Monday, July 25, 2011

Mac OS X Lion and Apple's New Direction

As as tech junkie, I was VERY excited for the release of Apple's new OS. I love the direction our society is going by digitizing and mobilizing our lives. Apple's iPhone is the main reason why. Since the iPhone's release, the smartphone/consumer tech industry has taken off in ways that Wall Street could have never predicted or estimated.

I'm a year into my lifetime relationship with Apple, so I am still new to Mac's love. That said, I really like to see Google's Android and to a lesser extent, Microsoft Windows 7 (and soon Win8) Mobile. The rising competitor in the world of smartphones/tablets is HOPEFULLY WebOS by Palm. Palm (and soon RIM, the makers of the Blackberry) was a casualty of Apple's increasing market share. Hewlett Packard acquired the fledgling company and gave it the capital and resources that it truly deserved.

I think this competition for iOS is great. There's no doubt that Android and others have caught up in the creativity department; Android has passed iOS in devices activated, due to the fact that even the shittiest phone can run a lesser version of Android. That competitive force is very important for the industry. For the first couple of years, the iPhone was a serious underachiever, performance-wise. That didn't matter as people were gonna buy it regardless of how much it underperformed. It was still leaps and bounds ahead of the competition.

Google has closed that gap and naturally that rivalry between two creative giants means that we as consumers are the short and long term winners. How much was a 8GB 1st generation iPhone? Around $500. Now a 16GB iPhone4, which is ten times the device, is less than half the price...in less than 5 years. Absolutely amazing.

Lion:

iOS is the reason Macs are starting to take deep cuts into the margins of Microsoft in the consumer PC market, and no one understands that better than the evil empire over in Cupertino. Mac OS X Lion is Apple's first step in integrating their more traditional PC operating system to their mobile OS, as seen on the iPhone and iPad.

Lion has lots of influence from its mobile counterparts and I'm not sure that it was pulled off to the standard that most Mac users expected. There seem to be lots of great concepts included in Lion, such as full screen apps and the plethora of multi-touch gestures for the trackpad (HEAVY iOS influence). But I'm not sure I can accept the elimination of a feature like Expose. I use that more than any other Mac-exclusive feature, and it has apparently been replaced by something called Mission Control. MC seems like a great concept, but not at the expense of an Expose/Spaces.

I would like to see what Apple could do with trying to "unify" iOS and Mac OS. I have a blog post in the works that explains why tablets are on the rise and the MAIN concept that seperates them from tradional PCs and laptops. A MacbookPro could operate somewhat as an iPad with a keyboard and trackpad.

Based on all of my research, anyone who seems to know what they're talking about is saying that Apple has failed at that task. Since I have no hands-on experience with Lion, I can only go off the trusted reviews I have read.

I imagine Mac will never make that transition to an "Mac-iOS" as long as apps in the Mac App Store are as expensive as they have been since its release. Damn near every app of use is well over $10. I don't know if the costs of developing apps for Mac are substantially more than iOS, but that would be my guess. I have an app on my iPhone called Reeder, an RSS reader for Google Reader. The exact same app in the Mac App Store costs $10. Like I said, I'm no developer, but I've always heard that developing apps for iOS is incredibly easy and cheap, thus its domination over the Android Market and Windows App Marketplace (or whatever that garbage is called).

Wrap-Up:

I don't think Mac will ever be what Apple wants it to be (a laptop version of iOS) due to reasons that are probably way over my head. I know for a fact that the blind Apple fanboys are sucking Lion's cock like it blew away their expectations (expectations that they only had because Steve Jobs told them to have them), and other more practical users of Mac are disappointed. I have lots of stuff to buy in regards to my laptop and phone, so I can't justify spending $30 on an OS that seems to have been rushed out in order to capitalize on iOS's popularity.

Apple is genius the way it plays the market and the way it markets itself. When looking at it that way, the release of Lion is no surprise, flaws and all. Last week, Apple released record numbers for the 2nd quarter. Within that week, new commercials for the iPad/iPhone began airing and they released Lion. From an economic standpoint, it would have almost been irresponsible not to release Lion when they did.

Also, the changes and development going into iOS5 and the iPhone5 are astounding. The public, as well as myself, have been conditioned to get more excited for mobile upgrades than more subtle updates to desktops. Desktops work similar to the desktops of the 90's, except faster, better, and more efficient. A phone/tablet from the 90's is unrecognizable to the devices being released today.

2 comments:

  1. Palm was hardly a fledgling company when acquired by HP

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  2. I have an htc incredible and I refuse to buy apple. I think those who do are mindless sheep. The HTC evo is technically better and faster than the Iphone and if you drop the Iphone once it is as broke as back mountain. HTC actually makes durable products, while apple purposefully makes shoddy products and then when those products mess up, they make you buy a new one. As with PC and mac, I refuse to pay three times the amount for an inferior product. I am used to the windows system and I feel like the apple product is not user friendly. I am as anti seeb/apple as they get. I do not understand why so many people want to have steve job's children.

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