Tim Cook on the potential convergence of OS X and iOS

Sad Professor · 24-04-2012 11:30pm #1

This often comes up, so I thought I'd post this. Tim Cook was asked about it during a conference call yesterday for the company's Q2 financial results.

Anything can be forced to converge. The products are about tradeoffs. You begin to make tradeoffs to the point where what you have left at the end of the day doesn't please anyone. You can converge a toaster and a refrigerator but those won't be pleasing to the user.

[...]

I also believe that there is a very good market for the MacBook Air and we continue to innovate in that product. I do think that it appeals to someone that has a little bit different requirements. You wouldn't want to put these things together because you wind up compromising and not pleasing either user. Some people prefer to own both, but to make the compromises on convergence... we're not going to that party. Others might, particularly from a defensive point of view but we're going to play in both.

http://www.macrumors.com/2012/04/24/apple-reports-results-for-q2-2012-11-6-billion-profit-on-39-2-billion-in-revenue/

The "others" mentioned at the end is obviously a reference to Microsoft and Windows 8.

opinion guy · 25-04-2012 12:41pm

Thread title is misleading SP - he wasn't talking about the merge of Osx and iOs he was talking about the merge of tablets and laptops. The two things are not equivalent. He in fact doesn't even mention iOS or Osx.

conor.hogan.2 · 25-04-2012 1:15pm

In fact, I think the convergence of OSX and iOS is one of their stated goals and one they have been acting on for at least 2 iterations of OSX.

Sad Professor · 25-04-2012 1:17pm

opinion guy wrote: »

Thread title is misleading SP - he wasn't talking about the merge of Osx and iOs he was talking about the merge of tablets and laptops. The two things are not equivalent. He in fact doesn't even mention iOS or Osx.

It's the same thing. Apple see all their products as being a combination of hardware and software. And as I've argued in here many times before, you can't combine iOS and OS X without turning the Mac into a giant tablet. The OS is the main thing that differentiates the two types of devices. One is a truck, the other is a car; one uses a keyboard, the other uses a touch-screen. And as Cook says, you can stick a toaster on a fridge but it's not going to please either user.

And the question he was asked specifically referred to combining the PC/tablet experience. Also, he's obviously talking about Microsoft and Windows 8 at the end when he mentions that others may take this path to defend their position. Windows 8 is already been heavily criticised for being an "awkward hybrid". All of Apple's so-called iosification of OS X is pretty minimal in comparison.

conor.hogan.2 · 25-04-2012 1:21pm

They have converged iOS and OSX, have you seen Lion?

They are still distinct obviously but they are bringing a lot of features over and it is their stated goal to help converge the two so to help new mac owners who came from iOS.

Exactly iOSification is convergence. Windows8 is still distinct from WP7 too, Microsoft just took a different approach.

Also MS will not force their new OS on all new users because they do not control the hardware or the OS choice so you can continue to use W7 for years if you want.

Sad Professor · 25-04-2012 5:30pm

We obviously have different ideas about what convergence involves. By your definition technically they haven't converged at all because they were already the same thing to begin with. iOS is based on OS X. What we are seeing with Lion and Mountain Lion is the same thing we saw with the early versions of iPhone OS: Apple are taking ideas from one OS and bringing them over to the other. It's a mutual sharing between two already closely connected but (as you said) distinct OSs with the goal of making them both better by making sure they have similar services and operate on similar principles. This is more about developing the Apple ecoysystem as a whole then changing OS X to be more like iOS (which implies a lot more). Both OSs are designed to take advantage of a particular platform.

The issue here is whether Apple seeks to truly converge OS X and iOS into the one OS regardless of whether that suits the hardware they are running on, which is what MS seem to be doing. As far as MS is concerned, everything is a PC. You can see this in their approach to the tablet: just slap a full version of Windows on it and away you go. This is like the difference between a cross platform app that's the same on all platforms but takes advantage of none of them, and an app that is written specifically for the platform in question. This hybrid Metro crap on Windows 8 seems like something designed for a tablet rather than a PC.

And yes, I have seen Lion and it looks and works just like Snow Leopard. :P

opinion guy · 25-04-2012 5:58pm

I've seen it all now.....a mod trolling his own forum :P

Sad Professor · 25-04-2012 6:11pm

Never? You obviously haven't been on Boards very long.

Anyway, didn't I clearly say at my inauguration that everyone had to agree with me or face the ban hammer? :pac:

conor.hogan.2 · 25-04-2012 7:41pm

Heavy borrowing of iOS features/ways of doing things is not quite convergence (if you want to get nit-picky about words)

iOSification is all over Lion and ML even and it is a stated goal of Apple to continue this.

As for Windows8 I agree it is just plain wrong. If I had to choose Lion/ML over Windows8 I would of course pick L/ML but that is akin to choosing getting lightly slapped and insulted over getting kicked repeatedly and I would prefer SL over either personally.

Red Alert · 25-04-2012 8:03pm

Convergence could mean anything - I still see the Mac as being distinct while it has a desktop, has access to the underlying UNIX (which I use an awful lot!) and has a user accessible filesystem. The problem for me comes when the iOS-ification starts to chip away at some of the strengths of the Mac - like Applescript and Automator. These are going to become harder for third party apps to implement once Sandboxing is mandated. What will happen when I can install my dev environment that I use for research - Eclipse and PyDev & MATLAB?

Sad Professor · 25-04-2012 8:04pm

conor.hogan.2 wrote: »

Heavy borrowing of iOS features/ways of doing things is not quite convergence (if you want to get nit-picky about words)

I agree. True convergence would be iOS and OS X becoming more or less one and the same. That would mean turning the Mac into a "walled garden" and eliminating things such as the filesystem.

iOSification is all over Lion and ML even and it is a stated goal of Apple to continue this.

Why did Tim Cook just say the opposite then? Do you have a link?

conor.hogan.2 · 25-04-2012 8:26pm

Sad Professor wrote: »

I agree. True convergence would be iOS and OS X becoming more or less one and the same. That would mean turning the Mac into a "walled garden" and eliminating things such as the filesystem.

Why did Tim Cook just say the opposite then? Do you have a link?

If I could bet on it, I would bet on this happening years down the line.

Do I have a link? No. But you have Lion. What is the default scrolling behavior in lion? Where did the idea for that scrolling and MC come from? Where did the idea for the Mac app store come from? iMessage and Facetime and lots of other smaller things too, did they not come from iOS and is ML not continuing this trend?

iOSification of OSX does not need a link.

Sad Professor · 25-04-2012 8:59pm

conor.hogan.2 wrote: »

If I could bet on it, I would bet on this happening years down the line.

Do I have a link? No. But you have Lion. What is the default scrolling behavior in lion? Where did the idea for that scrolling and MC come from? Where did the idea for the Mac app store come from? iMessage and Facetime and lots of other smaller things too, did they not come from iOS and is ML not continuing this trend?

iOSification of OSX does not need a link.

You just said it was their "stated goal". You said it twice. And you don't have a link?

And you are right about all those things coming from iOS. So what? What about all the things that came from OS X? The iPhone's Messages app was based on iChat. It has a Dock just like OS X. The home screen (which later inspired Launchpad) is like the old Mac OS 7 Launcher. It has a music player like iTunes. It has Safari, iPhoto, iMovie, Pages, Keynote, etc. They all came from the Mac. Hell, when Jobs launched the iPhone he even said: "it runs OS X".

iOS and OS X are sharing ideas, features, services and apps. Innovations made in one platform are being carried over to the other. But that doesn't mean Apple are turning OS X into iOS.

And the reason they changed the scrolling direction in Lion is because Macs now have multi-touch trackpads rather than scroll wheels. When you scroll by holding two fingers down it makes sense that you should be moving the content rather than the scrollbar. The scrollbar is a holdover from when mice didn't have scroll wheels and you had to scroll using the mouse pointer. Lion's scroll direction really is more natural once you get used to it. But look, if you don't like it all it takes is few clicks to disable it.

Duggys Housemate · 25-04-2012 9:09pm

Convergence for iOS and Mac OS X would technically involve integrating the appkit to the uikit, and ... That's it..

The convergent operating system would install the springboard on devices and the finder ( and launchpad) on macs. I bet that mission control will be in iOs 6 . Apps written for iOS would launch in full screen mode only on the Mac, although they would have to be more aware of screen size. Apps written for both will work as they do now on the Mac.

This is the technical feasibility of it, and I think it might happen to converge the OS teams. As for the question of the underlying chip architecture apps can be written Fat, which means both architectures in a bundle, when installed through the app stores they can be pruned for the specific OS.

conor.hogan.2 · 25-04-2012 11:38pm

They said it in a keynote that they are trying to bring what they learned from iOS to the mac and they have done so in Lion and seem to be continuing to do it in ML.

Trackpads have been around a lot longer than previews of Lion, and despite what people say it is a direct lift of of iOS as all computers have scrolled the other way and Lion changed this by default.

If you are an iOS user this is fantastic and of course would not see this as a bad thing as you say "sharing" and "innovation" whereas I see it as iOSification and simplification.

I just wish they had a "look and feel of SL" option at install Lion/ML or at least have terminal commands to restore old Spaces etc I hate when things are explicitly stripped out of software.

25-04-2012 11:41pm

Could we be jailbreaking Macs in a few years time? :eek:

Sad Professor · 26-04-2012 9:29am

conor.hogan.2 wrote: »

They said it in a keynote that they are trying to bring what they learned from iOS to the mac and they have done so in Lion and seem to be continuing to do it in ML.

I know and that's what I said above. But they also said at that same keynote that OS X had influenced iOS and they were bringing that "back to the Mac". You said convergence with both OSs merging together was their stated goal. There's no evidence to support this.

Trackpads have been around a lot longer than previews of Lion, and despite what people say it is a direct lift of of iOS as all computers have scrolled the other way and Lion changed this by default.

Since when have Apple ever been about maintaining the status quo? The reason they didn't change the scroll direction until Lion was because there was still a permanetly visible scrollbar. Once they dropped that it made sense to change the scroll direction. And as I said, Lion's scrolling really is more natural. You use your fingers to move the the content rather than the scrollbar. Yes, there were trackpads before, but Lion expanded the number of multi-touch gestures. The trackpad on the Mac is like a horizontal touchscreen. It doesn't make sense to treat it like a scrollwheel or scroll-ball.

If you are an iOS user this is fantastic and of course would not see this as a bad thing as you say "sharing" and "innovation" whereas I see it as iOSification and simplification.

Simplicity is what Apple has always been about though. There's nothing in Lion or ML to suggest they are dumbing down the OS. Everything I could do in SL I can still do in Lion. They added some iOS-like features, but nothing was take away. Spaces was changed and merged into Mission Control, but that had nothing to do with iOS.

conor.hogan.2 · 26-04-2012 1:12pm

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-17838180

As said before Tim Cook wasn't talking about iOS and OSX convergence as that is happening in small ways but that is not to say they will actually become one in the forseeable future.

That said I still believe they want both OSs to actually fully converge but there is no facts to say that as it is my opinion and I don't see it happening until OS11 possibly. Tablets and lap/desktops are becoming closer in terms of hardware/graphics/extensions so having one OS with 2/3 flavours in 5+ years is not crazy.

Sad Professor wrote: »

Since when have Apple ever been about maintaining the status quo? The reason they didn't change the scroll direction until Lion was because there was still a permanetly visible scrollbar. Once they dropped that it made sense to change the scroll direction. And as I said, Lion's scrolling really is more natural. You use your fingers to move the the content rather than the scrollbar. Yes, there were trackpads before, but Lion expanded the number of multi-touch gestures. The trackpad on the Mac is like a horizontal touchscreen. It doesn't make sense to treat it like a scrollwheel or scroll-ball.

Simplicity is what Apple has always been about though. There's nothing in Lion or ML to suggest they are dumbing down the OS. Everything I could do in SL I can still do in Lion. They added some iOS-like features, but nothing was take away. Spaces was changed and merged into Mission Control, but that had nothing to do with iOS.

There is breaking the status quo and moving the industry forward like with removing floppy, pushing firewire, ipods, iphones and ipads and then there is reversing the default scrolling behavior of the last 20+ years.

Lion is much harder to multi-task on. Removing old Spaces is making it simpler imo and is extremely annoying and is still keeping me from installing Lion on my machine even though I have it bought.

As I said if you are an iOS fan then this is all fantastic, if not then it is just annoying small changes to 2 otherwise amazing upgrades/OSs.

Sad Professor · 26-04-2012 1:53pm

Cook was talking about iOS and OS X as well. If he wasn't, why did he refer to Windows 8? See below:

You wouldn't want to put these things together because you wind up compromising and not pleasing either user. Some people prefer to own both, but to make the compromises on convergence... we're not going to that party. Others might, particularly from a defensive point of view but we're going to play in both.

He's talking about Microsoft.

It seems ridiculous to me to interpret Cook's comments to mean he opposed to merging a tablet and a notebook (how do you do that anyway?), but supports merging iOS and OS X. It's the same thing. A notebook running a crippled desktop version of iOS would be useless, you might as well merge the hardware as well.

And as for the scrolling direction, seriously, just turn it off. If that and other relatively minor changes in Lion are the basis for your case for convergence then you are being an alarmist. If Apple announce "iOS Desktop" in 5 years time with no filesystem, no desktop, no menus, no way to install non-App Store applications, then there'll be a reason to panic and switch to Linux/Ubuntu/whatever. But right now there is nothing to support any of this convergence nonsense.

However, you acknowledged that convergence is not Apple's "stated goal", just your opinion. That's fair enough with me.

conor.hogan.2 · 26-04-2012 2:11pm

Sad Professor wrote: »

Cook was talking about iOS and OS X as well. If he wasn't, why did he refer to Windows 8? See below:

He's talking about Microsoft.

It seems ridiculous to me to interpret Cook's comments to mean he opposed to merging a tablet and a notebook (how do you do that anyway?), but supports merging iOS and OS X. It's the same thing. A notebook running a crippled desktop version of iOS would be useless, you might as well merge the hardware as well.

And as for the scrolling direction, seriously, just turn it off. If that and other relatively minor changes in Lion are the basis for your case for convergence then you are being an alarmist. If Apple announce "iOS Desktop" in 5 years time with no filesystem, no desktop, no menus, no way to install non-App Store applications, then there'll be a reason to panic and switch to Linux/Ubuntu/whatever. But right now there is nothing to support any of this convergence nonsense.

However, you acknowledged that convergence is not Apple's "stated goal", just your opinion. That's fair enough with me.

"Prefer to own both" as in tablet/phone and laptop/desktop. He is not even really discussing iOS and OSX as others have mentioned and that story mentions.

In the future the tablets will be running hardware as good as laptops of today and the OS will not be crippled but moulded to fit that experience pretty much how it is today but both will have advanced. OS

The scrolling doesn't bother me, except the fact it went against all convention for 20+ years. Other UI tweaks really mess up my multi-tasking.

If you think Apple would not like 1 OS with two flavours then you have not looked at their history of the past 10 years, they would love it and seem to be working towards it.

Making OSX have no filesystem is just silly and I never mentioned it doing that, even in 10 years.

Sad Professor · 26-04-2012 4:51pm

I'm confused.

You are saying iOS and OS X are going to converge into one OS with two flavours. Can you define flavour? Because arguably they are already one OS with two flavours and have been from the start. What's going to be be different 5 years from now? Okay, there will still be a filesystem. Will there be a menubar? Will you have access to the Terminal? Will you still be able to download apps from outside the App Store or will it be locked down? Will apps be universal and run on both flavours?

conor.hogan.2 · 26-04-2012 6:12pm

Sad Professor wrote: »

I'm confused.

You are saying iOS and OS X are going to converge into one OS with two flavours. Can you define flavour? Because arguably they are already one OS with two flavours and have been from the start. What's going to be be different 5 years from now? Okay, there will still be a filesystem. Will there be a menubar? Will you have access to the Terminal? Will you still be able to download apps from outside the App Store or will it be locked down? Will apps be universal and run on both flavours?

Similar to how MS are doing it with normal versions and WinRT.

I said it would happen years from now* after the two versions transform closer to each other as (as you said) they are very close to each other now and as "we are in a post PC world" the two converging seems likely (Apple hint and act on this now anyway. The mac has taken a back seat in recent years)

* if it does, but if I had to bet on it I would bet it would happen rather than not happen.

There is a menubar in iOS? But if Apple decide we don't need it, thy will will be done.

OSX has to be good for development (being the "truck", which they seem to be pushing out more and more) then it will need a Terminal.

It will likely never be locked down, but who would have thought they would have locked down iOS before that happened? But I say they would lock down all new versions unless you opt-out.

As another poster pointed out there is little difference between Mac apps and iOS apps and this will shrink in years to come imo but this is all speculation.

Duggys Housemate · 26-04-2012 6:35pm

Sad Professor wrote: »

I'm confused.

You are saying iOS and OS X are going to converge into one OS with two flavours. Can you define flavour? Because arguably they are already one OS with two flavours and have been from the start. What's going to be be different 5 years from now? Okay, there will still be a filesystem. Will there be a menubar? Will you have access to the Terminal? Will you still be able to download apps from outside the App Store or will it be locked down? Will apps be universal and run on both flavours?

I already pointed out a mechanism, for devs the same api, for users an install gives you the Finder or Springboard.

Sad Professor · 26-04-2012 9:52pm

Conor, your description of iOS and OS X converging but remaining distinct doesn't make sense to me because if they are distinct then they can't be converged. As I see it, iOS and OS X are so similar already that the only way they could converge is to become one and the same, i.e. the same installer package could update a Mac and an iPad. This would mean that they both look the same, work the same and have the same restrictions. If there's no filesystem on the iPad, then there's no filesystem on the Mac. If there's no Terminal on the iPad, then there's no Terminal on the Mac. If the iPad is locked down, then so is the Mac. That as far as I'm concerned is convergence and I don't see it happening.

Compare this with Microsoft, who view the tablet as a PC minus a keyboard and with a touchscreen and who are trying to modify Windows so that it can work the same on both, hence this hybrid business. If Apple were headed in this direction then there wouldn't be an 11-inch Macbook Air running OS X, rather they probably would have released an iPad with a keyboard. The fact that they didn't suggests they clearly saw the market for an iPad-sized computer running a full version of OS X. As Cook said in the Q&A, the trade-offs involved in converging them wouldn't be worth it. The only reason MS are doing it is because they are trying use their dominance of the desktop market to dominate tablets as well.

Duggys Housemate wrote: »

I already pointed out a mechanism, for devs the same api, for users an install gives you the Finder or Springboard.

So there would be a Mac UI, and other associated crap that's not required on iDevices, squeezed into a single fat binary? Or the App Store would deliver the relevant binary depending on the device you are using. A lot of things would have to happen before that would be possible and even then it sounds extremely impractical.

Besides, universal apps don't mean a converged operating system. Converging the two OSs would be a backward step considering Apple stripped all that crap out of OS X to make iOS and made different decisions about how the OS works. It seems to me they have been on largely divergent path if anything.

Duggys Housemate · 26-04-2012 10:03pm

Sad Professor wrote: »

So there would be a Mac UI, and other associated crap that's not required on iDevices, squeezed into a single fat binary? Or the App Store would deliver the relevant binary depending on the device you are using. A lot of things would have to happen before that would be possible and even then it sounds extremely impractical.

The latter, the installer would load what it needs. I don't see it as a huge issue.

Besides, universal apps don't mean a converged operating system. Converging the two OSs would be a backward step considering Apple stripped all that crap out of OS X to make iOS and made different decisions about how the OS works. It seems to me they have been on largely divergent path if anything.

They did strip but remember the first device ran at 400mhz. To the user the OS would look different, but iOS apps would run on OS X, Mac apps which handle "full screen mode" which is the same as single screen mode can run on iOS.

You could do that without fully converging the OS, but it may be easier to converge, maximising the engineering talent in Apple. On the other hand it may not work for marketing purposes. I am 50-50, but it's not a massive technical challenge, less than Metro

Sad Professor · 27-04-2012 12:34am

Yeah, it's possible, but what's the benefit? Apple probably share people across both OS teams already and it's not like they lack resources. Having similar features, services etc, has obvious benefits in terms of the ecosystem and making the Mac more user-friendly to iOS users, but given that they control the hardware, what has Apple (or their users) to gain from a unified OS?

Tim Cook on the potential convergence of OS X and iOS

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