Above and beyond that, users just didn't see the point of upgrading, and when they did, they didn't recieve $120 worth of new capabilities.
After reviewing the news today regarding Apple's Mac OSX 10.8 (isn't that redundant, by the way?), one has to ask, is Mountain Lion Apple's Vista?
First and foremost, let's establish something: Vista was not a bad operating system. In fact, the troubles it ran into were inevitable. Microsoft had been doing something for YEARS that software designers know is a bad move: accumulating legacy code. While necessary to support older hardware and software (particularly important to business users with long and lagging update cycles), such code invariably slows the operating system down, creates security holes and undermines stability. So, in what I consider a GOOD move, Microsoft decided to pare down the Windows kernel by removing a huge chunk of this code by introducing new technologies and dropping old ones. 64-bit editions of the OS became standard on a vast majority of systems while removing support for 16-bit software. The system-driver model and format were completely revamped, and support for the old style was relegated to a right-click function.
Sure, it may have broken compatibility for your old HP laserjet and its parallel port, but it meant a better OS moving forward. hence Windows 7 and its incredible success.
Given the Developer release that was handed out by Apple today, I fear that this next OS will be their Vista, albeit in more unnecessary ways. Maybe.
No Diet-
Vista was a necessary evil because it cut the fat that had accumulated since Windows 98. However, OSX 10.8 doesn't seem to be doing any trimming or slimming. While some legacy code was removed in Lion (10.7), it was added back in the buggy and inconsistent Rosetta Stone emulation system. Sure you could run older apps, but it has been mostly hit or miss, and has recently been plagued by major issues.
More Junk Food-
The last version of OSX, 10.7, added some cool functionality but most of it has since been regarded as unused clutter, most based off of it's mobile platform, iOS.
Put another way, there are three different ways for you to view your active desktop and icons on Lion and Mountain Lion: Desktop/windows, Launchpad and Mission Control (i.e. super expose).
While these iOS influences will still be around, more have been added by the now Jobs-less Apple, including a not-so-subtle port of the iOS notification area. Notifications are nice, and for years, Apple users have been running the incredibly versatile and reliable Growl open source notification app. Apple is adding its own version (much to the dismay of Growl, one would assume) in 10.8, called Notification Center.
Choice? What Choice?-
Apple's products have never been about choice. They have a very finite number of products, with a finite number of versions and a finite number of software choices (due mostly to their 9% market share, not their own design). Their hardware has never been particularly easy to upgrade and sometimes impossible (no upgradable ram or SSD in the current Macbook Airs) and their OSs have always been locked down (iOS jailbraking, hackintoshes and EFI checks). But OSX 10.8 is the first time that Apple is trying to stop YOU from downloading any software you want.
It's called Gatekeeper:
Now, such ramifications are not present here on the desktop OS, but is it SO unreasonable to expect such measures in 10.9? Or maybe, as I had originally read, the default is to only approved applications? Apple's slow march to a completely sealed environment like on the iOS devices seems inevitable, and raises some serious concerns. Given the insane trouble Opera had simply making a browser available on the iPhone, simply because it 'duplicated the functionality of Safari' (Apple's browser), there may be serious anti-trust issues ahead of Apple.
After all, if Microsoft can be sued and found liable because it included a browser with its OS, Apple's path seems destined for worse issues, particularly in the EU and China.
Other not-worth-mentionables-
Apple added a few other abilities to OSX with Mountain Lion, but they are insanely boring. First is screen mirroring for AppltTV, which as far as I can tell is pretty useless. It's mostly a business-oriented ability (powerpoint/keynote presentations), but requires a consumer-driven, entertainment product (AppleTV). Anyway, it sounds a lot like Intel's WiDi. Which has already been reasonably successful with the business crowd, but has found little traction with consumers, despite widespread deployment in consumer products.
Message syncing was also added, with iOS and OSX syncing so that your conversation over Apple's messenger application occurs simultaneously over your iPad, iPhone and iMac/Macbook. Again, I'm not sure what the value is here, since the Messenger app is (also) a closed ecosystem, so Gchat, AIM, MSN, BBM and other widely used messaging applications will not work with it. I guess you can use it to chat with your other Barista fans. (har har!)
Apple has also brought reminders and notes from iOS. Again, this seems like a duplication of functionality since the built in calendar app, despite being much maligned aesthetically, does these things already.
Saving graces-
So OSX (by the way, it's not Mac OSX anymore) 10.8 looks to be a snorefest, laced by ironic peeks at an Orwellian future for the desktop OS. However it's not AUTOMATICALLY destined for a Vista-like fate.
There are some aspects that can save it:
Price: Dear lord, Cupertino, make it free. Windows users have been getting such 'service packs' for years free of charge. I mean, if your naming scheme is any indication (Leopard -> Snow Leopard, Lion-> mountain lion), this is an incremental upgrade. Since Lion (the last 'major' upgrade was only $30, this one had better be free. Otherwise, it's just a sad money grab.
Accessibility: Apple's Mac Store is a great idea, one that Windows appears to be copying with its upcoming Windows Store. Just ask Valve how successful digital distribution of software can be. Making the installation easy and downloadable, Apple decreases the consumer-inertia that may be caused by the lack of anything new or interesting in this OS update.
Apple, make it free! Consumers will say, "why not? and download it. Then you can brag about your adoption metrics, additional sales and Mac Store users to drive more business! But be warned: if you decide to try and make a buck off of a minimal upgrade with a few cluttering bells and whistles, you may find Tim Cook looking a lot more like Steve Ballmer, and less like Steve Jobs, than you would probably like.
There is no reason for Apple to make Mountain Lion free. At $29 the benefit of upgrading is comparatively cheap compared to upgrading to a new version of Windows. Apple is switching to a yearly upgrade schedule of its Mac OS. If you think that what they added in ML isn't enough to upgrade you might find the same for each subsequent release as well. You left out a lot of new features that many people will see as a large reason to upgrade.
ReplyDeleteWhat, like GameCenter? Yea, not really. This is the equivalent of Lion SP 1or2. This is a few new pieces of functionality, but no really new elements of UX besides notifications, and again, that's catch-up functionality.
DeleteTalk about a straw man. There's so much more than just Game Center. Notes, Reminders, Messages, and iCloud Documents are well worth $30 for those customers who have iPhones or iPads, without question. The beta version of Messages has already become a crucial part of my computing experience.
DeleteIs there though? I mean, reminders and notes are functions of pretty much any free calendar application, including Google's calendar and tasks apps. And those sync across devices as is, with no problem (at least they do across my laptop/desktop and Droid2). And i can't remember the last time I felt like I wanted to pay ANY money for a messaging app...
DeleteBut again, that's just me. My point is that while there are some nice features added here with Mtn. Lion, but none of them alone or aggregated seem to be worth paying for, particularly with Windows 8 on the horizon.
Google's iOS apps aren't as good or deeply integrated as the built-in calendar, contacts, reminders, etc for iPhone/Mac users, such as myself. I'm not belittling those services in any way, but they aren't the ecosystem I've decided to use, and Mountain Lion for a one-time $30 charge will unify that experience even further.
DeleteMessages isn't just a messaging app, it allows me to put my phone down and ignore it and continue to text people right from my Mac. To me, that's a really big deal. It shows how our devices are becoming different-sized screens to view the same information and do the same things. Same deal for Notes, Reminders, and ESPECIALLY documents.
These are VERY good features. And to me, very good features are worth paying for, and $30 is not a steep price by any means.
Obvious flamebait but I'm bored so I'll bite.
ReplyDelete1. The whole "Is X Apple's Vista" is getting old. It's been used for pretty much every product they've released since Vista.
2. I very much doubt the Growl team are that dismayed at Notification Centre given the whole point of Growl was to try and get Apple to include it in the OS by default, or at least build something similar. I'd say their goals have been fulfilled in that case.
3. You can't really equate them to Windows' notifications as Apple doesn't notify on every single little thing, like a network becoming available or a mouse being plugged in.
4. This is the biggest one. Apple is not preventing you from running anything. And the default is quite different to what you state. By default you can run apps from the Mac App Store and (and this is the key part) identifier developers. 3rd party developers can register as identified for free. It just means if you start shipping malware Apple can revoke your credentials and those with this setting won't be affected by it. However, if you do want to you can turn it all off and run whatever you like. I see no reason for Apple to remove this, and indeed it could put pressure on them to bring it to iOS.
5. The AirPlay stuff is actually very useful if you own an Apple TV, and the mirroring will be amazing for watching flash streams on a big screen.
6. The Messenger App works with AIM, XMPP (Jabber/Google Talk) and Yahoo and has a plugin system (since Lion) so others can add support (eg for MSN).
7. Reminders and notes aren't duplication of the Mail and iCal functionality as this functionality has apparently been removed from these apps.
Helps to do a little bit of research first and a little bit less scare mongering ;)
Thx for the polite comment. The same cannot be said for everyone!
Delete2) well, at least some of the people at Growl are Growl employees, and not just part time coders. When your only platform does what you do and builds it into the system, you are bound to lose a significant number of customers.
3) Neither does windows. I switch between mice on my laptop all the time, and I only get a notification if it is a new mouse I have never used before. Same was true on XP. After the first install and notification, you just get the noise of a new device plugged in.
4) First of all, my bad on the default. Several sites I saw said this and all but one have since changed their statements as well. After this comment I'm going to fix it. That being said, the TREND is is the same, worrying direction: more Apple control, and we can see what happens on iOS devices when they have all the control they can get (the Opera browser saga, where it took threats of anti-trust suits to get them to fold).
5) I'm actually a big HTML-5 proponent, and recommended an AppleTV for my parents who wanted to play their ripped CDs on their home theater system in a room separate from their PC. That being said, I just don't see many people using this. I mean, Apple TV has never been a big seller for Apple, and as such the number of people with a Mac and an Apple TV are pretty small. After all, if WiDi has had such a difficult time convincing people to use it in the home, I don't see where Apple has something new to offer. People just aren't into HTPC like functionality as much as we thought.
7) If that's the case, what's the point of a calendar that doesn't send you notifications? Isnt that what Reminders is?
I take it you're a Windows fanboy. At any rate, I find most of the iOS features welcomed.
ReplyDeleteNo not really. I absolutely love Mac hardware, with the exception some of the iMacs. The Macbook Air is likely my next laptop.
DeleteThat being said, I really don't like their whole OS language. While I understand that to make things simpler, you have to remove options, I want to OPTION to have those options. I like the fact that I can dig through the registry and the services and other in-depth menus to control what my PC does. I don't do it often, but I want the option.
IMHO, the Mac OS is just too option-bare.
And in terms of iOS, the biggest issue I have is the lack of desktop widgets. I don't want to have to open my calendar app ot notification pane to see my upcomming events or data usage. I want it on my desktop. Again, that's not even an OPTION in iOS.
So, I'm not really a Windows/Windows PC fanboy, I just prefer windows over OSX/iOS.
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteAs the previous poster said... you did get some of your facts wrong. Pretty funny since its a Law School blog! LOL
ReplyDeleteYup, my bad. Some of my original sources had it wrong, and have since switched. I have updated and corrected the article.
DeleteI agree with you.
ReplyDeleteThe Macbook Air SSD is upgradeable, actually.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.anandtech.com/show/4824/owc-releases-6gbs-ssd-upgrades-for-2011-macbook-air
Sort of, but it's not really an upgrade the average user is going to do. It's like saying the new Droid4's battery is user-replaceable. TECHNICALLY you could, but the specialized tools ( pentalobe and T5 torx screwdrivers) and difficulty in doing so is such that few can.
DeleteNot to mention it's effect on your warranty and Apple's history of shutting down suppliers:
http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/report_apple_stops_third_party_macbook_air_ssd_upgrades/
Have to agree, Apple makes good hardware but a few bells and whistles is not the same as a new OS. Apple looking greedy here. Seriously OS X Snow Leopard is most functional and Lion removes features still has a few bugs and touts worthless Launchpad as a feature. Looks like the Applications folder to me, spotlight search still more functional.
ReplyDelete1. No, Vista wasn't good. Certainly not until SP1 at the very least, and even that… there's a reason why Vista adoption was poor.
ReplyDelete2. You yourself admit as much when you say that Vista's merit was that it laid the foundation for Windows 7.
3. Apple already had an OS release where, like Vista, most of the improvement was under the hood, laying the foundations for the future. It was called Snow Leopard (10.6). Unlike Vista, it wasn't a disaster. Despite the focus on internals, it still delivered enough new user-facing features to be compelling, and it only cost $29 to upgrade from Leopard. The "Lion" releases (10.7 and now 10.8) take advantage of the groundwork laid in 10.6.
4. "No Diet" - what in the world? Lion doesn't need a diet. It's already very slim.
4a. Also in "No Diet" - you claim Rosetta was added back. No, it wasn't. The article you linked which mentioned Rosetta concerned a problem with the 10.6.8 update, which was a Snow Leopard "service pack", not anything to do with Lion or Mt. Lion. As for the Lion problem you linked, one easily fixed glitch due to a slightly botched version of the installer for one Lion update does not make Lion "plagued by major issues".
5. "More Junk Food" - Clearly, you are wholly ignorant of computer science if you seriously think a grid of clickable icons for launching apps is an example of Apple fattening its OS up with horrible bloat.
5a. Also, no, there are not three ways to "view your active desktop and icons". You interact with application windows in the normal view. Mission Control helps you switch between application windows and arrange multi-desktop workspaces. Launchpad lets you launch applications from an iOS-like icon grid. These are not redundant features.
6. Notifications - seriously, you think XP system tray popups are the same thing? Those aren't notifications, they're a system for antagonizing and irritating the user. As in: Screw you, Windows, I know I plugged a mouse in. Why are you "installing a driver" just because I plugged it into a different USB port this time? No, for the thousandth time, I do not *(#$%#$-ing want to clean up my icons!
7. Choice - You still don't understand what Gatekeeper does, even after commenters have taken you to task. You'd be better off not saying anything till you actually show signs of having invested at least a tiny bit of effort in educating yourself.
ReplyDeleteThe default setting lets any developer who signs up to get a signing key ship an app without going through any kind of approval process. If it turns out they released malware with that key, Apple can revoke it. That's the limit of Apple's control. And if you really need to install stuff that's not signed at all, it's still an option, and no it isn't hidden or hard to get to. Literally 3 clicks. (One to bring up the Apple Menu, the second to select System Preferences, the third to click on "Security and Privacy" in System Prefs, exactly where you'd expect to find that sort of thing.)
7a. Calling this one out for special attention because YOU'RE A LAW STUDENT. I really hope one of your professors sees your ridiculous claim that Apple's in for some antitrust hurt. See, there's this little thing which even those of us who are thankfully not lawyers in training know about antitrust legislation, and that is that you need to have a monopoly for it to apply to you. Guess what Apple doesn't have? The only market segment where Apple might arguably have one is tablet computers. Macs? They're doing great, but last I heard they're still way under 25% marketshare even in their best market, North America.
8. AppleTV screen mirroring is a business-oriented feature? Bahahahaha! It's so people can display their computer's video output on a TV without having to connect any wires. That's kinda cool. It's not the greatest thing since sliced bread, but so what? This is worthy of your hate?
9. The Messages app is not a closed ecosystem. It wasn't when it was called iChat, and it won't be now. iChat today supports AIM, Yahoo, and Google chat out of the box, and has a plugin system so it's possible to add more (like MSN).
10. "Saving graces" -- Funny how this section actually turns out to be a way to bash Apple using stupid memes, mostly the "omg Apple OS upgrades are just service packs they should be free!" crap.
11. Even in the comments you're being dumb. It's super hard to use a pentalobe screwdriver and a torx screwdriver to undo a grand total of 9 screws, pull out the SSD, put a new one in, and reverse the process? No, no it isn't. I've worked on computers which are legitimately hard to work on. The only "hard" thing about that process for the MacBook Air is that Apple used a nonstandard screw head on the external screws. So OWC tosses a screwdriver in the upgrade kit. This is not rocket science, dude.
Want polite comments? Try posting something where it doesn't sound like you're going out of your way to be astonishingly ignorant (for someone presenting themselves as an authority) in literally almost everything you say.
With al due respect, no matter the content of my posts,monosyllabic name calling is never appropriate (not that you did, but others did).
DeleteThat being said, while you raise some good points, you must recognize that they are, for the most part, just as subjective and opinionated as my OP. This is, after all, a personal blog, I'm glad you too the time to post a comment. Or two.
No, I must not recognize that the points I made are just as subjective and opinionated as your OP, because they aren't. I corrected you on a ton of falsehoods.
DeleteAlso, as a lawyer-in-training, surely you must be aware that 'oh, it's just your opinion against mine', with the implication that all opinions are equal, is sheer idiocy. Not all opinions are equal! Yours, on this topic, are founded in near-total ignorance. As for mine, designing this kind of stuff is what I do for a living. Not Apple's stuff, I don't work for them or even for one of their suppliers, but what I'm telling you is that I am in fact an expert in this field.
Well, you're welcome to your 'expertise,' which, to be fair I'm going to doubt as long as you post anonymously.
DeleteSimilarly, let's call it what it is, I'm simply an armchair quarterback with a personal blog I post to FOR FUN. I, personally, think I know more about this stuff than the average Joe, and I think my concern regarding where Apple is heading is just as relevant despite any minor factual issues I may have had in the OP. I think Apple is going to a place where it is slowing its rate of real UX innovation, slowing its progress that has been so influential and important in the industry to this point, and aimed squarely at obsolescence by being mired in OSX.
Time to mix things up.
There's so much ignorance, misinformation and conjecture in this blog post that it's difficult to know what to address first and seems almost churlish to even attempt to try. But I'd genuinely like to know, if Apple hardware and software is apparently not to your liking, why your next laptop will be a MacBook Air.
ReplyDeleteBecause I love Apple computer hardware. For the most part, their devices are well built, and look phenomenal. I wouldn't buy an iMac or Mac mini, simply because they are pretty over priced and impossible to appreciably upgrade, but that 27" screen on the higher end imac is really nice. Note I said "computer" hardware. I have had 2 iPods (a gen 2 nano and an 8gb Touch that I won). Each one was not great. The nano was returned 28 days into owning it. The sound was ok, but the device itself was crashy and prone to scratches, even in teh empty pockets of my gym shorts. The Touch was a different story. I had purchased a Zune HD a few months before winning the touch, and after using both, it didn't hold up. The sound was sub par, the screen and back scratched very easily and the device was larger than the Zune. If I was looking for an app platform, granted, the Touch would have won, but as an mp3 player, the ZuneHD (and it's silly-sweet software and subscription) won hands down. Additionally, iTunes on Windows is (notoriously, as it turns out) a buggy, slow mess with a clunky and disingenuous install and update system.
DeleteIt's their software that I don't like, at the end of the day. iOS, to me, is impersonal, cold and just OK. Sure, the app ecosystem is amazing, but for me, a grid of apps is just not very appealing. My Droid 2, with it's home screen widgets etc presents to me a huge amount of information without even opening an app. And until recently, Android's notification system was hands and feet better than Apple's non-offering. Even after iOS added the Notification Center, the ICS version is again, generations ahead.
As afar as OSX is concerned, as you can see in my post, above, my issues are multi-part. TO make a long story short, my workflow does not fit within the strictures of the OSX organizational language. I don't "get" finder, and the OSX file system on an intuitive level. I never have. I know that about 9% of the population prefer it, and that's ok, but it's not for me.
TL:DR- I love Apple's computer industrial design, but my brain does not work well with Apple's software design ideals.
I would understand if it was the other way around. A real update would be moving from Lion to Snow Leopard. My GF has lion and that thing its a mess! I have Snow Leopard on mine and is so much smoother and practical to navigate and work. It's a feeling thing...i feel lost using lion and very much in control using Leopard...and i know how to config lion!
ReplyDelete