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Could Apple Kill Off Mac OS X?
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."
I can't see an iOS based IDE working.
Apple is not going to kill of Mac OS X. I have said it before, and I'll say it again: Mac OS X's future is on high end workstations, targeting the professional and power user markets. Apple's consumer strategy will be centered on iOS.
Palm trees and 8
Or, should I say "linkbait" instead.
Physicists get Hadrons!
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.
UPS Sucks
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.
On the other hand, Apple could only market Mac OS X to professional users, on their high end workstations. Consumers will get iOS everything -- iOS tablets, iOS PDAs, iOS laptops, maybe even some sort of iOS desktop (with a completely different form factor than current desktops?), and they will be cut out of the development process; only professionals with high end workstations will be able to write software for iOS.
Palm trees and 8
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.
"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.
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...
This is total linkbait. Just like the one from pcworld asking whether OS X Lion could be Apples Vista. This article has no research behind it whatsoever, I do not understand how this trash can get on slashdot, it annoys me. A single quote: "iOS is mainstream: Mac OS X isn’t and likely never will be." Based on what research?!?! Just yesterday at the keynote, they announced that the OS X platform has risen to new heights and the PC market has shrunk. Android is gaining on the smartphone market. Why the hell would they bet everything on one horse if they have two that perform perfectly well?!
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.
"Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos!"
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.
Palm trees and 8
I don't think they'll miss you. Lets face it, people like yourself who make informed decisions about such things are not a major component of Apple's consumer base!
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.
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 and defend it with vigor.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
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
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
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.
If you can't convince them, convict them.
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.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
"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.
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.
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.
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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.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
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.
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
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.
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?
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
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?