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The latest Mac OS X is now just OS X. The “Mac” is now gone. It’s a clear declaration of intentions. The end of Macintosh — the desktop metaphor that reigned supreme for more than two decades — is near.
Not the MacBooks and the iMacs, no, but what defines them. Their software soul. Two more years and it will be nothing but compost under the flowers of iOS.
Yes, yes, I know. “Outrage!” “Bring out the tar and the feathers!” “Burn him!”
Whatever.
The fact is that it’s happening. Apple is doing it, using an app-centric user experience model, and Microsoft is doing it too, with their information-centric Metro interface. The latter will take over Windows just like iOS is taking over OS X. Yes, Microsoft is killing the desktop metaphor it copied from Apple too.
This process started when Apple realised the success of the iPhone was unstoppable. That people just loved this “new” way of computing that required no files, that you could touch and manipulate naturally. It continued with the iPad, which has become more than just a content-consumption platform — taking over the enterprise and breaking into many types of content creation.
And yes, I hate to tell you I told you so, but I told you so.
It’s going to continue with Mountain Lion and the new MacBook Pro 2012s.
This is not just theoretical. It’s supported by what users are demanding. You just have to look at this chart made by Asymco’s Horace Deidu. Apple sold 156 million iOS devices in one year compared to 122 million Macs in 28 years.
Think about that. Thirty million more units in one year compared to the whole, nearly three-decade history of a product. Even taking into account the obvious expansion of computing during almost three decades and the price difference between a Mac and an iDevice, the amount is staggering.
This is why Apple is making so much money. And why Microsoft is fighting back with Metro.
Their user experiences will be different, but at the core of it is a database-driven world in which the user’s data — songs, videos, documents, plans, game scores, social identities — are in a soup accessible through all their devices. For Apple users, their information is accessible from apps which are mostly isolated. For Microsoft users, there’s a single sea of information that can be navigated in many different ways. The latter is potentially more powerful than Apple’s approach, but that’s the subject for another article.
The important thing is that the Finder and the Explorer are on their way out, that the desktop metaphor is about to die. Good riddance. Because it was never designed to support the staggering amount of information that we have to deal with every day. We’ve changed. Our information has changed. The Mac, the desktop — has to die.
So they’ve renamed their operating system, “operating system 10″, essentially?
“Because it was never designed to support the staggering amount of information that we have to deal with every day. We’ve changed. Our information has changed. The Mac, the desktop — has to die.”
I have, no doubt, tens of thousands of files on my iMac and MacBook Pro and yet I am fully at home navigating using Finder and keeping my stuff organised. Things like iTunes and Plex are useful to keep media organised, sure, but when it comes to my work I don’t want any computer organising that for me or hiding the folder structure so I can only access it through photoshop or illustrator or what have you. I will never trust a computer to keep track of my work, back it up, save superseded files etc. I want to be able to have my own file structure that suits me and my work which is different to how others work and their requirements which will be different to those who use computers purely for TV, music, email and light internet surfing and don’t need to worry about how the back end of their device works.
I’m happy to see Apple continuing to innovate and evolve their products but I hope they don’t forget about their professional user base altogether in this regard.
With that said I’m not so sure we will be seeing such a dramatic departure all so soon, at least I am sure that in the next few iterations of Mac OS – sorry, OSX – we will still be able to do all we can now in addition to the increasing convergence of OSX and iOS.
Onwards and upwards, Apple.
That’s a hell of a graph.
“The important thing is that the Finder and the Explorer are on their way out, that the desktop metaphor is about to die.”
I don’t think that’s necessarily true. It’s just that the desktop metaphor is going to become restricted to work (Word processing, software development, professional 2D and 3D art), and everything else is going to find a new way to work.
Not everything has always been confortable with the desktop metaphor anyway. Video games, for example, very rarely use standard windowing environments. Media playback has been flirting with ’10 foot’ modes for years now – Windows Media Centre, XBMC, Apple’s Front Row, etc.
Agree 100%. It’s a case of finding the suitable medium for each kind of media.
Absolutely. I work in data analysis; I couldn’t deal without a clear file structure with the sheer amount of similar looking & sounding spreadsheets I deal with every day.
I’d be fine with it for home computing, but for work? no way
28 years with Mac(intosh) as a name, it’s done very well. I hope they drop the ‘i’ prefix soon too, simply because (apart from the fact it came along in 1998) it’s copied by every other bloody unimaginative product development team around the world.
Useless fookers.
“Yes, Microsoft is killing the desktop metaphor it copied from Apple too.”
Way to troll.