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Posts tagged with "lion"

iOS X

Like it or not, Apple is going back to the Mac. The regular Mac user, fan, fanboy – whatever you’d like to call someone who showed a deep affection to Apple’s desktop operating system for the past decade – should like the fact that Steve Jobs confirmed Apple is still committed to making the best personal computers, based on OS X. The same regular Mac user, though, is immensely scared by the concept underlying Jobs’ statements: Apple is going back to the Mac, taking the good things learned in 3 years of iOS development with them. OS X turned into iPhone OS. iPhone OS became iOS for iPhone and iPad. Now, everything’s going back to where it all started: the Mac.

We have heard this story before. In fact, we all commented on Apple’s October 20th event by saying that, with the right approach, the Mac App Store and some iOS elements coming to the Mac might be the best thing that ever happened to the platform in years. Read more

Is This The Finder You Want in OS X Lion?

With the Mac App Store reportedly around the corner and OS X Lion set to ship sometimes next summer, we are going to see hundreds of new apps coming to the Mac in the next months. Thanks to a unified purchase system modeled after the insanely successful iOS App Store and all the excitement around a major new version of OS X, developers are jumping to the Mac once again. The interesting apps released in these past weeks confirm that the Mac is far from “dead”.

Still, there’s one application users would like Apple to slightly tweak and / or completely change: the Finder. Some would be fine with a tweaked version inspired by TotalFinder, some claim Apple is going after a Finder-less model just like on iOS. And while we don’t think Apple is going to kill the Finder just yet, we’re definitely playing around with the idea of a massive update to OS X default file manager come Lion next year. Read more

Mac Of The Future→

Mac Of The Future

From its experience with iOS, Apple believes it has discovered—or perhaps rediscovered—the secret to selling consumer technology products: simplicity. This doesn’t mean that the Mac we know and love will disappear. Rather, by stealing the most successful ideas from iOS, the Mac OS of tomorrow could slowly shed its legacy constraints while still remaining true to the power, utility, and spirit that has always defined the Mac.

And we haven’t seen anything about Lion yet – Mac App Store and Launchpad aside. Exciting times ahead for Mac users.

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Apple Considering Scrollable Menus and Toolbars For Lion and iOS 5?

A new European patent filing discovered by Patently Apple details how Apple might implement different interaction methods for menus and toolbars in the next version of OS X, Lion, and in the future iteration of their mobile operating system, iOS. The patent, filed in Q2 1010 and published last week, shows two specific models: scrollable menus and toolbars.

The main concept behind the patent is that menus and toolbars take too much space on screen, and the large majority of users don’t need to look at these elements all the time. To save space and implement multitouch gesture-based navigation in menus, there could be a way to scroll through toolbar icons and dropdown menus both on the desktop and iPhone / iPad. Read more

John Gruber On The Idea of iPad Apps Running on Mac OS X→

John Gruber On The Idea of iPad Apps Running on Mac OS X

I can prove it, practically, that iPad apps aren’t going to run on the Mac as a standard feature. iOS apps do run on Mac OS X, today, in the iPhone/iPad emulator that ships with the iOS developer kit. Ends up they’re just not that pleasant to use on a Mac. Gestures that are natural and fun with direct touch are awkward and clumsy using a mouse or touchpad.

And we thought this idea of iOS apps running as “widgets” on the desktop had been buried in the darkest corners of the blogosphere. Turns out some people are still claiming it’d be a “great addition to OS X”. Too bad Apple is not Adobe, and they don’t care about “cross-platform interoperability” as much as they care about “single-platform excellence”.

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Apple’s Next Macintosh OS→

Apple’s Next Macintosh OS

Compare the bulldozer approach to what Apple did when it designed the A4, the “dark inside” of the iPad. Apple’s next Mac processor could be a multicore (or multi-chip) ARM derivative. And the company has proven time and again that it knows how to port software, and its support of the Open Source LLVM and Clang projects give it additional hardware independence. We all know the Apple Way: Integration. From bare metal to the flesh, from the processor to the Apple Store. Hardware, OS, applications, distribution… Apple knows how to control its own destiny.

And indeed, they’re committed to making a centralized integrated ecosystem the bet on their destiny.

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Should Lion Be Distributed On USB Keys?→

Should Lion Be Distributed On USB Keys?

A Redditor wonders if Apple is going to ditch the CD for the new OS distribution:

The new MB Airs ship with their restore software on a USB key, as they have no optical drive. Obviously those machines will need a way to upgrade to 10.7, and the remote disc stuff, while it works, doesn’t seem very Apple-ish. We know next to nothing about Lion at this point, and I’m not convinced that Apple is out to kill the optical disc. But I wonder: Will the next version of Mac OS X ship, not on a DVD, but on a USB key?

Obviously DVDs are cheaper and faster to print. But if you think about Apple and the “dangerous” decisions they made in the past, this kind of makes sense.

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A Black Menubar in Lion?→

A Black Menubar in Lion?

Neven Mrgan:

A suggestion for Mac OS X Lion: since the team is trying to integrate the menubar into the desktop a bit more, to make it less prominent - the translucent menubar was an attempt at just this - why not go all the way and make it black?

I’ve always wanted such an option, and it would fit with the latest trend of monochromatic icons. The new Airs don’t come with black bezels, though.

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“Back to the Mac” Event in 100 Seconds, Full 1080p Video Now On Youtube

For those of you who’ve just come home from work and would like to fire up some videos on that shiny new Apple TV: you can either choose between a 50 to 1 slimmed down version of the Back to the Mac event video, or enjoy the full show in 1080p on Youtube.

Both videos are embedded below. With HD version finally available for streaming, expect us to dig into those Lion screenshots even more. Read more