"OS X Mountain Lion arrives this summer. With all-new features inspired by iPad, the Mac just keeps getting better and better."
Am I the only person that doesn't want an ipad on the desktop?
Am I the only person that doesn't want an ipad on the desktop?
It seems to me that contrary to Gruber's claim, OSX is moving towards iOS and iOS is moving towards its competition.
Oh, not much--just the whole kernel, userland, graphics layer, and half of the Cocoa API.
EDIT: Also, Spotlight.
Most of the rest of the features that people are listing don't seem right, like both iOS and OS X have a search called Spotlight but they aren't very similar in UI.
It's no secret that Apple is basically creating a hardware software empire where everything from the physical computer to the peripherals to the software and even web services are all Apple. I've been fine with that because the Mac never tried to force things on me. I've always had the option to use a different email client, Dropbox, music player, etc. without any trouble but I'm afraid Apple will move OS X in the direction of Windows where the OS assumes you're going to use its preferred software and services and if you don't it either makes it a hassle to use alternatives or it continuously throws up those annoying notifications.
All that aside, I'm most afraid for how friendly it will be to developers. Snow Leopard was the last OS X that was perfect for me as a developer. In Lion I have to deal with things like LLVM as the default compiler outdated command line tools, some Ruby gems give me problems, the system won't allow you to save hidden files (i.e. ".htaccess") and the list goes on.
I know that developers and power users are in the minority and that for average folks who are all about media and entertainment with a little work thrown in Mountain Lion will be aweso,e out of the box. I'm glad they're making such an awesome system for those people but I feel like they're leaving developers out and not even giving us a way to switch off some of those default behaviors.
I'm only 25 but I feel like I sound like the old guy who thinks things were better "back in the old days". Maybe I am just resisting a good thing and I hope I learn to love it.
> the system won't allow you to save hidden files (i.e. ".htaccess") and the list goes on.
I don't believe that is true, unless you're having problems with a specific editor?
It also seems there's a trend here, with Apple bringing iOS increasingly into OSX and Microsoft bringing Windows Phone into Windows 8, the only operating systems which still are aimed primarily at computer users are Unix or Linux based.
The "Back to the Mac" line might be good marketing but massive over sell if viewed as literal truth. What they did was identify a few holes in the UI (for instance that you might not have every application you wanted in your dock but that going through your applications folder was a pain) and fill them with iOS-ish solutions.
But if you don't want them, you don't use them, they've not taken any of the old stuff away.
And they did screw with the old ui stuff in Lion. For example, they completely fucked up Spaces when they merged everything into Mission Control. It now takes twice as long to move between spaces; you're treated to a stupid iOS-style "fade in" animation, wasting even more of your time; the steps to move a window between spaces is now more complicated; and they removed rows. Why? I assume they wanted to make it look exactly the way it does on iOS, where you just have a horizontal series of windows. This is simple and intuitive. It's also stupid as hell.
Because you can organise them, group related stuff together and so on as opposed to having a single long list. I admit that I don't really use it (I prefer stacks in the dock) but it's better than the application folder.
> And they did screw with the old ui stuff in Lion. For example, they completely fucked up Spaces when they merged everything into Mission Control. It now takes twice as long to move between spaces; you're treated to a stupid iOS-style "fade in" animation, wasting even more of your time; the steps to move a window between spaces is now more complicated; and they removed rows. Why? I assume they wanted to make it look exactly the way it does on iOS, where you just have a horizontal series of windows.
Fair enough, I didn't really use Spaces previously so I'd not noticed the changes, though I'm not sure what you mean about the fade in. Mine transitions very quickly between spaces with no fade in.
> This is simple and intuitive. It's also stupid as hell.
Can you explain this? Simple and intuitive are good. How is that stupid.
In fact, other than the reverse scrolling behaviour (which would be easy to revert if I cared) I rarely notice any difference in behaviour between my Lion laptop and my girlfriend's Snow Leopard laptop.
Lion is great. Swiping between full-screen desktops is a huge productivity boost. Touchpad gestures instead of hotkeys to bring up Expose is awesome. Yes it's iOS-ified, but it takes the good things from iOS that fit naturally with the touchpad.
At the same time, the UNIX guts of OS X keep getting better. Grand Central is an awesome API that you can use from C. 64-bit support is almost seamless. You can swipe just fine between full-screen terminal windows. Xcode keeps getting less shitty, LLVM and LLDB keep getting better. Objective-C keeps seeing feature and performance improvements. The API's keep being improved.
People are afraid that the gains for iOS means losses for OS X, but all I've seen so far are gains for OS X, largely focused on revamping the UI to take full advantage of the multi-touch capabilities of modern Mac hardware.
Are you kidding? XCode 4 is one of the most unstable pieces of software that Apple has ever released. It crashes all the time and is borderline unacceptable as an IDE.
Check out: https://twitter.com/search/realtime/xcode%20crash
Thanks but no thanks.
I'm a huge fan of the inverted scrolling, though.
This is a much smaller burden to me than having to wait for OSX to launch all sorts of random apps after every single reboot. Most of which I simply close right away anyway because there's no point in having them clutter my screen until I actually need them again.
I.e. I really don't need iTerm to resume because it can't restore my sessions anyway. And even most regular apps fail to resume for me because almost all of my files are on a network share that OSX fails to auto-mount.
On inverted scroll, it's great until you have to use someone else's mac or a PC then it just gets painful.
It would be nice if there was a proper system preference though.
But this update feels like it's creeping towards a heavily consumer facing product. My workhorse is being swapped for a show pony...
(no doubt it'll still do the job, it just a totally unfounded feeling I have)
Two questions:
1) you think you are different than a consumer how?
2) what exactly do you see this update taking away from you?
2) Nothing. But now I'm buying a consumer product to do my work. It's like Iron Maiden using Garageband, or Philip Halsman using Instagram. (not that I would compare myself to them, but you get the idea)
That's just way of the world, I'm not complaining, it's great to get these creative tools to as many people as possible. But my original point still stands.
Of course you still have to have a tallent to make anything of these tools, no matter how point-and-click they are, even so they're robbing me of that feeling of achievement and pride that I had in being able to handle a tool that not many could... and yes, I'm aware that I'm beginning to sound like an old man.
Anybody reading this page is likely to be told they aren't a "consumer." I was having that problem with Ubuntu Linux, for goodness' sake, though in Linux they call it a "Real Person(tm)" instead of a consumer. As in, "Of course XYZ doesn't work out of the box if you run an alternative window manager, because a Real Person doesn't run alternative window managers, and Ubuntu is for Real People."
Based on that, I think it's a valid concern that in focusing on "consumers" or "normal people" or however you want to put it, Apple might fail to take care of the artists, designers, and musicians who have historically been a strong part of its user base. One consistent goal for the Mac has been to be a computer for people who don't want to learn how to use their computer. That could be interpreted to exclude designers, artists, musicians, and so on, because they use very sophisticated software tools with steep learning curves. It would be very easy to lose sight of the distinction between people who enjoy having a sophisticated understanding of their computer (nerrrrds! not a high value or high prestige market) and people who have to use sophisticated software to get their work done (artists, designers, directors, musicians -- a high prestige, trendsetting market.)
For me the distinction is this. If a feature is being taken from a consumer (e.g., me as a consumer), I say bummer and find a new hobby. No Apple remote and Front Row anymore? Oh well, it was fun while it lasted.
If I use a feature in a professional workflow and it disappears, then I want at the very least a big fat warning before upgrading, but it'd be better if nothing disappeared altogether; or alternatively, if I could stay on the older version.
The current trend with Apple is to radically drop features that are only used by <n% of users and to always require the latest OS for everything. You cannot sync contacts off a 32-bit Mac anymore because MobileMe is running out and Lion/iCloud is 64-bit only. And on my 64-bit machine, I only found out that iSync was gone after I upgraded and held a (replacement) dumbphone in my hand.
Or look at OS X server, which I am happy I didn't buy. The reviews on the MAS are devastating and I was wondering if it would ever rise from beta software quality. If you relied on OS X server, well joke's on you.
That said, I think 10.8 in particular is only 10.7 with lipstick to directly compete against Windows 8. (Notice even the version numbers?) But 10.7 did cause lots of damage.
Such as?
OSX Server gained a simple user interface mode but otherwise is basically the same thing and now it's only $50. Just install the Server Admin package. It's exactly the same as 10.6 You can do HTTPD, VPN, POP/IMAP mail server, net boot, software update server, DNS, DHCP, etc. From what I can tell all the same functionality is there. Maybe there are some small things missing?
iSync is a relic of a bygone era that hasn't seen any updates in many years. There are better tools available like The Missing Sync. This company focuses on making a really good tool for the small number of people who need it. Apple can't cater to every niche. If they can't do it right they shouldn't do it at all IMO.
Keychain syncing is one thing I would agree on. I found it very useful. I suspect it will be coming back in the future. Apple may not have been totally comfortable with managing the keychains of 100 million people quite yet.
I don't think these changes have anything to do with iOS-ification or whatever. They were going to happen either way.
Put another way, in 2009 at MacWorld there was unanimous consent among my fellow IT track speakers that anyone with non-trivial needs should be using Linux servers for Mac clients, due entirely to the obvious low priority of the server product. Making it a $50 app store add-on is the first step in simply acknowledging that Apple is really a consumer product company and unwilling to devote the significant resources needed to stay competitive in the traditional IT market.
I have been running Lion and do not feel that it makes my computer less of a workhorse. I dont think that ML will make it less of a workhorse. I see this update as adding a bunch of stuff, some of which will be useful to developers, and not removing anything that made me fall in love with my Mac as a dev platform.
Schools used Macs because they were cheap (for the schools). Creatives used Macs because the tools were better. 99% of the other Mac users used Macs because it was more consumer friendly than the business-oriented Windows. Apple has never been in the business of catering to business.
Personally, I think it was a big mistake for Apple to do this. I find it very un-intuitive. Even if the design of the way windows scroll was ultimately an arbitrary decision, it's ingrained now. I think it was silly to change it.
I don't use it everytime I launch somthing (I use alfred for that), but to refresh my memory every now and then.
It doesn't work exactly like I would like it too, but it's not bad, and it's very out of the way if you don't like it.
I love them both, but they are drastically different products and uses.
All I see is popular out-of-the-box iOS apps/features being brought to the out-of-the-box OS X experience.
What power users don't already have growl, dropbox, a dedicated notes app, a dedicated reminders app, an integrated chat client, etc?
These Mountain Lion features are only iOS-like inasmuch as iOS had them out-of-the_box, while OS X users looked to third parties to provide them. If you ask me, Mountain Lion sounds like a more reasoned approach to "bring what works about iOS to OS X" than misfires like "Mission Control".