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."

Comments

...and develop iOS on their iPads?

[nigel_atkinson]

I can't see an iOS based IDE working.

Re:...and develop iOS on their iPads?

[twidarkling]

Good point. On what platform are iOS applications going to be written?

Windows.

(cough)bullshit(cough)

[Space cowboy]

Or, should I say "linkbait" instead.

Where would all the content come from?

[wandazulu]

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.

So, there is no indication?

[TheCycoONE]

"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.

bullshit

[andsens]

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?!

Premature paranoia

[curunir]

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.

Re:...and this is why we RTFA

[NatasRevol]

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