Ina Fried:
Although they are doing it in different ways, Apple and Microsoft are aiming for a similar goal with their next desktop operating systems: To make the computer more like the phone.
This just isn’t what’s happening. Microsoft is trying to shoehorn one operating system into the desktop and mobile spaces, but that will ultimately fail. They are different platforms and should be treated differently.
What Apple is doing with Mountain Lion is taking some of the more common features on iOS and bringing them to the desktop. However, Apple is not just plunking down features that don’t make sense, they are doing thinking about how users will interact with the apps and features on a mobile OS and a desktop OS.
The common tie is iCloud, which syncs the data.
There is a big difference between what Microsoft and Apple are doing.
I’ve been fighting this particular brand of stupid since the Back to the Mac event. Apple’s intention is as far from “make Macs act like iPhones” as the Earth is from the edge of the visible Universe.
I take it Ina had no invite?
I sometimes have to wonder if these doorknob writers have ever even used a Mac. Pffft!
I totally agree; Apple realization that the phone, tablet and the desktop are different woking environment. One point that I think that you may have missed is that Windows must stay Windows. Their own market share has force themselves into a corner. They can’t rebuild the Windows from the group up. They must hold on to legacy support. W8 has not even ship and window community is already scream about lack of support for some plugins.
While Apple has rebuild their OS and now in the process of refining the capabilities of the OS. With 10.7 Apple took a major leap, 10.8 is looks like another major. That I don’t think that Microsoft can follow imeditatively without building totally new Windows.
The Verge has already started with the “Microsoft has had X for years” discussions… It just never ends.
Yeah. Apple’s intention is to make Macs act the way computers should act. That it’s bringing it closer to iOS is only because they got to throw all the old cruft away when creating iOS.
That isn’t to say Macs act the way computer should act, only that they’re getting closer.
Microsoft is trying to make their PCs work like their phones despite the phones being built on Silverlight/C# and their desktop/tables being built on C++/Javascript. They lack a coherent strategy for convergence of Windows 8 Metro, Windows 8 Desktop, and Windows Phone 7. Windows Phone has more in common with an Xbox 360 than Windows 8, and Windows 8 Metro has more in common with Internet Explorer than Windows Phone. Windows Mobile 6 has more in common with Windows 7 than Windows Phone.
OSX and iOS have been the same OS since 2007. Proper compatibility, as opposed to write once fail everywhere natively trash that we’ve been mucking up for years, is a recompile away — because it’s all BSD/Darwin with Objective-C and Cocoa APIs, regardless of processor architecture. They’re built on the same core.
See: The Incident, iDraw, Gesundheit, iMessage, Safari, iWork, iLife, Colloquy, iTunes, Dictionary…
While many of the ideas make sense, I’m not sure I’d totally agree with you. Do we really need features like LaunchPad, Overlay scroll bars and Automatic Termination of background apps on a Desktop system?
I disagree. I think that they are trying to make Macs very much like iphones/ipads AS AN OPTION for users that don’t need the more complex technonerd stuff like Terminal or even Finder.
It works for Apple because they are leaving the ‘old school’ more or less alone and because the two already have a common code base.
Do you? No, probably not.
Do new users. Perhaps. Certainly someone like my grandfather whose first ‘computer’ was an iPad would find something like Launchpad useful and comforting. so much so that I would want there to be a way to set up a user on the computer that just goes right to launchpad rather than making him click a button for it. or the same idea for an account for younger kids