Shuttleworth: Apple Will Merge Mac and iPhone

Barence writes "Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth claims Apple will follow Ubuntu's lead and converge the iPhone and MacBook product lines. Speaking to PC Pro to mark the upcoming launch of Ubuntu 13.10, Shuttleworth said that the failed Ubuntu Edge smartphone — an attempt to bridge mobile and desktop computing devices — had set an example that others will follow. 'We've seen a very interested ripple go through the industry, and an uptick in interest in convergence,' Shuttleworth added. 'People are saying yes, mobile processors are catching up with the desktop. When Apple announced the iPhone 5s, it called the processor "desktop-class," and I don't think that was an accident – it was sending what we think is a very clear signal that it will converge the iPhone and the MacBook Air.'"

Comments

Why did they not roll this out anyway?

[h4rr4r]

So why don't you roll it out now Mr.Shuttleworth?
You don't have to make hardware. You could even buy some Nexus devices and flash your OS on then sell them.

Re:Why did they not roll this out anyway?

[hairyfeet]

And a good 90% of what you just listed support exactly ONE version, put on at the factory, and no other. If you call that "support" then a casio calc watch from the 80s must be a wearable computer to you. BTW why didn't you include TiVo in your list? After all they meet the criteria, just as locked down as TV and appliances yet runs a Linux kernel?

As for TFA...Yo, Shuttleworth? Yeah MSFT was the one that followed your moronic idea, NOT APPLE and look what it got them, flops bigger than winME and Vista put together. If you are so much into "innovation" why don't you rip the steering wheel off your car and replace it with bike handlebars? Well why not, in both cases you are taking a UI designed for one form factor and jamming into a completely different one where it doesn't work well and both are totally moronic, so why not just push the envelope and go full retard?

Look folks its REALLY simple, the PC and laptop are vertical non touch screen high res systems and the phone and tablet are.....wait for it....horizontal touch screen oriented low res systems. Now what do they have in common? NOTHING, that is right NOTHING! They have screens....but the res is several orders of magnitude better on one than the other. They have CPUs....except that one is a SoC made for power consumption above all and therefor is slower than an early Pentium 4 in terms of performance. They have storage....err again several orders of magnitude better and faster on one than the other. Graphics....seeing a pattern here folks?

The reason why Shuttleworth hasn't been able to peddle his shit and Ballmer can't give away Win 8 is because tablets and PCs are NOT the same thing and you can't just rip the UI from one and stuff if it the other and expect it to be anything but suck and fail. Why do the Win 8 apologists never praise the "innovation" of giving phones itty bitty start buttons and menus? Its the same fucking thing, you take a UI designed for one form factor and hamfistedly ram it into the other form factor and expect people are gonna care.

As much as I hate the control freak nature of Apple I have to give them credit, they aren't being bit by a case of the stupids like MSFT and Canonical. Everything they have imported from iOS? Can be easily turned off or just outright ignored and from what I've been told you can have the same UI they have had for the past 6 releases if that is what you want. Who would have thought that Apple of all people would be giving the user what they expect, while MSFT and Canonical would be taken over by art school rejects and go apeshit?

idiots

[slashmydots]

NOBODY WANTS THIS! Who's running Apple, Balmer? They seem to think I want some super-computer-phone. Here's what I want in a computing device: a full sized keyboard, a full sized display, extremely fast responsiveness, gigabit, 500+ GB of storage, a video card capable of gaming, actual games, real software, and a DVD drive. That's called a computer, NOT a phone!

Nobody anywhere has the patience to sit there and create a powerpoint presentation for a school project on a damn phone no matter how fast it allegedly is. You give me a keyboard and 19" display, I'll make 50 powerpoints in the time it took you to make one in this superphone they're planning. Now take that example and apply it to anything anyone would ever do on a computer ever and you'll see my point.

Re:idiots

[rumpsummoner]

Yep, phones are for consuming things, and in a pinch, they can kind of limp along at creating things. Computers are for creating.

Re:idiots

[h4rr4r]

So what do you think happens when you add a bluetooth keyboard and mouse plus a full display via HDMI?

If I could do that I would not need a desktop at work. I just need a web browser and ssh.

Re:idiots

[MBGMorden]

Even if you do that tablet and phone OS's don't work great. Everything runs full screen all the time. One of the perks of having a big full screen is having enough room to work with multiple windows.

The simple reality is that the windowed application concept is incredibly useful, mature, and powerful. I can understand why it doesn't work on small mobile devices and why they don't use it there, but its foolish to hobble a desktop system by making it match the design choices of a mobile platform. Particularly when those design choices were made because of limitations that don't exist on the desktop.

Re:idiots

[rumpsummoner]

I think you have a big screen and a bluetooth keyboard and mouse hooked to an OS that sucks for those devices. I also think you have a bunch of software not written for those interfaces. But what do I know. Maybe it will be fine. Currently I don't like it. Maybe someone will do it in a way that makes it awesome.

Re:idiots

[jeremyp]

NOBODY WANTS THIS! Who's running Apple, Balmer?

If you read the article, you'll realise that this is not Apple, but Mark Shuttleworth claiming to know what Apple are going to do. It is like me saying "Linus Torvalds is going to implement the Win32 API directly and you saying "who is running Linux? Steve Balmer?"

It's quite funny actually. He admits his own attempt failed to reach its crowd funding target, but the support he did get "blew him away" which implies that he was never expecting the crowd funding target to be met.

The rest of your post is exactly why Apple would be stupid to consider merging their laptop and tablet lines.

Apple's actions say they won't

[danaris]

Everything Apple has been doing since the iPhone has come out has been moving in one direction: Two operating systems, built on a common core, which share various elements that make sense.

Apple is not Microsoft. They don't think you have to have "one OS to rule them all." Apple knows that what's good for a touchscreen device is not as good for a traditional laptop or desktop.

Yes, they have taken some features from iOS and moved them over to Mac OS X. However, they're almost universally optional and/or superficial. You never have to use Launchpad if you don't want, and all the autosaving features can be disabled if you prefer to work under the more traditional document management paradigm.

This idea is one that has been often proclaimed quite loudly by critics of Apple who say that everything's going to be locked down and if you buy a Mac, it'll be exactly like an iPad with a keyboard, but it doesn't have any real basis in reality.

Dan Aris

Re:Apple's actions say they won't

[nbritton]

Everything Apple has been doing since the iPhone has come out has been moving in one direction: Two operating systems, built on a common core, which share various elements that make sense.

Apple is not Microsoft. They don't think you have to have "one OS to rule them all." Apple knows that what's good for a touchscreen device is not as good for a traditional laptop or desktop.

Really? God help us if they merge the iOS7 interface into MacOS. Frankly I feel they have lost direction with the passing of Jobs. They do really stupid things now, like emulate the look, and behavior, of Android.

Re:Apple's actions say they won't

[Voyager529]

Not at first. Give it time.

In a few years, what will really be the functional difference between the Macbook Air and an iPad with a clamshell keyboard? Additionally, as Apple continues to grow their marketshare in the laptop segment, OSX in its original iterations will become a more lucrative target for malware. Now before anyone gets pissed at me for saying that, I chose the word "lucrative" for a reason. 8 times out of ten, people with Macbooks will:

1.) Have some money to spend.
2.) Label themselves as "not computer people".
3.) Be of the persuasion that Macs can't get viruses.

Now yes, I know there are plenty of slashdotters here who got a hand-me-down Mac from work, spend as much time in the Terminal as in Safari, and run Sophos on it because you never know. However, let's say that these qualifications apply to even a third of the people who buy a Macbook, and pretend you're a malware writer. You've got millions of people who you KNOW have money, who you KNOW are not technologically savvy enough to discern a real warning message from a fraudulent one, and who are all but certain that they are invulnerable to the very type of attack you plan on performing. It sounds like the perfect storm to me.

Apple is aware that these types of people are amongst their customers, and in many cases, amongst their loudest evangelists - you'll never get better advertising than to say "Other computers were complicated, but I can finally Facebook my kids!". For these kinds of people, the walled garden is a feature, not a bug. For these people, there needs to be a solution. Apple gave one: the Mac App Store.

At first, it was optional.
Then, it was a part of the OS.
Then, it was enabled by default.
Then, you get a warning if you turn off the OS's blocking of sideloading.

Meanwhile, Apple is making money hand over fist on software for their mobile platform. For the majority of their demographic, being able to run iOS apps on their laptop is a quantum leap forward.

Even if they don't merge, there will be a point at which the lines are so blurry it won't matter.

MS has already done this...

[SpoonStomper]

Microsoft is already doing this with Windows 8. http://www.engadget.com/2012/06/20/windows-phone-8-and-windows-8-share-lots-of-code-nt-kernel/ But Ubuntu and Apple are the innovators... lame...

Re:MS has already done this...

[HerculesMO]

Was looking for this comment, though you're already modded down.

Shuttleworth has had limited success with Ubuntu in terms of a monetary return, so showing himself as an "innovator" (and we all love the new UI don't we?) is kind of laughable.

Is Shuttleworth fucking stupid?

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, though!

Canonical forces a mobile interface on a desktop OS; Flops

Microsoft forces a mobile interface on a desktop OS; Flops even harder

Shuttleworth:"Apple will merge their mobile and desktop platforms"

Not if they're smart, Mark, not if they're smart...

My failure was actually awesome success...

[denzacar]

...only no one understands that yet.
That is why I predict that some day, someone successful will try doing the same thing I've failed at.
Which proves, regardless of success or failure of that theoretical venture I just described, how awesome and ahead of its time my concept was and how brilliant I am.

In fact, the failure I mention was not my failure at all - it was the failure of the world to recognize the opportunity to exploit my genius.

Re:Shuttleworth works for the NSA

[kamapuaa]

Right, I've been saying this for years. Before that, she worked in Japan, where the government has been refusing the apologize for war atrocities for years. Even today, Koreans aren't recognized at Hiroshima, despite being one fourth of the death toll. Why is Jane Silber anti-Korean? Why does Ubuntu hold a racist ideology?

And let's not even get started on her work for General Health, a health risk assessment firm.

They have to do something

[tuppe666]

Apple have neglected the computing products for a long time (even removed "computers" from its name), and have made no secret of making its(not your) computers, non-upgradable, disposable electronics, rather than General purpose machines, The move to 64-bit arm is a heartbeat away, with the dream of a touchcreen iPad. I wish them success.

The reality is its computing sales have dropped for 4 quarters, and it looks like this will be another quarter of its sales dropping faster than the PC market...even with Windows 8 as a dead weight.

It looks like linux is going to continue to be the only bright spot in an otherwise lackluster market. The Irony of years of "Year of Linux" meme is kind of sad how quickly Microsoft and Apple gave there duopoly away (at least Apple still has 13% of the smartphone market)

Re:Shuttleworth works for the NSA

[MightyYar]

My last job was corrosion testing. I would test various materials and coatings for their corrosion resistance - basically, I would make things rust.

My current job is building robotic assembly equipment. Despite my last job, I do not make the robots rust.

Re:64-bit processor seems to indicate it

[Henriok]

I was having pretty much the same thought myself.

Why would you want a 64-bit processor on a phone?

The answer right now is: A processor with the ARMv8 ISA will be more powerful per clock and draw less power per clock and use less transistors per area than the previous ARMv7 would allow. It'll be a cheaper, faster and less power consuming than its predecessors. THAT'S the reason. Let's do it. Oh, it'll be 64-bit with no drawbacks too since we already have all the software tools and knowhow to make the leap, so let's do that too.

Re:Shuttleworth works for the NSA

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh god! Someone used to have a job somewhere else and now they're using their proprietary open source code base that no one can check to secretly spy on us because they must be somehow still linked to their previous employer. Anyone who works for a place that we don't like should have their ear cut off so we can easily identify them. What's if she's a member of the New World Order, or worse, what if she's secretly a zionist Joo?

C4 Systems gave 96% of its $14,000 of campaign contributions to Republicans

$14,000 huh? That's fucking nothing. NOTHING Elections take millions, if not billions. $14K might as well be a fucking joke.

which could suggest C4's leadership takes a hawkish attitude about war and has a disregard for human rights.

Yeah, I guess it could be taken that way, if you're delusional. Stop making us liberals look bad with this nonsense. You're no better than the idiots who say that anyone who donates a dollar to the democrats should be hanged for inciting socialist revolution. Fuck off.

Shame on the idiots who modded you up. They need to have their mod privileges revoked.

Re:Too much credit

[dirtyhippie]

The hilarious bit isn't that Shuttleworth says this, but that someone thought it was news that he did.

Re:Too much credit

[supremebob]

Yeah, I love the ego of this guy. He seems to forget that Ubuntu's market share is still puny compared to Apple and Microsoft, and nobody is "following his lead" on anything.

Honestly, I doubt that many outside of the Linux community are even paying all that much attention to his statements.

Re:Next generation of the iWatch capability?

[93 Escort Wagon]

Yeah, Apple will never catch Google or Microsoft in the tablet space...

(snicker... Microsoft!? really?)

Why lie about results?

[SuperKendall]

Mac sales were actually UP in Q4 last year - so how have they "dropped for four quarters"? As for the other three quarters, it's dropped something like 1% while the rest of the PC market screams into the ground at mach 3. All of which ignores the computers coming down the pike that will boost Mac sales again...

I'm not sure what leads you to introduce lis into every Slashdot post you make. But you really should consider at least sticking to the truth when you troll, it's marginally more effective.