'Back to the Mac' Event October 20th

They use iTunes/App Store content to help sell their iDevices. This might change in the future, but I don't see any of evidence of it happening yet.

That's my point though. The app store model is driving sales of their mobile devices. It's about the biggest driver at the moment and that they may be trying to bring that more to the core PC business. The iphone would not be the market leader today without it and the ipod would be up there with the zune.

The original Air was an experiment alright, but an experiment in making a very small and light notebook, minus all the (increasingly redundant) stuff that weighs it down.

Well if so they kinda came late to that party, what with netbooks being around before them at significantly lower prices, small form factor and more features. They've reinvented the wheel at best.

Laptops have gotten very big over the years with 15-inches becoming the minimum size for many people,

I agree 100% on that score alright.

while in the meantime many Mac users have been begging Apple to release a successor to the 12-inch Powerbook.

True. It was a form factor seriously lacking in their lineup. I have one of those old 12 inchers and its a grand piece of kit size wise.

Those people got their wish yesterday.

Well they were presented with their wish anyway. I would buy that more if the new mac was nearly as slim but with a cd drive etc, but that would kill the macbook range, if not whack the 13" macbook pro while it was at it.

The idea that Apple are planning to lock down the Mac to applications is ridiculous.

You reckon. Look back at the iPhone development trajectory from the get go. Look how it developed and look how successful it has been.

If Apple are smart enough to realise that you can't just slap a desktop OS on a tablet, and if they are smart enough to realise that touchscreen isn't suitable for a desktop/notebook,

Well a mixture of good sense and existing resources. The iphone os only required tweaking to go on the tablet and it was hitting the ground running because of the existing groundswell of apps on the iphone. The killer app for the ipad was the store. It would make sense to at least try that with their PCs.

They may say a touchscreen on a laptop isn't suitable, but IMHO its more to do with again existing resources and not bashing into other product lines. ipad is a good product but a keyboard would be a bonus for many. If they had made this new macbook an ipad with a keyboard the ipad line would have suffered(and like I said so would the small macbooks). It reminds me of the old days of Newton OS. Their first and actually very impressive foray into the mobile market. While people joked with the first one, the later ones worked very well(and still have a following out there believe it or not, though has died off since iphone etc). I've used a mates later 2100 and its remarkably good especially considering the age. The emate was originally an in house attempt to put it all together, touchscreen and keyboard. Now costs scaled up and the mooted pro version was scrapped in favour of the education model(which was still daft money nearly a grand), but I have one of those and do use it the odd time for taking notes etc even email :eek: (instant on, no worries re saving, 24hr + battery life, very robust ). You might be surprised how useful a touchscreen on a laptop can actually be. I'm always a little dubious when someone tells me, "oh we didnt put that in because it wouldnt be useful" as an explanation of why it doesnt have it.

why would they be so stupid as to kill their computer business by inexplicably bringing the iPhone/iPad's approach to applications to the Mac? I've yet to see a single valid argument for why they would want to do this.

Simples, it wouldnt kill their pc biz. Likely grow it and they would have the backing of the software and content industries right behind them. The average iphone/ipad user is now used to downloading apps through the store, ditto with music and movies/TV. You have a large population out there that have come to Apple not through their PCs and accept that's how its done. The software and content companies love it as it increases their control of the product and control of their revenue stream. There is a lot and I mean a lot of pirated software(and content) out there, especially on the mac*. How much pirated software is on the iphone? Very very little and its not easy to do(and largely not worth doing for a 1.99 app). While this is a pain for notions of open platforms it's also an advantage to the average end user. It drives down costs. EG If 98% of adobe photoshop installs out there were legit and paid for, then I guarantee it wouldnt cost nearly as much as it does, or at least they would find it damned hard to justify the high price.

The real danger to the Mac isn't iOS's closed ecosystem philosophy, it's that Apple just aren't particularly arsed about the Mac anymore, as I think Lion's delayed and rather underwhelming presentation proved. But this is going to be an issue across the computer industry. Mobile devices are the future and it's where all the potential innovation is right now.

I would agree, especially when you consider what most people actually use a computer for. Even in work outside of specialty areas. Email, browsing, typing, media, games(though Wii etc grabs a lot of that). Most are using machines that are much more powerful(or focused wrongly) with more options than they actually need(hell Im typing this on a 10 year old Pismo that I often use for browsing ). The mobile direction has shown that to be more the case than its not. I would have predicted back when the iPhone first took off that its platform would become increasingly like the desktop OS(and I had good reason to believe so. Long story), but now I would predict that the convergence is going to going the other way across the board.

Though I'm also mindful that every ten years something is "the future". Sometimes they're right, but often they're wrong, or at least they miss something big that takes things in another direction. To be fair to Apple and especially jobs, they are very very good at spotting what the actual future is. And creating it.


* I guarantee the majority reading this have non legit software somewhere on their machines. From the extreme "I never buy what I can warez" types to the "Oh I'm legit. Well I did get a snow leopard install from a mate. Oh yea and fonts, forgot about them". If there isn't a single bit of grey area software on your mac(or PC) then you're a rare bunny.

conor.hogan.2 wrote: »

Apple won't fully lock osx like iOS - much like how they won't put iOS to replace osx on the desktop.

They are not idiots.

Oh I agree. They would be damned stupid to pull it now, but I would bet the farm that if they could and got the software producers on board they would.

But they made a way to make osx more iOS like and they are locking down the mac app store from what has been released so far

http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/362131/apple-looking-to-ditch-java

and it will only get worse - they can leverage their iOS strength to get more people to move to macs and then they can do whatever they want through their mac app store as they are nowhere near a monopoly on desktop.

Like I say, if they could do it I strongly suspect they would. Like you say and I was saying earlier there are a lot of people out there happily using a mac OS and downloading environment, just not a desktop one. I reckon Steve is thinking the long game. Their share has grown in the desktop market, but it is still small, but if one was to just base it on OS overall? Their share, especially their mindset share is much bigger. I really doubt Steve's looking at business or even the high end machines we think of PC's at the moment. Like he has said "why build trucks when most people want to drive cars?" If he could leverage the iPhone experience to the whole of the personal computer world, he would. Apple would still build a few trucks(mac pros et al), but the core would be the cars and attendant roads they would drive on. iPad/iPhone/Air type devices.

Rabble Rabble wrote: »

The iPhone was - like all other phones at the time, and the google market now, to an extent - curated bacause errant apps would bring down the system. This was common at the time, and now, and was little remarked upon at the day because it was what everybody did. Only with the (largely manufatured) anti-Apple backlash and the "open" Android platform did this become any kind of an issue.

Oh I agree and I also agree the anti apple fanboi type latched onto this as a problem when i really wasn't. I remember the earlys days(sounds like aeons ) when I jailbroke the iphone and it opened up the OS, but a lot of the third party apps were well twitchy and caused frequent restarts. Some were useful, but now most of the uesful stuff is in the app store. I do like being able to access my directory so I still jailbreak the phone, but not for Cydia.

Mac OS X has a filesystem, full accessible by it's users.

As does iOS of course, the accessibility is the only difference and Apple have been very reticent to open it up. That said there is some change even there. iPen drive as an example, where they're allowing an app to access the directory to use it like a USB stick for your data.

If it is removed we will lose our files, and lose the ability to mount a USB disk, and other media, or mount SMBs, or use FTP and so on. All file systems.

Yes but all OS's have a filesystem. The iPhone does. It's macOS/Darwin with (simplistically speaking) a different "finder". The only OS I can think of that didn't have a file system as such was apples own Newton OS, which under the bonnet was more like how iPhone seems to work, but doesn't. The only difference with the main OS's is the degree to which the filesystem is open and how one accesses that file system. With open source like linux you can pretty much do what you like and more importantly how you choose to access it. Windows and Mac already lock that down by comparison. And because they all have such a system under the bonnet they can't remove it. Apple won't and I never suggested they would. What I have suggested is how you access that filesystem will change IMHO.

And I think it should, or at least a new paradigm of file management at the gui end should be tried. The one we have now is very very old in computing terms and IMHO its creaky for the majority of users. Xerox then apple, then windows have all followed the same basic template. The aforementioned Newton for all its failings and short life was at least a different approach and remarkably instinctive in its final 2.1 form(most gave up at V 1.1). It had some very good plus points. As an aside I wouldnt be surprised if Steve gets over his ire at "Amelios baby" and inkwell starts to figure more down the line. Though he has stated publicly he hates pens/styli.

That is not going to happen. If it happens nobody will upgrade. The iPad is on a different route, and may be more important but it is the locked down computer. The Mac cant be locked down in that fashion without destroying it's value.

I don't agree. Or at least with the definition of locked down. The macos is already locked down in how it allows you to deal with it's filesystem. The look and feel and how you search for and use files and folders and apps is sacrosanct and third parties are not allowed to screw with it. That's a lockdown right there. The mac environment with it's paradigm* of a separate apps folder, with distinctive all in one app packages which defo marks it out agin windows which is very "locked down" and uninstinctive by comparison. Hence windows requires an uninstall app. Mac users for the most part just grab the app on the surface layer, dump it in the bin and delete and the other parts under the surface follow. That I feel will probably stay as a discrete feature as its far better and far more elegant a feature than the windows method. Then again that feature is already in iOS. You want to delete and app and all its data? Hold down the app until they all start jiggling and hit the X and its gone. No uninstall. Unlike Cydia by comparison which cogs the windows method of not hiding the computer bit under the surface.

If there is a filesystem, then any app which is released without protection will launch and run when you install it, or drag it to where you want. There is no way around this without gutting the system which is not going to happen.

Sorry I don't quite get what you mean. Dumb it down goddammit! I can be very slow :D OK lets look at apps cuurently in MacOS. They're already protected against the system and how it's top layer keeps the guff away from you in many ways. You have to enter your admin password for a start. Fine, but even then there are a few apps who get real flaky if you move them from the application folder. If you've photoshop and it's a bit twitchy and you have moved the main app to the desktop, that is likely a lot of your trouble. Try creating a folder say called Appstuff. Move all your apps from the app folder into it. Then try that for a few months. Get back to me. This was not nearly the case in OS9, where you could put stuff pretty much wherever the hell you liked(save for system stuff). To get people used to this shift to Next/OSx you'l notice OS 9 created an Applications folder, unlike previous systems. Hate to tell you, but the system has already been "gutted", more to the point made more consistent. I also recall loadsa voices getting a tad freaked out when OSx first came along and were clamouring for "their" OS9 and saying how "you can't do it this way, itll never work. Its too locked down!". How many now would go back to OS9? Pretty bloody few. Though I did like Copeland. Had a dev copy of it way back and I liked a lot of its features.

The Mac Store is just a distribution system ( like unix dist systems) and has DRM for it's own apps - like Steam.

The iOS store is just a dist system too. So? It does drive the market for the devices though. iPhone would not be where it is today without it. I'm just saying that it would be mad of Steve not to try to apply a similar notion with tweaks to the main MacOS. I mean he is pretty plainly saying this is what he is at.

Thats it. thats all. The rest is paranoia.

I can't speak for others, but not on my part. I personally welcome a change, hopefully for the better in how my life is helped by how the tech changes and how it fits in with my life, not how I should aim to fit in with it's way of doing things. If they can make how I interact with the world and how I work in it easier and straightforward and yes a little bit of thinking different then I would be all for it. I don't get hepped up on goofballs about the whole "freedom to compute" thing. I leave that to the yes like you say paranoid geeks who moan but dont tend to make things better for the rest of us. Left to many of them we'd be all still looking at C:\ or variation of.

Don't get me wrong I have issues with how Apple operate at times, I would disagree with some of big Stevies notions, but I do admire him and them for taking chances and saying fuggit and steaming ahead. It's in the ethos of the company, even when Steve left. Hell I'm typing this on a PB G3 pismo that's 11 years old just cos I like the Apple vibe behind it and it's a remarkably up to date PC even considering its age(and for browsing and general email typing stuff? Save your money, forget a netbook at 400 quid, ebay one of these for 100 odd ramp up the ram to 1Gb and you'll be grand ).




*sorry for using the P word and yes I hate it too :)

Fysh wrote: »

Yeah, but what if your choice was either an obsolete OS X native version of the CS Suite or the Windows version? I'm not talking about choosing between two equivalent options, I'm talking about the tools of a professional gradually being only available on one platform rather than two.

Certainly that would have an impact, but for many users the overall mac experience would win out for a good while. I've seen that with architects and the like, when the CAD apps went more towards windows. They mostly kept the macs going with either a dedicated PC as an adjunct or more recently dual booted/parallel'd windows on their macs.

(Out of curiosity - have you used Windows 7 at all? As far as I can tell a lot of the UI changes have been lifted from OS X, so I'm curious as to what Mac users think of it...)

I've used both Win and Mac for nigh on 20 years now, with forays into various Linux distros. Each have their plus points, some major, mostly minor outside the fanboi crappola. Ignoring for a sec the things I like about the MS way of doing things? My biggest irk with windows is that the environment they create for me at least, restricts my actual output. Weird considering that it is more "open" in lots of ways. I find it gets more in the way of me and my flow of doing stuff more than Mac(or Linux once its setup). It feels to me like the engineering is first and way down the line is how I deal with that engineering. I find it less easy to work my way around it. It railroads me too much. Like the example of deleting apps I gave above. Mac= drag app to bin, empty bin. Windows= no all in one app package to speak of, just a link in the start menu, so requires an uninstall program. This and the constant(to me) reminders of what I know I'm doing or have done. "You plugged in a printer" Eh yea I know dufus. "Do you really want to open this?", Eh yea that's why I double clicked on it. etc.

For me anyway Windows interrupts me too much. The look has gotten better. It's still a little brash, but I think a lot of it comes down to the ethos of the companies involved. Cliche I know, but MS are an engineering company, Apple are a design company. Both would do well to feed a little of the other into their way of doing things.

Sad Professor wrote: »

This is really more down to individual applications. I've used many apps successfully outside of the applications folder.

Of course yes, but my point still stands as quite a few apps out there get mighty twitchy outside of the app folder.

There was an Applications folder on my first Mac, which ran System 7.5.

Sorry yes, there was. What I mean is it was more an organisational thing than a software engineering thing.

I don't ever remember anyone saying this. OS X gave the user a helluva a lot more under the hood access to the system than was ever possible in earlier versions of Mac OS.

It's not access Im talking about it was more restrictive to average users. Oh sure power/unix user types could hack away in terminal, but OS9 was a more "open" system for the drag and drop user. EG Drag and drop control panels and extensions. Hell you could drag and drop an entire system folder onto another drive and it would be bootable. You could also boot from a cd on a sick mac and see the desktop and all your stuff and move it to a backup drive. Not nearly as straigtforward in OS X.

When did he say this? What profit or reason is there for him to do this? The iPhone and it's closed development environment has existed for 4/5 years. The Mac and it's open development has existed considerably longer. Why would anyone go along with it? And why would he even think it would work? The Mac is not the iPhone.

I've already pointed out what his reasons would be. The iphone hasn't a particularly closed dev environment either. Not from Apple's or end users point of view(or most developers either). Yes for developers in the open source style model, but not in the big picture sense. IE actually getting software to market through a new conduit and more cheaply, both for developers and users. How many new dev companies and careers have kicked off from basements because of iOS/App store? It's far easier for a talented software designer to get his or her product to market than the old way. It also helped Apple by increasing control of that conduit, increasing profits and selling hardware on the back of it. The iPod/iPhone model. The MacOS isn't particularly open either BTW and its getting less so. Bye bye java anyone? Flash support not on the iOS and how long will it be supported on the MacOS? The success of both the phone and tablet doesnt seem to have been unduly hit by this either, not outside the writings of disgruntled bloggers anyway.

When did he say this? Eh the recent conference and what is coming down the line as far as convergence between iOS and macOS in how they look and feel and that is flowing from iOS so far, not the other way around. That's pretty clear intent. The new machinery in the form of the airs underlined the point and he himself mentioned how they adopted ipad features. Now they really didn't beyond vaguely looking like one with a keyboard. that said the whole air line is more a drift towards the mobile iPhone/ipad idea, rather than "here's a desktop we squeezed into a small fancy case" as has been the situation until recently across the industry. IE gestural input, little or no expandibility(Ram basically) including storage. I/O options are USB, video out and sound. That's your lot. No CD/DVD or ethernet without plug in modules. Slap on Lion and it really does look like an iPad/iPhone with a keyboard.

Then add in the upcoming features so far rolled out in Lion. Multitouch gesturing, auto update, auto resume, auto save. Launch pad is a very similar look and feel to how iOS does things. Apps http://images.apple.com/macosx/lion/images/lion_springboard1_20101020.jpg Folder handling http://images.apple.com/macosx/lion/images/lion_springboard2_20101020.jpg That's the Iphone/Pad interface right there. Full screen apps ditto. Then on top of that the macOS app store.

Hell read Apples own spiel on Lion http://www.apple.com/macosx/lion/ "We took our best thinking from Mac OS X and brought it to the iPhone(they really didn't. Not in the end user layer). Then we took our best thinking from the iPhone and brought it to iPad. And now we’re bringing it all back to the Mac with our eighth major release of the world’s most advanced operating system."(emphasis and in brackets mine). I don't understand why this isn't more obvious to you.

Like Ive also said I welcome these changes and innovations. It should make the platform a better one to actually use to do stuff(as opposed to fiddle with it for its own sake).

They don't have to think of flicking the switch. Provide the right switch and people will flick it for themselves. What I'm saying that if they could do it they would as it's a software model that costs them nothing and that sells their high profit hardware. I've not said they're going to lockdown the mac. Then again I dont see it as a lockdown anyway.

In any case they're not going to do it overnight and they won't do it with the macOS "trucks" to the extent of iOS for the reasons you gave, but they will try to push it as much as they can on the "cars". And what we'll see I further predict is them developing and selling more cars than trucks in the coming years. Or at least the truck sales will remain static as the car sales balloon. It's already happening. Far more people own and use iPhones than use macs. members in here see themselves as "mac users" and they are, but look around you in the pub and while more will be using PC's their phones mark them out as fellow mac users, even if they don't see it that way. They've sold 8.5 million iPads alone so far. http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2010/10/05/how-many-ipads-has-apple-really-sold/ In just one quarter they sold more ipads than macs and many millions more iPhones than macs http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2010/10/18results.html

Now we have the introduction/evolution of a product range in the middle of the Mac camp that would make it much easier to download from an app store than to install in the traditional way(well you can't unless you have an existing mac or buy an external drive). While existing mac owners will buy the new air alright, I reckon they're just as much after the iphone market who want a "laptop".

It makes good financial sense. The profit margins on iphone/ipad type devices is much higher than on current mac hardware. Apparently the top end iphone costs them around 60 to 80 dollars per unit and the overall profit per phone could be higher as a few are suggesting http://www.bnet.com/blog/technology-business/apple-8217s-revenue-per-iphone-revealed-and-it-8217s-650-updated/2406 The sale of the most fully loaded mac pro doesnt quite compare(though still a tidy little profit) and the numbers sold of same don't come within an astronomical unit of the iDevices.

IMHO too many people both mac "fanbois" and mac "haters" make the mistake of considering Apple a computer company in the same vein as Dell or MS. Yes they make similar things, but that's where the comparison ends. I personally believe in a much better way on balance for the consumer/user. They're in the business of devices that happen to be computers for the most part, but the computer part is more hidden from the user than the others. The others have copied them a lot(even the most ardent apple hater can't really deny that) and the main reason we have easy to use devices is largely down to them. They do "think different" on that score and how they're moving forward in all their lines is a current example of that. Do I think they'll lock down the macOS anytime soon? No, indeed in many ways what some might see as a lockdown I don't anyway. if they did go that route I see as opening it up in another direction. First we installed software from old cassettes or ROMs, then floppies, then CD/DVD's and more and more online, but that was more a shareware/niche market, now with iOS app store its one of the biggest markets and with the MacOS app store it could well drive it to be the main way, not the only way of downloading software. That's what Im saying and that's what Im predicting. Nothing more or more to use a word earlier in the thread "paranoid" than that.