10 ms·
Apple to announce OS 10.7 (probably) on October 20
- captaincrowbar 16y agoAnd to save you asking the obvious first question: the announcement has a picture of a lion on it.
- frou_dh 16y agoLion: King of beasts. Lion: King of OS X big cat releases -- Last 10.x?
- pohl 16y agoOne could go in almost any direction, like bible codes[1], by trying to infer things from the nature of the particular cat in question. For example, "Lions are unusually social compared to other cats,"[2] which means that MacOS X Lion could have social networking as its main feature. Just pick what you hope for the most and find a way to tie it to the critter. I only wish they had gone with "Liger". [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bible_code http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bible_code [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion
- frou_dh 16y agoNah. I think alternate interpretations would be comparatively obscure, at least in the US/UK :-)
- mike-cardwell 16y agoIf they had a sense of humour they'd release "OSX Kitten" after "OSX Lion"
- s3graham 16y agohttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5R6wWgVp9kA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5R6wWgVp9kA
- ugh 16y agoThere was nothing leopardy about Leopard and nothing tigery about Tiger so I would expect there to be nothing liony about Lion.
- iuguy 16y agoGiven that OSX has got to a fairly stable point, what would you want to see in a new version of OSX that would make you want to upgrade?
- aaront 16y agoMaybe a UI overhaul. They've been teasing us for years with iTunes. Time to finally ditch Aqua. Maybe something MacRuby related? Maybe making it a first class language?
- Corrado 16y agoThat's a good question. I'm guessing that UI tweaks will be the order of the day: - I remember when the Dock was a new idea; will there be a similar revelation in task management? - The "Spaces" feature could use some work to bring it up to par with similar functionality in Ubuntu. - Complete the transition to 64-bit for every single Apple sub-system|program. - Tighter integration/control of external stuff: AppleTV, Airport Express, etc.
- Timothee 16y ago- Tighter integration/control of external stuff: AppleTV, Airport Express, etc. Not that I have any hope of seeing this, but I would extend it to iPhones, iPad, etc. for things like sharing clipboards, using the computer's mic/audio to pick up the phone, direct access to the iPhone's camera from the desktop... basically make the relationship between the computers and devices more symbiotic.
- jws 16y agoSnow Leopard was all about the internals. UI changes were not a priority. Apple has presumably learned much from their iOS work that will inform their thinking about how people want to interact with a device. I don't think we'll see a touch-the-screen interface, but we might see an interface that is less file/application oriented and more task oriented. It won't be a replacement, but it might be a new direction. Oh, and some gradients and textures will be slightly different and 10,000 blogs posts will be written about that.
- cemregr 16y agoMaybe they will finally implement resolution-independent UI and release some Retina notebooks, who knows? There's already a higher-resolution 15" MBP available, would be great to see more of that.
- slantyyz 16y agoI tend to think that Retina on larger screens (iPad sized and larger) still a ways off for cost and gpu/battery reasons. I mean, doesn't a 30" monitor require dual-link capability to feed that resolution? A retina display on even an iPad sized screen would approach that type of resolution.
- frou_dh 16y agoDual link is DVI terminology isn't it? Apple use DisplayPort now. I'm not sure what bandwidth concerns devices with integrated screens have.
- slantyyz 16y agoOops. All I meant was that the processing of all those bits would eat a lot cycles. It came out incorrectly.
- wtallis 16y agoThe dual-link thing only applies to DVI, which Apple doesn't even use externally anymore, let alone internally. Also, the success of AMD's Eyefinity shows that modern GPUs can handle very high resolutions effortlessly for anything other than complicated 3d rendering. 2D and simple 3D (of the sort that might be used by a compositing window manager) are too easy. The only limitation is that producing very high DPI displays in large sizes with acceptable defect rates is extremely expensive.
- ugh 16y agoA 15" laptop would need something like 4000×3000 pixel to equal the current iPhone’s resolution. (A 30" screen would accordingly need something like 8000×6000 pixel.) I don’t even know whether that‘s currently feasible below the price of a small car or something like that. I wouldn’t expect 300+ ppi (“Retina“) screens anytime soon but resolution independence sure would be nice. (And later maybe some 200+ dpi screens.)
- c1sc0 16y agoI'm not really looking forward to that. With each upgrade comes that little bit of agony about the unix underpinnings: what are they going to do to the default python install? Ruby? ...
- xorglorb 16y agoAdd MacPorts (/opt/local/bin) to the front of your path and you have fully updated versions of all of your favorite UNIX goodies such as Emacs, Clang and Python.
- mortenjorck 16y agoIn 2009, Apple added a video camera to the otherwise perfected iPod Nano. It was a sign: While one might have had to be quite prescient to imagine exactly what would come after it, it was obvious that Apple felt it had reached the end of what could be innovated with that form factor. The 2010 reinvention of the Nano was the only logical next step, at least for Apple. In 2009, Apple released Snow Leopard, whose emphasis on optimization and subtle improvement seemed to signal the same kind of state for the operating system as the addiiton of a camera signaled for the Nano. I think it's safe to say that what comes next will be fairly big. I have a suspicion that among other things, 10.7 will introduce some new conventions to the basic problems of window management (though I might be a little biased). Apple has been at the forefront of dealing with it ever since Exposé debuted with 10.3, but in the years since the iPhone, iOS has thrown this problem into sharp relief. Part of me hopes they might even announce something that bears a resemblance to 10/GUI's linear window management -- I've unfortunately proven I can't really do much with the concept myself so far.
- Timothee 16y agoI have a suspicion that among other things, 10.7 will introduce some new conventions to the basic problems of window management (though I might be a little biased). For anyone not sure why mortenjock is biased, I recommend viewing his concept video 10GUI http://10gui.com/video/ http://10gui.com/video/ The recent Magic Trackpad would tend to support your ideas here.
- noelchurchill 16y agoWow that is so cool.
- blehn 16y agoOut of curiosity, how do you think you'd react if Apple implemented something that closely resembled 10/GUI? Do you have any patents for it? Didn't they interview you for a job at one point? Did they indicate if they were experimenting with new desktop UI frameworks?
- 16y ago
- kogus 16y agoI wish they would get rid of the absurd "mount a disk before you run an installer" paradigm. Installing an app downloaded from the web, Windows vs Mac: Windows: 1 - Click a download link 2 - Yes, I'm sure 3 - Run 4 - Next, Next, Next, Finish 5 - Delete the setup file OS X: 1 - Click a download link 2 - Yes, I'm sure 3 - Open a finder window 4 - Open .dmg file, and it mounts 5 - Open the mounted image 6 - Run the installer (or drag it somewhere, depending on the app) 7 - Continue, Continue, Finish 8 - Unmount the image 9 - Delete the .dmg file
- pmjordan 16y agoIn fairness, steps 1-5 or some subset of them are combined into one or two, depending on your browser.
- alextgordon 16y agoI agree the description is a little unfair, but the point is sound. This is how it should work 1. User clicks download link 2. Browser downloads a standard cross-platform .zip file, decompresses in a temporary directory 3. Browser notifies OS. 4. OS looks in Info.plist for instructions on where to install, possibly mpkg for more complex installers 5. OS prompts user for permission to install and possibly run the app, or passes user over to Installer.app for complex installs 6. Temporary files are deleted From the user's perspective it would work like this 1. Click download link 2. Click "Install and Run"
- frou_dh 16y agoA lot of application DMGs feeling they have to give the Finder window a custom background image directing you to drag the .app to /Applications/ does indicte the paradigm is a bit shabby.
- s3graham 16y agoTBH, both Windows and Mac feel painful these days. Ubuntu: 1 - Select package(s) 2 - Click Apply (or use the command line to reduce to 1 step)
- 16y ago
- siglesias 16y agoJust dropping some speculation here, as many are wondering what Lion can possibly offer that's new (and I don't mean a fix, but new). Touch. Deep integration with touch. As you see with the release of the Magic Trackpad, Apple is retiring the traditional mouse paradigm and moving on to versatile and complex gestures to aid in window management. Four finger swipe for expose and show desktop has been godsend for productivity, as has three fingers up and down for switching between h/m files in xcode. Let's not forget swipe to go back and forth in browsers, pinch to zoom, rotation, etc... None of which is possible with the standard mouse. And peruse through Apple's touch gesture patent library and you will see that they haven't implemented a fraction of what they have patents to. You have neat stuff like three finger pinch (possible to close/hide a window, save), non-adjacent finger scroll (ex. thumb and ring finger, note that Magic Trackpad is big enough for this one, but existing options on MBP are not), and several others involving rotation and unconventional finger combos. Expect for these gestures to be baked deeply into the new iMovie, iPhoto, and iTunes. Seriously, can you imagine alternate paradigms for simply grabbing video from a bin once you account for different numbers of fingers involved in the drag? A preview of Lion with these features will allow them to sell the next generation MBP with a new, much larger trackpad to accommodate the new focus on touch and touch gestures. If Apple scores a hit with this new focus on touch, it will be another competitive headache for thin, underpowered clients that serve up web content and can't handle advanced video and photo editing, not to mention lack large surface areas for touch gesturing. What's in it for Apple: If you think about this from a competitive standpoint, most of Apple's competitors want to lift computing into the cloud--Google with Chrome OS, HP with WebOS, and even MSFT with Ballmer's pronouncements of "cloud speed". Apple's strategy, and profits, are vested in adding weights to computing to take advantage of powerful, local, GPU and CPU intensive tasks, thus slowing, or even reversing the shift towards browsers and web applications, in keeping us grounded in powerful, local machines. If Apple finally figures out a way to get your mom editing video with powerful and intuitive new touch gestures, how is a web application going to respond to this from the confines of a browser? How is Microsoft going to coordinate with clone makers to agree on standard sizes and performance of computationally complex multi-touch trackpads? Touch and media editing all the way.
- frou_dh 16y agoExpanded trackpad gestures are a good idea, though geeks who are big in to keyboard shortcuts can already have a pretty great experience. You can do all your window focus and visibility with the keyboard. Add a 3rd party utility like SizeUp/Divvy and you have movement and reizing, too.
- colomon 16y agoSo they're going to announce 10.7 about the time I finally get around to installing 10.6 (if all goes according to plan).
- ojbyrne 16y agoI own 3 macs, but I'm still amused that a pre-announcement of an announcement generates so much discussion.
- runjake 16y agoTwo words for 10.7: Touch. Ok, that's one word, but you get the point. Multitouch trackpads and gestures in 10.6 are only the start.