core frameworks, but above that they are different (UIWebView,UILabel, etc etc), and most mac apps would need a pretty complete rewrite to run on iOS. Vice versa isn't quite so hard with a shim but still takes a lot of work (see Chameleon). What's interesting is that Apple have rewritten a lot of view classes etc which didn't need to be rewritten for iOS - they could have used NSView etc quite easily, but they threw it all out and started again, which implies they're going to want to replace NSView with UIView et al at some point.
To say that iOS is going to replace Mac OS (or that this is what Apple intends) would mean big changes. It'd mean dropping legacy Mac apps, and only allowing apps which conform to the new interface paradigm (iOS, UIViews etc) and file access APIs (sandboxed), and probably only apps which they approve to their store, as they have done with iOS. So you can take replacing Mac OS with iOS to mean:
* No more visible file system
* No more third party APIs
* Full lockdown and sandboxing
* No more scripting, java, etc etc (already banned from the app store)
* No more selling stuff except through apple (already banned from the app store)
* Probably similar gesture based interface, using a larger trackpad (already in progress)
Quite possibly Apple will do this in a few years - it's an insane waste of time to maintain two similar sets of view hierarchies, two entirely different ui libraries etc. and they have shown a predilection for eliminating APIs like this where they can. It would also mean quite a few improvements for end-users in security and ease of use. Not sure if that's a world I'd want to live in though - it would mean massive changes to the way we use our computers for techy Mac users.
Possibly end-users won't notice much of a change if the transition is gradual, particularly those who didn't like folders and files anyway and would rather not see a Library folder etc, but developers would see a huge change (like the one from Carbon to Cocoa in scale).
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it's an insane waste of time to maintain two similar sets of view hierarchies, two entirely different ui libraries etc.
That's the kind of thinking that has cost Microsoft their empire. Those two UI libraries are there because of the fundamental difference between interacting with a desktop and a tablet or phone. To think that there is redundancy there, is to no understand the fundamentals of UI design, don't you think?
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This is called a thin client, and nobody likes them. It is a great idea until the server is down for the day before your project is due, or until the server gets slow every day from 1 PM to 6 PM.
Stupid! (Score:2)
Re:Stupid! (Score:4, Insightful)
You sure about that ? From what I've seen, most people who have an Apple Product will forever purchase OTHER Mac products. They will purchase EVERY thing that Mac puts out (How many different Mac Laptop/Desktop have you owned/do you own, how many different version of iPad or their MP3 Players ?)
Perhaps you're different, I don't know.
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I've owned two iPods in the past (2nd and 5th gen), one iPhone (got stolen, replaced it with an Android phone), and at two companies I've had Macs. I loved the Macs, and for their time, the iPods were awesome music players (especially the first one!). The iPhone was pretty cool, but unnecessarily limited for a general purpose mobile computer.
I certainly do not buy everything Mac puts out. I prefer Android over iOS. Macs are still cool, but they'll suck as soon as Apple decides to neuter them.
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Re:Stupid! (Score:5, Interesting)
That's just the thing. I buy Apple computers because I like the Mac. Drop the Mac, and drop me as a customer.
I will say, if Apple plans on dropping OS X, then why did they spend so much effort on Lion? IMO, it's a more impressive update than iOS 5, which is basically just a "quick, let's bring this thing up-to-date with Android" release.
Re:Stupid! (Score:5, Insightful)
Mac OS X gives us more than pretty... it gives us UNIX. I chose Mac OS X because I could get UNIX, and my wife could have pretty.
Take away the UNIX shell and sudo, all that's left is a device that my wife uses. I might as well get her an iPad.
Re:Stupid! (Score:4, Insightful)
You sure about that ? From what I've seen, most people who have an Apple Product will forever purchase OTHER Mac products. They will purchase EVERY thing that Mac puts out (How many different Mac Laptop/Desktop have you owned/do you own, how many different version of iPad or their MP3 Players ?)
Perhaps you're different, I don't know.
This is a paradigm shift too far; it won't happen.
Why? Partially because Apple is now the industry leader in notebooks. And part of the reason for that is Windows compatibility. That is what is getting Apples to be accepted both in the boardroom as well as the livingroom, and they bloody well know it.
Now, you can talk all you want about MS playing around with porting Windows to ARM; but rest assured, MS cannot abandon x86; they just can't. To do so would be to commit software suicide. Yes, at its core, NT is basically as processor-agnostic as OS X; but the applications, drivers, DLLs, etc, are NOT. And MS is not moving the world to a "managed code" world like they planned, that would have made a processor transition far less painful.
And, although the A5 is a pretty sweet machine, especially considering its power consumption, it ain't no i7, and Apple knows it.
Will there continue to be a subtle merging of some iOS features and capabilities into OS X (and vice versa)? Sure. But it doesn't mean the end of OS X. Not at all. Or of Apple's commitment to the Intel roadmap. Intel is serving them just fine right now, and the ARM architecture has a long way to go to catch up.
What Jobs was saying is merely an extension of his remarks in March, 2011; where he pointed out that the majority of Apple's revenue comes from the sale of iOS devices, not Macs anymore.
Apple looks pretty far out into the future; and, IMHO, what Jobs is saying is that, in the next 10 years, there will be much less computing done on traditional towers, and even lappies, and that things like tablets will continue to become more commonplace, as they become more powerful. It does not mean the death of OS X as we know it. Afterall, who will then write all these apps? Apple? Even SJ isn't THAT arrogant. It will be quite a while before we see XCode running on iOS. And no, Apple will not keep OS X alive simply on the Mac Pro. That would be financially unfeasible. For every Mac Pro Apple sells, they sell 10,000 MacBook Pros and iMacs (guessing, but still...)
So, stand down from Red Alert. It simply ain't happenin' The article is nothing but slashdot linkbait. Don't feed the trolls.
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Restricting downloads to their app store would kill the Mac as a development platform, which is exactly the market where it's gotten pretty popular, since it moved to being a full-blown unix.
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For many reasons, including the announcements and implications made yesterday at WWDC, it would appear that MacOS is safe, and the point is moot. I think it's speculative at best to consider the demise of iOS at this point; it's not like Microsoft killing off Windows, but it's close in some ways.
Re:Stupid! (Score:5, Interesting)
It's just a dumb click-farming review specifically designed to generate controversy. Clearly if you wanted to phase something out, you would release a new version of it...
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It's not even unique. Every time Apple releases ANYTHING, there's a spate of articles about OS X getting locked down, being replaced by iOS or disappearing entirely. Blah.
Re:Stupid! (Score:5, Informative)
It's worth remembering that iOS and Mac OS X are just brands. The software stacks are almost identical. iOS has UIKit and AVKit and a few other frameworks, OS X has AppKit and a few legacy frameworks, but aside from that they're basically the same. The kernel is the same. The GUI is the Quartz window server in both cases (just with different window management policies). The core frameworks (libSystem, CoreFoundation, Foundation, CoreGraphics, and so on) are the same on both.
With this in mind, it's not totally unreasonable to consider that they may phase one or the other out at some point in the future. It would be trivial to do, just install whichever missing frameworks people care about on the one that they decide to keep.
The minimal effort involved, however, rather argues against Apple doing it. The most important reason why iOS uses UIKit instead of AppKit is to force developers to redesign their user interfaces for small devices with touchscreens, rather than just ship bad ports of apps designed for keyboard and mouse. If you write an application for iOS or OS X, you can port it to the other reusing all of your model and controller classes, and 90% of any code in custom view classes. Merging the two platforms would mean that developers could easily ship one application for both systems without any modifications, which Apple doesn't want. Given the code sharing between iOS and OS X, there's no real incentive for Apple to kill either - it wouldn't save them very much development cost, because most of the development is already shared.
Re:Stupid! (Score:5, Interesting)
Would you shell out the $3500 to get Mac OS X? The way I see it, that is the choice you will have in the near future: iOS for a "consumer" level computer, and Mac OS X for high end "professional" level computers.
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What if Apple gave you the following choice:
Would you shell out the $3500 to get Mac OS X? The way I see it, that is the choice you will have in the near future: iOS for a "consumer" level computer, and Mac OS X for high end "professional" level computers.
And what if Apple gave you the following choice:
iOS laptop or tablet starting at $600
Mac OSX laptop or desktop for free, with every Itunes purchase of $9.99 or more.
Wouldn't that be amazing! The way I see it, your prices are just as crazy as mine and just as improbable.
Re:Stupid! (Score:5, Insightful)
Highly doubtful.
The Macbook Pro is already a "professional" level computer - millions of developers use it for development. You can get a high end model for a bit over $2000. And take a look at their laptop product line, it's almost perfectly distributed with offerings between $1000 and $2500. iPads cover the range just below that, from $500 to $830; iPod Touches (and subsidized iPhones) right below that from $200 to $400. You can get an AppleTV for $100. None of this is by accident! The don't want consumers to choose one of these devices, they want them to buy all of them. And the iCloud announcement made this even clearer...
Apple has become the 2nd largest company in the world (by market cap) by almost completely giving up the budget segment of the market to others and focusing on customer loyalty and a self-contained ecosystem. Why would they suddenly change that strategy?
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What if Apple gave you the following choice:
iOS laptop or tablet starting at $600
Mac OS X laptop or workstation starting at $3500
Would you shell out the $3500 to get Mac OS X? The way I see it, that is the choice you will have in the near future: iOS for a "consumer" level computer, and Mac OS X for high end "professional" level computers.
Yah, and what if auto manufacturers offered a horse for $500, or a car for $1,000,000?
What if I had a pony?
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This is what everyone was saying 24 hours before Apple announced the switch from PPC to Intel.
I recommend a new face for the Borg... (Score:2, Insightful)
Jobs comes across as the greediest villain (black turtleneck sans fluffy white cat) since the early days of Bill Gates...
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Whatever you think of his vision, I don't see this as being motivated by personal greed. He probably won't be around long enough to spend any of the money that would theoretically result.
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It's not about money, it's about his ego and his legacy. He has a giant ego, and he thinks his legacy will be as the person who brought America, or the world, into high technology. In that sense it's about greed, he sees himself as some sort of visionary/genius/hero out to save the world by apparently crapping on everyone's choices and forcing people to conform to his ideas about what computers should be.
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Yeah, but... he IS a a visionary genius / hero, and there is no way to refute that.
Oh, really? Let me show you how:
I refute that.
There, that wasn't hard. It's difficult to argue against him being a visionary, he definitely has a vision for the future. It's a stark, choice-less, authoritarian type of vision, but it's a vision. It's much easier to argue that he is not a genius or hero. Genius doesn't really have a precise definition, and of course one group's hero is another group's villain. Steve Jobs might be a "hero" to people who buy his products, but he's definitely no hero of mi
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No. Altair, IMSAI and SWTPC birthed the PC market. Apple came later.
You mean, he copied all of the features of the Amiga he could. Multitasking, *nix like underpinnings, color... yeah.
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I recommend a new face for the Borg... Jobs comes across as the greediest villain (black turtleneck sans fluffy white cat) since the early days of Bill Gates...
He comes across that way because Slashdot is responding to your clickish desires. You realize you're responding to a work of speculative fiction, right?
Nonsense (Score:5, Interesting)
...and this is why we RTFA (Score:2)
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Somebody needs to write the iPad apps, and they're not exactly going to "pinch to malloc". This alone would keep Mac OS X alive.
You're saying they'll maintain an entirely separate OS just for development? Seems a bit like overkill.
If only there were an already-maintained cheap (or free) OS that was capable of high-end development. It would be significantly easier to port Cocoa / XCode to Linux, use that as a development platform, and test against an emulator.
Re:...and this is why we RTFA (Score:5, Informative)
Pretty sure that they're not going to kill off a segment that generates about $5Billion/quarter.
http://images.apple.com/pr/pdf/q211data_sum.pdf [apple.com]
Re:Nonsense (Score:5, Interesting)
Then perhaps the only real Mac that remains available will be the one that starts at $2400.
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The Mac Pro line maybe, but something like IOS will be coming to the MacBook and iMac Lines.
Re:Nonsense (Score:4, Insightful)
So OS X will be moving into the market that IRIX and SunOS left behind?
Re:Nonsense (Score:4, Informative)
OS X has been the top selling Unix-based workstation OS for half a decade now.
They already moved into the market IRIX and SunOS left behind a long time ago.
(cough)bullshit(cough) (Score:5, Insightful)
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It's not an IOS issue as much as it is an ipad / ipod issue. They have very little fast ram and no high speed input channels, so that puts some serious limits on what you can do with them. They make rather fabulous control surfaces and beatbox-thingees, though. :^)
Most CPU-based signal processing that is of the [mixing / EQ / level shifting / routing / delay] class requires very little from the CPU if the code is written properly; so it's really a matter of getting the audio in and out of the hardware, but
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Linkbait clearly, but where do you think Jobs will take the iPad next? Don't think about it as a Mac, think about it as an iPad with an extensible/detachable keyboard. Suddenly you have something that does all the iPad does do, as well as being decent for typing up all sorts of basic email / im / documents / spreadsheets / presentations. It may not be a full laptop replacement, but it might be a *sufficient* laptop replacement that you keep using it instead of your real laptop. It doesn't have to win the wh
Nope. (Score:2, Insightful)
The Apple cannot do this - they have too much to lose. All the "creatives" who use macs are their greatest evangelists and if Apple takes their "toys" away, they will turn to foes. There won't be a single Apple device appearing casually in movies & TV shows as the angry Final Cut editors will airbrush them out.
Re:Nope. (Score:4, Interesting)
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iMac will be the iOS desktop.
The Pro line will be what keeps proper OSX.
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I've been predicting this [slashdot.org] for some time. The days when you can just install anything on an Apple computer are numbered. Pretty soon, all software will have to go through the App Store on a Mac just like they already do on an iPhone/iPad. The writing on the wall was pretty obvious back when they first announced the App Store was coming to Mac. Rigth now it's just an option, but soon it will be mandatory.
Predictions of Bill Gates in 1995 (Score:4, Insightful)
In Bill Gates' book from 1995, "The Road Ahead", he discusses how computing switched from "mainframe"-type applications where the bulk of the storage and processing was done by a centralized system, and how that was falling out of favor for a more distributed desktop PC environment. He further predicted this model would eventually revert back to the "mainframe" (now known as "cloud").
Steve Jobs must have read this book.
Re:Predictions of Bill Gates in 1995 (Score:5, Insightful)
Err... not even close. What you're doing is a wide interpretation. What Bill meant was the "thin client" model, a big hype in the 90s. He was far, far away from predicting cloud computing or iDevices.
Re:Predictions of Bill Gates in 1995 (Score:4, Interesting)
Gates is as fearful as he is feared, and these days he worries most about the Internet, Usenet and the World Wide Web, which threaten his software monopoly by shifting the nexus of control from stand-alone computers to the network that connects them. The Internet, by design, has no central operating system that Microsoft or anybody else can patent and license. And its libertarian culture is devoted to open—that is to say, nonproprietary—standards, none of which were set by Microsoft. Gates moved quickly this year to embrace the Net, although it sometimes seemed he was trying to wrap Microsoft's long arms around it.
Time Magazine - 12/22/1995 [time.com]
Re:Predictions of Bill Gates in 1995 (Score:4, Interesting)
No surprises there. Geeks have been predicting the downfall of MS for 15 years and more, essentially saying that once their monopoly falls apart, it's game over for them.
We see it happening. Their market share doesn't have to go to less than 50% for the monopoly to break apart. Once it's low enough for the lock-in effects to go away (which means you need to look at the Windows/Office market share, and not the Windows share alone), it will accelerate dramatically.
I can't wait to see it.
Keep laughing (Score:3)
Every time these "Future of the Mac" I predict that there will come a time when EVERYTHING from Apple will be just as locked down as the iPhone/iPad, and every time I get laughed at for saying it. Yet with every announcement, Apple moves closer and closer to phasing out their last open platform.
Prophet of Retrospect (Score:3)
thin reasoning (Score:2)
I think this conclusion is a bit hard to reach. the comment about "demoting" the mac is no indication whatsoever about the future of OSX. the comment was made entirely in the context of cloud computing and where the "truth" is stored. not saying that apple won't perhaps phase out OSX, just that this keynote was no evidence of it.
I personally don't think they will remove it. I can see them bringing the two OS's closer together in look and feel, but I think they will remain distinct for sometime to come at le
The Answer (Score:3, Insightful)
No!!!
Maybe!!!
Almost there with their keyboards (Score:3)
I figured this might be coming. Between Windows 8 trying to become a cell phone UI and Apple's brilliant idea to place an eject key on its keyboards instead of a forward delete key, it won't be long before a PC is completely gimped and useless to anyone that produces anything. Apple hit it big with its touch screen UI. So big that they're going to impale themselves on it.
Professional users wouldn't be happy (Score:3)
The usual place I see Macs is when I head down to the graphics studio or Marketing departments at work- those guys use Macs as their all-purpose computers to make use of their (I'm told) top-quality or industry standard graphics and media editing software.
I can't really imagine those guys (or our procurement) switching to a form factor other than big-screen desktop machine or high-end laptop. That means the only way Mac could be "phased out" for them would be if iOS could work as a drop-in replacement, with no loss of features or software suite. Seeing as iOS is just Mac optimised for a different form factor and with a different software suite, I'm not sure I can really see the point in doing that. It would be an awful lot of leg-work just to end up where they already are.
Apple could and would... (Score:2)
Troll (Score:3)
(Those idiots who think Apple only cares about iPhones and iPads should realise that Apple is the worlds most profitable PC maker, making more profits from building desktop computers and laptops than anyone else, including HP, Dell, Acer, Toshiba and so on)
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So what if people stop buying Macs?
That's the real problem here. Apple lost the desktop wars a long LONG time ago. Jobs might be willing to concede that completely and try to displace Windows desktops with some form of their more successful platform rather than trying to fight a losing pointless battle with MacOS.
The mundane desktop MacOS user probably won't even be bothered with the whole MacOS -> PhoneOS thing.
H*ll, your average fanboy will probably declare that such a shift is actually a good thing an
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Actually, you may want to look at the statistics. Apple seems to be winning the desktop war quarter by quarter - and already brings in more in dollar terms.
Re:Troll (Score:5, Insightful)
That's the real problem here. Apple lost the desktop wars a long LONG time ago. Jobs might be willing to concede that completely and try to displace Windows desktops with some form of their more successful platform rather than trying to fight a losing pointless battle with MacOS.
I don't know what you are looking at, but Apple gave up the desktop market share war and started the desktop and laptop profit war, without telling anyone, especially without telling Microsoft and you. And they are winning by a mile. Net income for the company six times that of Dell. Even if only one third were Macs, that would make "Apple Computers Inc. " twice as profitable as Dell.
Re:Troll (Score:4, Interesting)
That's the real problem here. Apple lost the desktop wars a long LONG time ago.
That is why "war" is such a bad analogy for markets. What makes you think this "war" is over - or ever will be? Competition in a market place is continuous. Apple is still there, making more money in that market that you say they "lost" than you'll likely ever see in your life, and their market share has actually been growing for years.
If anything, they've proven that they're in it for the whole nine yards. If they kept it alive when market share was shrinking, what insanity would have to befall them to kill it when market share is growing?
Where would all the content come from? (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple just recently announced Final Cut Pro X, they've revamped XCode, and they're heavy into LLVM and clang. Doesn't seem like they're ditching the Mac any time soon. An iPad with iMovie is fine, just like Garageband is fine (and a lot of fun to use!), but for my next $100 million dollar blockbuster, I'm going to want more robust tools.
All the content consumed on an iphone, ipad,etc., has got to originate from somewhere, and I think apple would be happy to have both ends of the spectrum: the content producers and the content consumers.
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Because iOS sucks for certain types of tasks. There are some things that a touchscreen interface will never be that good for.
Why does a unified mobile and desktop OS seem logical? I mean, sure, it'd be awesome if there was one basic interface that worked great for everything. It'd also be great if my scissors could also staple, dispense tape, and make copies. But in reality, devices that try to do everything end up doing everything poorly.
So, there is no indication? (Score:5, Insightful)
"When Steve Jobs announced last night that he was 'going to demote the PC and the Mac to just be a device,' it was the clearest indication yet that Apple is phasing out Mac OS X, argues PC Pro's Barry Collins
In context, this was while hyping a cloud computing solution that at the moment is a little more than shared storage. To me this isn't a very clear indication of anything except increased interoperability with a cloud service, possibly for automatic synchronization of settings and access to the same documents and media. I'll take that to mean that there is no clear indication yet that Apple is phasing out Mac OS X.
Where's the DOJ (Score:2)
How would that not be any more egregious then what MS was convicted for.
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Re:Where's the DOJ (Score:5, Informative)
You need to read up on the legal definition of a monopoly. What MS was dinged for was using its monopoly in OS and Office software to drive out competition in the web browser software market. Apple doesn't have a monopoly in mobile OS software (iOS is actually losing ground to android); Apple doesn't have a monopoly in desktop/laptop OS software (Windows still accounts for 90+%); Apple doesn't have a monopoly in anything (no, "monopoly in software that runs on macs" is not a legal monopoly, otherwise every single company would have a "monopoly" in some arbitrarily defined, meaningless, sliver "market").
A monopoly is the market power to price your offerings without regard to the price of competitors offerings. Apple doesn't have one, so they can't be accused of leveraging a monopoly they don't have.
bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
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Android is gaining on the smartphone market.
Android is not gaining on the smartphone market, it owns the smartphone market. Its market share is at least twice that of iOS, and is growing. iOS appears to have saturated its market, with most sales being upgrades from owners of older model iPhones.
Premature paranoia (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course they're not going to kill it off. The only people suggesting as much are paranoid Apple haters. If nothing else, Apple will need OS X to enable developers to build applications for iOS devices.
I knew as soon as I heard Steve Jobs say those words about demoting the PC that they would be taken entirely wrongly by some people. But all that he meant is that they're extracting a feature (the storage hub and interconnect of all iDevices) from the PC and moving it to iCloud. He only meant that iCloud sees the PC as "just another device" that isn't given special treatment above and beyond what iOS devices are given. But even then he went on to contradict that statement by revealing the particulars of the implementation. iOS devices will not store all information (songs, photos, etc) that OS X computers will.
In shortthere's nothing to see herejust a misinterpreted phrase from a 2-hour presentation that mistakenly confirms the paranoid beliefs of people who want to see Apple in a negative light. There's no logical reason to believe what the story claims. Apple knows that it needs OS X to maintain its developer community. They know that without the developer community, people would abandon iOS. So until developers can do everything they need to do to create apps for iOS on iOS itself, OS X isn't going away.
paranoid nonsense (Score:3)
What a piece of nonsense.
OS X is the backend of the entire Apple world. While you could theoretically run things like iTunes on an iOS device as an app, where do you think all those apps come from? Hint: They don't grow on trees.
There is no 30% cut if people don't have development machines. And that means Xcode, and engines and frameworks. And that means a general-purpose OS. Namely, OS X.
Really, how dumb do you have to be to think that a car company is going to sell its future models without engines just because they focus on the design of the body and the exquisite interior?
Killing Xserve indicates nothing (Score:2)
I don't know whether OS X will live forever, but I'm sure that the end of Xserve isn't a sign of it going away. I know a lot of Mac people, but I've heard very few of them admit to having an Xserve, and none of those people were glad that they had it. It seemed very much a solution looking for a problem and no one actually wanted one. Basically, if you were big enough to actually need one, you were big enough to order a Dell or HP and install Linux or Windows yourself to get the same features.
Again, I have
Makes sense to have one API (Score:2)
At some level what Apple is doing does make a lot of sense. Does it really make sense to have two different APIs, one for mobile devices and one for traditional computers? At least for the general consumer apps, it probably doesn't make much sense in maintaining two separate Mail apps, Photo apps, etc. For the average non-technical user, having a consistent UI is probably a good thing. I haven't seen any indication that Apple is going to discontinue Mac OS, or lock it down to prevent users from installing t
Year of the Linux Desktop (Score:3)
Maybe that year is getting closer to us if Apple and Microsoft jump over their respective cliffs. At least Microsoft is offering a classic desktop option in Windows 8, but who knows if that will still be available in Windows 9.
The beauty of Linux is that the GUI and the OS are separate so you can run any GUI you wish on top of the OS. You want tablet UI? Go with Unity or Gnome Shell. You want a more traditional GUI? Go with KDE, XFCE, LXDE, or Enlightenment.
I really hate this trend of writing off desktops and being so focused on mobile and tablet devices. I seriously think people are overestimating mobile devices and underestimating desktops.
Can iOS run Adobe CS? (Score:3)
I know it's hip to be an Apple user now these days and all the cool kids are rocking their iDevices, but a good majority of graphic designers/artists use the platform and I while it's cool to watch netflix in bed on an iPad, it's irrelevant when you have to start using InDesign, Illustrator and Photoshop, though I imagine Illustrator and Photoshop wouldn't be as big an issue to use on a tablet as InDesign would be.
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No, Microsoft killing Windows would be like Apple killing the iPhone. Apple killing the Mac is more like Microsoft killing Windows Mobile.
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> As well of alot of free mac software.
why would free mac software be driven away?
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Because damnit man, 30% of nothing is a hell of a lot of something, and would bankrupt those poor developers.
After all, we all know there's no free programs on iOS.
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30% of the price of products would be shunted to Apple. This would trigger either a sufficient increase in the price of software to account for the Apple tax or the software no longer being available for that platform. Software would probably jump $50 for every $100 that it used to cost just for being on the iOS platform.
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Just because they're adding new iOS-like features doesn't mean they're removing things that were previously working.
Let's take the scrollbar example. When was the last time that you actually used the scrollbar to scroll a web page? We've had a scrollwheel on the mouse for almost a decade now. Laptops have trackpads. Who still uses the scrollbar to scroll? It's been relegated to a visual indicator which takes room for no reason. The iOS approach is the right one. When you scroll, the scrollbar appears and sh
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You're reaching the wrong conclusions from the data you've presented. Apple has publicly stated that they're trying to take the best from iOS and add it to OS X. The key word there is 'add'. It's entirely reasonable to say that, since you've got 2 OSs, you can take knowledge gleaned from one of them and apply it to improving the other.
When you may start to have a point is when Apple starts removing things from OS X to make it more like iOS. They haven't done this, nor have they shown any indication that the
The actual quote (Score:4, Interesting)
"If I were running Apple, I would milk the Macintosh for all it's worth - and get busy on the next big thing. The PC wars are over. Done. Microsoft won a long time ago."
Steve Jobs, Fortune Magazine, February 19, 1996
Which is exactly what he did with the iPod, and then the iPhone. But note there is nothing there about killing the Mac; He will continue milking it as long is it keeps giving milk. His comment was about not sitting on the success of the Mac, nor will he sit on the success of the iPhone; he will keep moving to the next big thing.
Re:Let him demote the Mac (Score:4, Funny)
Are you seriously that fucking stupid, or do you choose to suck dick?
I'm reminded of that scene in Star Trek 4:
Spock: They like you very much, but they are not the hell "your" whales.
Dr. Gillian Taylor: I suppose they told you that.
Spock: The *hell* they did.