OS X 10.7 Lion is the
"consumer" version of Mac OS X that has Paul Thurrott
excited, which can only mean that I will hate it. Any time the
owner of Paul Thurrott's Supersite for Window says nice things about
Apple, it is time to start looking over your shoulder.
Just to be clear, I am not a developer. I have not used a prerelease
copy of Lion. Except for a few screen shots and Apple's talking points,
I know nothing more about Lion than the average person.
iOS Is a Lightweight
In general, it is the marketing and positioning of Lion that I
oppose.
I own both an iPad and a half dozen computers with Mac OS X. It is
seldom that I use the iPad and think to myself, "Wow, I wish my
computer could do that!" The iPad is the toy car to my Toyota
Corolla.
What is nice in the toy is not acceptable for my
working device.
Sure, it is nice that my toy car is free from dependence on foreign
imported oil. But I don't really want to hassle with winding up my
Toyota to drive to work. What is nice in the toy is not acceptable for
my working device.
When OS X 10.6 Snow
Leopard made its debut, the features that got advertised were the
technological advances. It had better 64-bit features, such as more
theoretical allowed memory. There was OpenCL with the ability to use
the video card for general program uses, tapping into the power locked
away for graphics. It has Grand Central Dispatch to give developers
easy access to the multi-core power in the newest Macs.
It was technology, technology, technology.
Great Expectations Unmet
The problem is that most of those promises never quite happened. For
example, Apple promised:
Snow Leopard extends the 64-bit technology in Mac OS X
to support breakthrough amounts of RAM - up to a theoretical 16TB, or
500 times more than what is possible today.
You still can't install 16 TB of DDR3 RAM in the latest Mac Pro desktop. The most that
Apple supports is 64 GB, and that only in the dual-processor Mac
Pro.* The limit is built into the hardware, and updating your
operating system is not going to change it.
The problem with 64-bit operation, OpenCL, and Grand Central
Dispatch is that they rely on developers to implement the changes in
their programs. These are the same developers that kept using PowerPC
code (instead of creating universal binaries) years after Apple
switched to Intel. Based on history, Apple can't expect new technology
to get adopted fast enough for consumers to notice the difference.
To be fair to developers, most of what we do on a computer doesn't
need these improvements. For writing articles and surfing the Web,
software is already fast enough. At the end of the day, the technology
promises are nothing but wasted potential.
250 Useful New Features or 250 Pieces of Fluff?
This time, we get served up an integrated Mac App
Store, Launchpad,
and full screen
apps. Whoopee!?
Maybe these "advances" will get used, but they are not successes of
technology, except for the servers in the huge iCloud
data center in North Carolina. I want technology on my
computers, not those running in NC. (To appreciate the irony, I live in
NC.)
To be honest, I don't even like these "improvements". The App Store
is not about buying a product. You are not buying a product. There is
no CD or DVD. All you are purchasing is the license. Technically, this
was all the software vendors promised in the EULA, but when you got a
CD or DVD, you had something to resell on eBay.
Now you have nothing but the license.
The App Store is a glorified license manager, tracking which
licenses you paid for. If you don't pay your license fee, access to
that product is terminated. No more pirated software. No more reselling
old versions of apps. Once everyone has switched to this software
model, additional restrictions can be implemented like annual
subscriptions, termination for unauthorized use, in app advertising,
etc.
It is a software vendor's dream. Apple gains more control over your
computing experience, and it gets to make whatever profit it wants. The
fact that Apple is now skimming 30% off every app installed sold on its
App Stores, puts even Microsoft profiteering to shame.
Screen Clutter
Full screen apps are another joke. We wouldn't need full screen apps
if software developers didn't fill the screen with all their menus.
Apple and Microsoft are half to blame. Windows has the start menu at
the bottom of the screen and wants to stick the app launcher on the
right side. For Macs, we have the Dock at the bottom and the taskbar at
the top. Then every program window has similar docks, menu bars, and
floating palettes.
All of these could have been designed to hide like the Dock can.
As monitor size grew, so did all the junk cluttering up the screen.
It's like software developers worried more about sticking the controls
in our face so we didn't have to learn where to find them. The ribbon
interface by Microsoft is the biggest offender, with its large
buttons gobbling screen space. Sure full screen apps will be great, but
only because developers screwed up by filling the screen with
cruft.
Ribbon from Microsoft Word 2010
Launchpad is eye candy for the busy computer consumer, but the
reality is that two buttons is all most people would use. You need one
to launch the web browser and a second to launch a chat/email/text
editor combo app.
The Launchpad in OS X 10.7 Lion
Dumbing It Down
Let's face the truth: Apple is dumbing down the operating system for
those who do the least on a computer. We can pretend that they will use
dozens of programs, but the only dozens that they will use are games.
We could rename the launch window the game launch window. Aside from
games, surfing the Web is the only other thing most people do.
I could have put up with all the consumer fluff if Apple hadn't
removed Rosetta.
Rosetta is needed to run older programs written for PowerPC Macs, of
which I have a couple. I wouldn't mind Apple dropping Rosetta from Lion
if there were an easy way to run an older version of Mac OS X along
side Lion. If Lion were allowed to virtualize Snow Leopard the same way
virtualization software can run Windows, everything would be great.
I'm a cheapskate who thinks software should last for years,
especially if I've paid for it. If I switch to Lion, I will be forced
to buy new software - not because it does something new that I need. I
will have to purchase software only to regain what I lose from
switching to Lion.
I guess what I really hate about Lion is what it says about us. It
is a reflection of the modern computer consumer. It really is what we
want and/or need.
We are no longer a group of hackers, working away for hours on code.
We are your mom, dad, and grandma Regina. No one care about 32-bit
versus 64-bit, just give us a computer that works.
That is what Apple does best, and it is delivering.
