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Mountain Lion: John Gruber's personal briefing

419 points by MaxGabriel 15y ago

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rjj 15y ago
I'm struck by the self-awareness that it takes to NOT have a marketing event for the announcement of your new operating system. Wow. Also, fascinating how the iPhone is the first step in the halo effect but at the same time is also the most profitable. They are building on the halo effect and lock in of the iPhone/iPad to the Mac ecosystem.
pavlov 15y ago
So John Gruber is basically an official Apple announcement channel now?
- Tloewald 15y ago
  It's being announced all over the place.
  - pavlov 15y ago
    The difference is that other journalists who got the preview also write about other products, whereas Gruber only writes about Apple. When an Apple-exclusive blog gets preferential treatment and news scoops directly from Apple, it's reasonable to ask whether it's anything more than Phil Schiller's astroturfing outlet.
    - smackfu 15y ago
      You could say the same about MacWorld.
      - pavlov 15y ago
        Being compared to MacWorld is hardly an endorsement of an independent blogger's journalistic integrity.
        smackfu 15y ago
        But it is rather odd to complain that getting a briefing to a "biased" reporter is unusual. It's like Thurott getting briefed on Windows stuff, S.O.P.
    - tvon 15y ago
      Gruber is not at all Apple exclusive, but he is clearly a fan.
    - coob 15y ago
      As someone who has Gruber's musings on baseball pop up all over his twitter and RSS clients, I'm inclined to disagree.
    - deleted 15y ago
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- kikocherman 15y ago
  He probably believes in every word he writes, but Apple sure seems him as one channel.
- tvon 15y ago
  I suspect he isn't the only one that got this treatment, though it would be amusing if he was (and I'm sure it will cause a big kerfuffle).
- mmahemoff 15y ago
  Well, MG Siegler managed to get access to Chrome for Android before it was public and he's hardly a Google fanboy.
- jws 15y ago
  I think we might be seeing is Apple acknowledging that journalists are going to have "blind men and an elephant"[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_men_and_an_elephant http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_men_and_an_elephant] problems, and arranging to have a sufficient number of blind men feel the elephant to get the whole description, and all tell their stories at once only makes sense. You've got Gruber talking about only on the most visible features, but spending more thought on corporate communication strategy and iCloud directions. Jason Snell articulates new features as clearly as I'd expect from an Apple "New in Mountain Lion" page. Edward Mendelson I think covers even more features, but not as clearly as Jason Snell, and I think his vision of "AirPlay display to TV" -> "Mac is video game console" is fatally doomed by latency.[1] But it's ok. We have enough people touching the elephant and describing it to dilute that. So here you have the new strategy for non-event announcements. Arrange for simultaneous views from multiple, competent sources. Let the first sounds in the echo chamber be accurate and well informed to keep the erroneous speculation to a minimum. EOM [1] I could also be wrong here. With gigabit 802.11ac just around the corner, one could conceive of a TV device that optimized the latency from wifi to screen. You know, by tearing apart the industry's entrenched model and doing their own vision. But I'm just groping an elephant here.
- deleted 15y ago
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- malyk 15y ago
  Gruber has a rabid following of hardcore apple lovers. Just the kind of people who are going to be most interested in these announcements. They would be dumb not to get him involved in this type of release (which I think we'll see more of in the future).
Tloewald 15y ago
I assume an embargo was lifted and we'll get a bunch of these. Another possible implication may be that Mac OS X becomes a free update for everyone. The three tiered app security thing is huge and great. I love it. I hope they've ditched some skumorphism.
- beaumartinez 15y ago
  > I hope they've ditched some skeuomorphism. It's worse than ever—have a look at some of the screenshots[1]. My favourite is the tweet dialog[2]. [1] http://www.macworld.com/article/165407/2012/02/hands_on_with_apples_new_os_x_mountain_lion.html http://www.macworld.com/article/165407/2012/02/hands_on_with... [2] http://images.macworld.com/images/article/2012/02/tweetsheet-full-272427.jpg http://images.macworld.com/images/article/2012/02/tweetsheet...
  - batista 15y ago
    It's worse than ever—have a look at some of the screenshots[1]. My favourite is the tweet dialog[2] Actually there's nothing of the "bad skeuomorphic UI" about the tweet dialog --it's just that its' background resembles a lined notepad. Other than that, it looks and behaves like any other text entry box and has non skeuomorphic send etc buttons. So, "worse than ever"? Hardly.
    - sirn 15y ago
      What about Game Center[1]? [1]: http://assets.sbnation.com/assets/953451/Screen_Shot_2012-02-15_at_7.46.56_PM.jpg http://assets.sbnation.com/assets/953451/Screen_Shot_2012-02...
      - ugh 15y ago
        If it’s only a skin there really is no problem (except if the skin makes it harder to identify standard UI elements). It’s only when skeumorphism impacts behavior that it becomes a serious usability issue. For example: The Address Book used to have three panes. Since Apple pressed the app into book shape for Lion they had to ditch one pane to keep with the book aesthetic. That’s a problem.
gkefalas 15y ago
Hm. * The "Gatekeeper" concept is interesting, but I expect we'll hear a lot of grumbling about the default setting. We also all remember the concern about the App Store eventually becoming the only way to get software for your Mac; this will do little to allay that. * Hopefully Launchpad will have some keyboard-based shortcuts, search-as-you-type (the way a Stack does), perhaps a separate/faster editing view than drap-and-drop, and other usability enhancements to make it more useful. I like it in concept, especially with the trackpad pinch shortcut, but not enough to keep using it once I got all of my programs installed. * Whither new iWork? * Some of the tweaks Gruber talks about really make logical sense, and I'm excited to see them. I hope that reliability & clarity hasn't suffered by the time of release; each release of OS X has seemed jam-packed with more "stuff" at the expense of much of that stuff's stability and polish, it seems. * Gruber didn't mention a new Finder, so we're left to guess and find out in just a few days. * I wonder who the other journalists are. This format for a press reveal of a product is... interesting, I guess, is the word I'd use right now.
- morisy 15y ago
  Briefings like that aren't unusual ... just highly unusual for Apple. I've sat in dozens of similar ones unveiling new versions of hardware, software or services for both consumer and business. It offers less launch-day spectacle, but it also offers the chance for more thoughtful analysis that can still be coordinated with embargoes. It is, of course, a very large departure for Apple, which generally doesn't even return calls from anyone but Pogue or the WSJ, and even then doesn't generally comment.
  - gkefalas 15y ago
    Right, I meant they're unusual for Big Fruit. And also, the period between this reveal and release this summer is equally unusual... I'd say that the lag between announce & release is a little more worrisome and something that I wouldn't want to see become a trend at Apple. I've always felt that a big part of their press was their general tendency to release right at announcement of a product or soon thereafter. Though, now that I think about it, I guess their OS releases have, by necessity, had to have some lead time associated with them.
dchest 15y ago
We are here, ladies and gentlemen. Users have three choices which type of apps can run on Mountain Lion: Only those from the App Store Only those from the App Store or which are signed by a developer ID Any app, whether signed or unsigned The default for this setting is, I say, exactly right: the one in the middle, disallowing only unsigned apps.
- narkee 15y ago
  Say I use my Macbook for development, and I compile a small toy C program using gcc. Does that mean now that I cannot run the produced binary by default? Forgive me for being naive, but what does "app" mean in this context? Is a shell script an app? What about a python script with GUI elements?
  - tptacek 15y ago
    No, it does not mean that.
    - Craiggybear 15y ago
      Sources?
      - tptacek 15y ago
        The actual article you just read, for one. The way code signing is implemented today, for another.
  - Craiggybear 15y ago
    Good question. I can't see this just yet, but it will happen. Probably by 10.9 which won't even have a command prompt -- or at least not one you can access easily without invalidating warranty or some such nonsense.
    - batista 15y ago
      Yeah, or 10.30, which will not even have a UI, just an OS-to-Mind interface. Can we please stop repeating BS? People like to make it sound like some kind of slippery slope, but including Mountain Lion, NOTHING has been taken away from users re: freedom, from OS X 10.0.1 to 10.8. In addition to running whatever from whatever, 10.7 gave you the option to use an App repository. You know, like the one, say, Debian had from decades, only not restricted to OSS. In addition to running whatever from whatever AND from the App Store, 10.8 adds the ability to only run signed apps. You, know, like the security solution that is considered one of most effective ones by security boffins.
dsr_ 15y ago
Amazingly cost-effective marketing. Most people don't go to an Apple Event, they read the press coverage. So why spend a million dollars on an Event when you can spend a few thousand dollars on your pet journalists, who will then report to all that the coffee was really good?
- alanfalcon 15y ago
  Yeah, hah hah, the "pet" journalists are pampered by the Apple iCoffee, but in all seriousness I'm very glad that Gruber got this one-on-one treatment because his reporting is as much about the fact of the meeting and the way of the meeting as it is about the content of the meeting. And that's entirely relevant to the audience of Daring Fireball! I don't expect the NY Times to do more than report on the content of the meeting, but I love getting this well written and well thought out little "inside Apple" from Gruber. The other guy whose account I'd love to read would be Andy Ihnatko's take were he invited to such an event.
  - FireBeyond 15y ago
    I'm usually fairly anti-Gruber. But this was, in all respects, an interesting and insightful read, well thought out, and offered little in the way of Gruber's worshipping at the pedestal of Apple.
- kmfrk 15y ago
  I also think that, prior to this, Apple was running into a problem of being unable to know when they were talking to developers and people in general, as we saw with large parts of the iTextbook presentation. With this model, the developers will get their news in the same manner as always, and the keynotes can be reserved for a general audience.
- recoiledsnake 15y ago
  This kind of situation has two bad effects, first being that the "pet" journalists will have a hard time criticizing Apple in the future, for the fear of losing exclusive access, and the second being that impartial journalists would want to court Apple with positive articles, in the hope of getting the exclusive access.
smackfu 15y ago
Not surprised they didn't give a big briefing. An hour of "this is just like the iOS version, but on OS X" would get pretty bad press.
ugh 15y ago
Ah! That’s iOSification in a good way. It’s nice that they are finally fighting cruft. That even lets me overlook the skeumorphism. (I don’t care so much if it’s only looks and not functionality. Sometimes Apple oversteps that line but a more careful examination is necessary to figure that out.) Next stop: De-crufting iTunes.
- siglesias 15y ago
  Next stop: De-crufting iTunes. Totally agreed. It's been pretty apparent for a while now that iTunes should be broken up into Music, Books, and Movies, each playing to its own strength and linking to a separate "iTunes store" app. And also that iPhoto should be renamed Photos, with full iCloud syncing.
127001brewer 15y ago
...is going on an iOS-esque one-major-update-per-year development schedule. This year’s update is scheduled for release in the summer, and is ready now for a developer preview release. I found this comment very interesting. It seems like Apple will be updating OS X aggressively. Will this force Microsoft to do the same with Windows? (As an aside, if iCloud will be used to "sync" your iWork documents between your Mac + iPad + iPhone, then that will be a great thing.)
- emehrkay 15y ago
  That would be a GREAT thing if Microsoft did. I think the yearly release is the most exciting thing, it is the software that matters when it comes down to it.
  - recoiledsnake 15y ago
    Actually it won't be a good thing if Microsoft did the same thing. For starters, big features that need a lot of design and development (think Windows 8 GUI) take much more than a year. Also Windows needs to be tested across a lot more hardware and much bigger software ecosystem than OS X, so longer alpha and beta cycles are needed. They already release minor upgrades via service packs. I would rather have a solid OS like Windows 7 once in 3 years rather than an unstable OS every year.
nagrom 15y ago
I'm still running Snow Leopard after being scared off Lion from reports about instability when it was first released. Is Lion mature enough to replace Snow Leopard now, or should I just hold off and see what happens when Mountain Lion is released?
- Craiggybear 15y ago
  Yeah, I'm still with Leopard 10.5.8 ... I don't like the direction they're taking with OS X but I'd seen this coming for a while. I can see the next release after this being effectively a completely walled garden desktop OS without even a command prompt.
  - gkefalas 15y ago
    Really? Because I can't, at all, and I'd rather not be proven wrong as I'd loathe it as much as you would (but it sounds like it's not like you'd upgrade anyway).
  - mitchellhislop 15y ago
    Really? On a machine that makes Apple a ton of money from developers (where do you think most iPhone apps are written) will get an OS without a command prompt? And you can see this happening?
  - neilparikh 15y ago
    Command line for Apple registered developers only is more likely.
- ugh 15y ago
  I’m running Lion on a four year old MBP and never had any stability problems, not even with any of the developer previews. Safari used to behave strangely and still kind of does (once in a blue moon it will reload every single page you have open, which can be very annoying and even disastrous). That’s the most egregious issue I had with Lion.
  - nagrom 15y ago
vegardx 15y ago
I can't really say I love the direction Apple is taking with Mac OSX. They make really radical changes to how things work, and for a phone that might be okay, I don't use my phone that much, but with every update (or so it seems, after Snow Leopard) I have to change my workflow. With Lion I even didn't fully recover. As an example, with Lion they more or less removed Spaces entirely. This was a killer feature for me (and many many developers / professional users), instead they replaced it with some sort of fullscreen-ish-applications.
- tptacek 15y ago
  They removed Spaces? Huh? Browser, Chat/Mail, Emacs & Terminals, Illustrator & Pages; I'd go nuts if I couldn't get my workspace set up that way, the way it's been since I had to buy virtual desktops as a third party app before 10.5. It works exactly the same way in Lion. Better, from the perspective of moving apps from Space to Space. The only thing I see different in Lion is that you can't do two-dimensional layouts of Spaces.
  - snth 15y ago
    You can't arbitrarily drag windows from space to space in the "expose" view in Lion, as far as I can tell. You have to 1) Switch to the space the window is open in and then 2) Drag the window from the current space to another. I liked Spaces much better.
    - yusefnapora 15y ago
      That is annoying, but you don't have to fully switch to the space containing the window. In mission control, you can three-finger swipe through your spaces to get to the expose view for the space that has the app you want, then drag it to the smaller space icon at the top. Still more work than the old way, but you don't have to leave mission control.
  - NathanKP 15y ago
    Personally the issue I have with the Lion implementation of Spaces, is that it is not two-dimensional. I use a 2x2 grid of spaces on Snow Leopard, and I love it because I have my workflow set up to go around in a circle: Coda in one screen, Tower for version control and deployments in the next screen, Terminal and MySQL Chrome for managing the remote server and verifying deployments, Chrome for web testing. After I've made the loop so to speak, I'm ready to go back to Coda to fix a bug or work an another feature, and the circle begins again. So my mental model works in a circle, with each next step only a screen away. In Lion the screens are laid out in one line, and I feel like it is harder to get to the screen I want. I have to remember the number of the screen rather than just the position of the screen. (For example upper right, lower right, lower left, upper left.)
worldimperator 15y ago
I love how the points 'Gatekeeper' and 'All-new features for China' so naturally are presented side-by-side. Why would anyone want to run an unsafe program like a tor client ? Ask your local gatekeeper.
mambodog 15y ago
Many around these parts will make glib insinuations about the "Gatekeeper" feature heralding Apple's clawing away the freedoms of it's users, one-by-one, until we are all prisoners of "the computer as a jail made cool". However, it seems to me that Gatekeeper's presence embodies a rather more embarrassing admission that, yes, Mac OS is on the verge of needing some kind of malware protection; in the wake of the Mac Defender malware surfacing last year, it was really only a matter of time.
- nirvana 15y ago
  You're right, but Gatekeeper does something else: It marks the line in the sand. So long as that choice is there as an option in settings for me to make, Apple is in the right. If they ever take that choice away, and they start dictating what I can run or not run, they will have crossed that line, and lost me as a customer forever. I think a lot of people think that Apple taking away that choice is inevitable. I don't think so- I think it would be completely out of character. But if I'm wrong, I'm gone.
  - deleted 15y ago
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    - Tyrannosaurs 15y ago
      Apple's pattern with iOS has actually been one of slowly opening up. Just web apps, then native apps with massive restrictions on what you can do and how you can build them, then native apps with a few less restrictions on what you can do and how you can build them (for instance compiled from non-objective C sources). I get that people don't like where they are now but the pattern isn't one of closing down, it's slow but in the other direction. I don't think it's a jump to assume it might keep moving if Apple see the benefit of allowing it. Gatekeeper might, just might, be them seeing how such a model might work.
      - fpgeek 15y ago
        > Apple's pattern with iOS has actually been one of slowly opening up. Tell that to Amazon or Barnes & Noble or Netflix or Hulu or anyone else burned by the In-App Purchase mess. I'd bet none of them would say Apple's pattern has been to open up iOS.
llambda 15y ago
Of all the exciting new features that must be contained in this release, I am most excited about Notification Center (finally) being ported to the desktop. It's kind of a sad thing to say, because Growl was for many years a fine notifications platform. However I always wondered why there was no standard provided by Apple. It didn't matter much until Growl's development took a radical new direction. No, I'm not referring to charging for the product, the app would have been worth the $2. But I am disgruntled about its bugginess and backwards-incompatibility. Presently Growl is crippled on my system. It works for apps that have updated to the new protocol. For others it doesn't. And it still suffers from bugs. So my hope is that Notification Center will prove to be a unifying standard for Mac apps.
- super_mario 15y ago
  Notifications API is only for apps distributed through Mac app store. So, if you are independent developer, don't get too excited.
  - llambda 15y ago
    Are you sure about that? The introductory video explicitly says, "...and even notifications from third-party apps." [1] But that could be limited to apps in the App Store. Do you have a citation for that? [1] http://www.apple.com/macosx/mountain-lion/features.html#video-mountainlion http://www.apple.com/macosx/mountain-lion/features.html#vide...
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tptacek 15y ago
Notification Center seems like something that will work better on OS X than it does on iOS.
- jinushaun 15y ago
  I still don't see a "Clear All" button for clearing notifications...
jinushaun 15y ago
"And then the reveal: Mac OS X — sorry, OS X — is going on an iOS-esque one-major-update-per-year development schedule. This year’s update is scheduled for release in the summer, and is ready now for a developer preview release. Its name is Mountain Lion." Yearly updates? Most exciting nugget of news in the post, IMO. The only problem is that iOS updates are free, while OS X updates are not. With one update per year, they run the risk of version fragmentation if users have to pay to keep up with the upgrade cycle.
- sosuke 15y ago
  Lion was 35 bucks I think? Maybe they will go the free update route, that would be awesome!
- fpgeek 15y ago
  As long as Apple controls which versions of OS X iTunes runs on (and they've been rough on Mac users in the past - at least as compared to Windows users), they have all the tools they need to avoid "fragmentation".
- sipefree 15y ago
  There's a reason for that. U.S. accounting law requires that non-subscription devices that are upgraded have a fee associated with the upgrade under Apple and many analysts’ interpretation of the law. This is why iPod Touch owners have to pay for upgrades while iPhone users do not. I think Apple may have relaxed that recently though, and I wouldn't be surprised if they release Mountain Lion for free.
  - neilparikh 15y ago
    iPod Touch updates have been free for a while now, I think.
  - mitchellhislop 15y ago
    If I recall, this is also why FaceTime, when it left beta, cost $.99.
  - wmf 15y ago
sjwright 15y ago
Am I the only one who thinks gatekeeper is the most exciting new feature in Mountain Lion? I hope they take the concept even further! The best thing about the iPad is how it can't run untrusted code, and that no third party app can escape the sandbox. My goodness, since my parents got iPads, the number of support calls I've had to field has plummeted. If Apple can do the same for their iMac, I'll be forever grateful. Of course I'll leave it switched off, thanks.
feralchimp 15y ago
They should have called this "the Dentata". You know, code signature verification with teeth. Can I get an amen for free code signing certificates that derive from the Apple Root CA? Not $99, not $5, free. Overall: more like this on more OS's.
CJefferson 15y ago
The most worrying point to me (which other people might have already known) as that you can only access iCloud, or the new notifications, in your app if users get it through the app store. This clearly means that non-app store apps are second class citizens. I had wanted to use iCloud in a program I'm working on at the moment. I'm now going to have to seriously think about if I'm willing to make my app only available through the app store, or not use iCloud.
- jonhendry 15y ago
  It means apps with access to iCloud get some extra scrutiny, helping prevent malware tampering with iCloud. I suppose notifications could be abused as well (perhaps some kind of notification-phising, where an app posts notifications that appear to be from something else?)
  - CJefferson 15y ago
    What it means is that you can't release an app that uses iCloud anywhere else. No releasing on your homepage. No mailing out to people. No humble indie bundle. No steam. No developing an app with paying apple $99/year.
    - jonhendry 15y ago
      Well, yeah. The implication being that Apple doesn't want your filthy unexamined app to be touching iCloud's servers.
    - c1sc0 15y ago
      I think you mean 'without'
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chj 15y ago
the last sentence is pure gold. apple, are you listening?
jroseattle 15y ago
This last comment is interesting: "On the Mac, Notification Center alerts are decidedly inspired by those of Growl, a longstanding open source project that is now sold for $2 in the Mac App Store. I hereby predict “Apple ripped off Growl” as the mini-scandal of the day." It brings to mind Steve Jobs's rant against Android (the whole I-will-spend-every-last-cent scene) for "ripping off" Apple. But this is a case of "inspiration". I've not seen the feature, but choosing the words "inspired by" makes everything sound a-OK. And that's a very fine line to walk. The Reality Distortion Field is just kool-aid with capitalization.
joejohnson 15y ago
I'm glad to hear there will be a better Notification system. Growl is decent, but it would be nice if such simple functionality was handled by the OS and was free.
notatoad 15y ago
the new naming seems weird to me. i get that "Mac OS X" was too long, but i would have thought they'd drop the X rather than the mac. Mac OS runs on Macs, iOS runs on iDevices. makes me wonder if they're going to drop the mac branding altogether.
raldi 15y ago
So what cat names are left for future OS X releases?
- jopt 15y ago
  Lynx?
- grecy 15y ago
  If my math is correct, they only need one more before XI
  - raldi 15y ago
    Care to show your math?
    - grecy 15y ago
      10.8 = Mountain Lion. 10.9 = Last needed cat name. 11 = New naming scheme that doesn't involve big cats.
      - msbarnett 15y ago
        There's really no reason to assume that 10.9 couldn't be followed by 10.10. The final release of 10.4 was 10.4.11.
        grecy 15y ago
        I've always felt 10.10, 10.11, etc. would be horrible for marketing. But you are absolutely correct, there is no reason to assume it won't happen. Interestingly, the Engadget article mentions more than once they thought 10.7 would be the last 10 before the jump to 11.
        raldi 15y ago
        What Engadget article?
richcollins 15y ago
Apple is calling it “Gatekeeper”. It’s a system whereby developers can sign up for free-of-charge Apple developer IDs which they can then use to cryptographically sign their applications. If an app is found to be malware, Apple can revoke that developer’s certificate, rendering the app (along with any others from the same developer) inert on any Mac where it’s been installed. I would love to see iOS move in this direction as well
beatpanda 15y ago
When journalists say they're different from bloggers, what they're talking about is the kind of navel-gazing bullshit that Gruber spends half his time on here — describing the event itself, and his presence and experience there, making sure the reader knows that he was among only a few dozen people invited to this exclusive one-on-one press briefing. A more competent writer would have spent maybe a sentence or two explaining the novelty of the briefing and then moved on. Gruber spends four paragraphs. I don't need to know that they gave him free coffee, or that the chair was comfortable. The whole thing comes off as sickeningly conceited.
- barumrho 15y ago
  I think you missed the point of this post.
- ebbv 15y ago
  > The whole thing comes off as sickeningly conceited. So like a typical Gruber piece, right?
- eykanal 15y ago
  For what it's worth, and focusing on this isn't worth much at all, I read it completely differently. Gruber was trying to convey a sense of how different this is from the Apple of days gone by. He's trying to demonstrate that Apple has gone from having huge keynotes at Macworld to having medium-size keynotes in their own auditoriums to having one-on-ones with key members of the press. The point isn't "look at how awesome I am", the point is "look at how completely different this is from everything they've ever done in the past".
- greyish_water 15y ago
  Whereas what you've written...
- gecko 15y ago
  I don't think that's quite true. If you read stories in the New Yorker, or the Atlantic, or similar publications, then you'd find equally "naval-gazing" writing from "real" reporters. When I write a post, or when a journalist writes a story, or when you write a comment, you want to have an angle: something that sets your writing apart from the other thirty people who are writing about the same thing. Many publications today will cover detailed information about Mountain Lion. Gruber knows that. Further, there's not actually much new in Mountain Lion: Gruber successfully summarizes the new release in a handful of words in a middle paragraph. While I suppose he could go into more detail on interface minutia between Contacts and Address Book, or pontificate on why Notification Center on OS X looks more like Growl and less like the iOS pull-down, even doing that would provide him relatively little material. Instead, Gruber focused on the culture of the event. From a company so well known for massive product releases and on-stage demos, the idea of doing not just one, but a large number of in-person demos across the country represents a substantial shift. It could symbolize any number of things, from a lack of confidence to a desire to repair image damage from Foxconn, which is why Gruber finds a need to emphasize how polished the presentation was and how the event was set-up in detail. I can understand why this might feel like naval gazing, but to me, it's anything but. Gruber is in a unique position to comment on the cultural shifts of Apple, precisely because he's so involved with that selfsame culture. If he's going to comment on Mountain Lion's release this morning, that's going to be his angle. It's completely fine if you don't find it interesting, but questioning his competency, or calling this approach conceited, is wrong.
parfe 15y ago
That’s when Schiller tells me they’re doing some things differently now. I wonder immediately about that “now”. I don’t press, because I find the question that immediately sprang to mind uncomfortable. And some things remain unchanged: Apple executives explain what they want to explain, and they explain nothing more. What useless reporting! How about just asking a follow up question about what is different? Or why OS X will not support Siri in this release? Strike out all Gruber's writing involving the feel of the room and this might as well be a feature list on Apple.com. And instead of a room full of writers, journalists, and analysts, it was just me, Schiller, and two others from Apple — Brian Croll from product marketing and Bill Evans from PR. Not even a head nod to let us know he has at least a small sense of what his purpose at this meeting is. Just any hint of self-awareness that he's merely an extension of Apple Marketing would suffice. One of the most valuable companies on the planet sees value in free advertising through Gruber. I'm not sure if that reflects more poorly on Gruber as the stooge, or his readers as pawns.
- MrJagil 15y ago
  As this event is rather unusual, I personally find the "feeling of the room" quite interesting. Though I must concede Gruber is rather poor when poetic. Ps, if Schiller's presentation was as thorough as Gruber describes it, then I hardly see this as free marketing. Time is money, especially for a guy in Schiller's position. Also the coffee.
- chadgeidel 15y ago
  Hmm, I got the idea he understood what this was about from this paragraph: "This is an awful lot of effort and attention in order to brief what I’m guessing is a list of a dozen or two writers and journalists. It’s Phil Schiller, spending an entire week on the East Coast, repeating this presentation over and over to a series of audiences of one." (emphasis mine)
  - parfe 15y ago
    That's exactly it though! Gruber thinks he's on an select list of writers and journalists. Instead, I believe he's an item on the Apple marketing checklist. Can you find another author who got the same treatment as Gruber? This random article I stumbled across while looking myself takes Gruber's assumptions as fact, which I believe to be Apple's intention. "The company is also changing the way it handles press events, according to worldwide marketing VP Phil Schiller. While Schiller has refused to go into any more detail, Daring Fireball's John Gruber notes that last week, he and others in the media were given separate, solo product briefings on Mountain Lion." http://www.macnn.com/articles/12/02/16/os.x.updates.to.become.annual.releases/ http://www.macnn.com/articles/12/02/16/os.x.updates.to.becom... Gruber actually wrote, "I'm guessing" because he didn't have the sense, integrity, or care to ask "Hey guys, how many other people will you be giving this personal, private, ego-stroking presentation to?"
brudgers 15y ago
To me, the most interesting difference in how Apple presented Mountain Lion was that the announcement appears to have been made on Eastern Time rather than Pacific Time or in the middle of the night through website changes.
padobson 15y ago
I'm not sure iCloud can work in Apple's walled garden. The whole point of cloud storage is to make things accessible seamlessly across all devices. People who use a Mac at home and a PC at work or own an iPad and an Android phone are going to find Dropbox and the like a much better solution. I know Apple is using iCloud to sell hardware and not the other way around, but I cant help but think iCloud can never be what Dropbox is so long as they don't make it available cross platform a la iTunes.
CubicleNinjas 15y ago
So many critics here of Gruber and his writing style. I just see jealousy. This change in Apple's approach is very encouraging and goes to show that for all of their success, they have not their moxy.
ary 15y ago
That’s when Schiller tells me they’re doing some things differently now. Seems to me that not everyone at Apple was thrilled with the one-man spectacle that Jobs made the company into. I'd wager that most of the executives (especially Forstall) are going to raise their public profiles in the coming years in an attempt to use the rather high launching pad that is Apple to make a mark. Under Jobs that wasn't easy.
wisty 15y ago
Does anyone remember that Steve Jobs interview, in which he waxes lyrical about the benefits of putting your docs on a big iron server?
WiseWeasel 15y ago
Really hoping they integrate Siri into Spotlight in 10.8. It would be nice to be able to hit 'command-space' to bring up Spotlight, then just type, "remind me to call Fred at 5", and it would set a reminder, and sync it to your iPhone. Or maybe "set a timer for 5 minutes on my phone", or "add an appointment for dentist tomorrow at noon", "find a good thai restaurant nearby", etc. It's embarrassing how much faster these kinds of tasks are on the iPhone than the Mac now, though network issues can still be a problem inside buildings, and the voice recognition isn't perfect. If I could just type my requests to my Mac, I think I'd find myself using it a lot more often. It would be like a realization of Jef Raskin's (and maybe even more his son Aza's) ideas on 'humane' and command-line interfaces as the ultimate UI.
signalsignal 15y ago
Thank God. I always hated Growl.
fuckapple 15y ago
apple products are overhyped shit. most of the world's bullshit patent problems go away if they do. don't buy their slave-labored garbage. why do they have so much money in the bank? same reason robber barons did. cost of production doesn't factor in externalities and market price is kept artificially high by trumped up demand.

419 points by MaxGabriel 15y ago

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rjj 15y ago

I'm struck by the self-awareness that it takes to NOT have a marketing event for the announcement of your new operating system. Wow. Also, fascinating how the iPhone is the first step in the halo effect but at the same time is also the most profitable. They are building on the halo effect and lock in of the iPhone/iPad to the Mac ecosystem.

pavlov 15y ago

So John Gruber is basically an official Apple announcement channel now?

Tloewald 15y ago
It's being announced all over the place.
- pavlov 15y ago
  The difference is that other journalists who got the preview also write about other products, whereas Gruber only writes about Apple. When an Apple-exclusive blog gets preferential treatment and news scoops directly from Apple, it's reasonable to ask whether it's anything more than Phil Schiller's astroturfing outlet.
  - smackfu 15y ago
    You could say the same about MacWorld.
    - pavlov 15y ago
      Being compared to MacWorld is hardly an endorsement of an independent blogger's journalistic integrity.
      - smackfu 15y ago
        But it is rather odd to complain that getting a briefing to a "biased" reporter is unusual. It's like Thurott getting briefed on Windows stuff, S.O.P.
  - tvon 15y ago
    Gruber is not at all Apple exclusive, but he is clearly a fan.
  - coob 15y ago
    As someone who has Gruber's musings on baseball pop up all over his twitter and RSS clients, I'm inclined to disagree.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
kikocherman 15y ago
He probably believes in every word he writes, but Apple sure seems him as one channel.
tvon 15y ago
I suspect he isn't the only one that got this treatment, though it would be amusing if he was (and I'm sure it will cause a big kerfuffle).
mmahemoff 15y ago
Well, MG Siegler managed to get access to Chrome for Android before it was public and he's hardly a Google fanboy.
jws 15y ago
I think we might be seeing is Apple acknowledging that journalists are going to have "blind men and an elephant"[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_men_and_an_elephant http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_men_and_an_elephant] problems, and arranging to have a sufficient number of blind men feel the elephant to get the whole description, and all tell their stories at once only makes sense. You've got Gruber talking about only on the most visible features, but spending more thought on corporate communication strategy and iCloud directions. Jason Snell articulates new features as clearly as I'd expect from an Apple "New in Mountain Lion" page. Edward Mendelson I think covers even more features, but not as clearly as Jason Snell, and I think his vision of "AirPlay display to TV" -> "Mac is video game console" is fatally doomed by latency.[1] But it's ok. We have enough people touching the elephant and describing it to dilute that. So here you have the new strategy for non-event announcements. Arrange for simultaneous views from multiple, competent sources. Let the first sounds in the echo chamber be accurate and well informed to keep the erroneous speculation to a minimum. EOM [1] I could also be wrong here. With gigabit 802.11ac just around the corner, one could conceive of a TV device that optimized the latency from wifi to screen. You know, by tearing apart the industry's entrenched model and doing their own vision. But I'm just groping an elephant here.
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malyk 15y ago
Gruber has a rabid following of hardcore apple lovers. Just the kind of people who are going to be most interested in these announcements. They would be dumb not to get him involved in this type of release (which I think we'll see more of in the future).

Tloewald 15y ago

I assume an embargo was lifted and we'll get a bunch of these. Another possible implication may be that Mac OS X becomes a free update for everyone. The three tiered app security thing is huge and great. I love it. I hope they've ditched some skumorphism.

beaumartinez 15y ago
> I hope they've ditched some skeuomorphism. It's worse than ever—have a look at some of the screenshots[1]. My favourite is the tweet dialog[2]. [1] http://www.macworld.com/article/165407/2012/02/hands_on_with_apples_new_os_x_mountain_lion.html http://www.macworld.com/article/165407/2012/02/hands_on_with... [2] http://images.macworld.com/images/article/2012/02/tweetsheet-full-272427.jpg http://images.macworld.com/images/article/2012/02/tweetsheet...
- batista 15y ago
  It's worse than ever—have a look at some of the screenshots[1]. My favourite is the tweet dialog[2] Actually there's nothing of the "bad skeuomorphic UI" about the tweet dialog --it's just that its' background resembles a lined notepad. Other than that, it looks and behaves like any other text entry box and has non skeuomorphic send etc buttons. So, "worse than ever"? Hardly.
  - sirn 15y ago
    What about Game Center[1]? [1]: http://assets.sbnation.com/assets/953451/Screen_Shot_2012-02-15_at_7.46.56_PM.jpg http://assets.sbnation.com/assets/953451/Screen_Shot_2012-02...
    - ugh 15y ago
      If it’s only a skin there really is no problem (except if the skin makes it harder to identify standard UI elements). It’s only when skeumorphism impacts behavior that it becomes a serious usability issue. For example: The Address Book used to have three panes. Since Apple pressed the app into book shape for Lion they had to ditch one pane to keep with the book aesthetic. That’s a problem.

gkefalas 15y ago

Hm. * The "Gatekeeper" concept is interesting, but I expect we'll hear a lot of grumbling about the default setting. We also all remember the concern about the App Store eventually becoming the only way to get software for your Mac; this will do little to allay that. * Hopefully Launchpad will have some keyboard-based shortcuts, search-as-you-type (the way a Stack does), perhaps a separate/faster editing view than drap-and-drop, and other usability enhancements to make it more useful. I like it in concept, especially with the trackpad pinch shortcut, but not enough to keep using it once I got all of my programs installed. * Whither new iWork? * Some of the tweaks Gruber talks about really make logical sense, and I'm excited to see them. I hope that reliability & clarity hasn't suffered by the time of release; each release of OS X has seemed jam-packed with more "stuff" at the expense of much of that stuff's stability and polish, it seems. * Gruber didn't mention a new Finder, so we're left to guess and find out in just a few days. * I wonder who the other journalists are. This format for a press reveal of a product is... interesting, I guess, is the word I'd use right now.

morisy 15y ago
Briefings like that aren't unusual ... just highly unusual for Apple. I've sat in dozens of similar ones unveiling new versions of hardware, software or services for both consumer and business. It offers less launch-day spectacle, but it also offers the chance for more thoughtful analysis that can still be coordinated with embargoes. It is, of course, a very large departure for Apple, which generally doesn't even return calls from anyone but Pogue or the WSJ, and even then doesn't generally comment.
- gkefalas 15y ago
  Right, I meant they're unusual for Big Fruit. And also, the period between this reveal and release this summer is equally unusual... I'd say that the lag between announce & release is a little more worrisome and something that I wouldn't want to see become a trend at Apple. I've always felt that a big part of their press was their general tendency to release right at announcement of a product or soon thereafter. Though, now that I think about it, I guess their OS releases have, by necessity, had to have some lead time associated with them.

dchest 15y ago

We are here, ladies and gentlemen. Users have three choices which type of apps can run on Mountain Lion: Only those from the App Store Only those from the App Store or which are signed by a developer ID Any app, whether signed or unsigned The default for this setting is, I say, exactly right: the one in the middle, disallowing only unsigned apps.

narkee 15y ago
Say I use my Macbook for development, and I compile a small toy C program using gcc. Does that mean now that I cannot run the produced binary by default? Forgive me for being naive, but what does "app" mean in this context? Is a shell script an app? What about a python script with GUI elements?
- tptacek 15y ago
  No, it does not mean that.
  - Craiggybear 15y ago
    Sources?
    - tptacek 15y ago
      The actual article you just read, for one. The way code signing is implemented today, for another.
- Craiggybear 15y ago
  Good question. I can't see this just yet, but it will happen. Probably by 10.9 which won't even have a command prompt -- or at least not one you can access easily without invalidating warranty or some such nonsense.
  - batista 15y ago
    Yeah, or 10.30, which will not even have a UI, just an OS-to-Mind interface. Can we please stop repeating BS? People like to make it sound like some kind of slippery slope, but including Mountain Lion, NOTHING has been taken away from users re: freedom, from OS X 10.0.1 to 10.8. In addition to running whatever from whatever, 10.7 gave you the option to use an App repository. You know, like the one, say, Debian had from decades, only not restricted to OSS. In addition to running whatever from whatever AND from the App Store, 10.8 adds the ability to only run signed apps. You, know, like the security solution that is considered one of most effective ones by security boffins.

dsr_ 15y ago

Amazingly cost-effective marketing. Most people don't go to an Apple Event, they read the press coverage. So why spend a million dollars on an Event when you can spend a few thousand dollars on your pet journalists, who will then report to all that the coffee was really good?

alanfalcon 15y ago
Yeah, hah hah, the "pet" journalists are pampered by the Apple iCoffee, but in all seriousness I'm very glad that Gruber got this one-on-one treatment because his reporting is as much about the fact of the meeting and the way of the meeting as it is about the content of the meeting. And that's entirely relevant to the audience of Daring Fireball! I don't expect the NY Times to do more than report on the content of the meeting, but I love getting this well written and well thought out little "inside Apple" from Gruber. The other guy whose account I'd love to read would be Andy Ihnatko's take were he invited to such an event.
- FireBeyond 15y ago
  I'm usually fairly anti-Gruber. But this was, in all respects, an interesting and insightful read, well thought out, and offered little in the way of Gruber's worshipping at the pedestal of Apple.
kmfrk 15y ago
I also think that, prior to this, Apple was running into a problem of being unable to know when they were talking to developers and people in general, as we saw with large parts of the iTextbook presentation. With this model, the developers will get their news in the same manner as always, and the keynotes can be reserved for a general audience.
recoiledsnake 15y ago
This kind of situation has two bad effects, first being that the "pet" journalists will have a hard time criticizing Apple in the future, for the fear of losing exclusive access, and the second being that impartial journalists would want to court Apple with positive articles, in the hope of getting the exclusive access.

smackfu 15y ago

Not surprised they didn't give a big briefing. An hour of "this is just like the iOS version, but on OS X" would get pretty bad press.

ugh 15y ago

Ah! That’s iOSification in a good way. It’s nice that they are finally fighting cruft. That even lets me overlook the skeumorphism. (I don’t care so much if it’s only looks and not functionality. Sometimes Apple oversteps that line but a more careful examination is necessary to figure that out.) Next stop: De-crufting iTunes.

siglesias 15y ago
Next stop: De-crufting iTunes. Totally agreed. It's been pretty apparent for a while now that iTunes should be broken up into Music, Books, and Movies, each playing to its own strength and linking to a separate "iTunes store" app. And also that iPhoto should be renamed Photos, with full iCloud syncing.

127001brewer 15y ago

...is going on an iOS-esque one-major-update-per-year development schedule. This year’s update is scheduled for release in the summer, and is ready now for a developer preview release. I found this comment very interesting. It seems like Apple will be updating OS X aggressively. Will this force Microsoft to do the same with Windows? (As an aside, if iCloud will be used to "sync" your iWork documents between your Mac + iPad + iPhone, then that will be a great thing.)

emehrkay 15y ago
That would be a GREAT thing if Microsoft did. I think the yearly release is the most exciting thing, it is the software that matters when it comes down to it.
- recoiledsnake 15y ago
  Actually it won't be a good thing if Microsoft did the same thing. For starters, big features that need a lot of design and development (think Windows 8 GUI) take much more than a year. Also Windows needs to be tested across a lot more hardware and much bigger software ecosystem than OS X, so longer alpha and beta cycles are needed. They already release minor upgrades via service packs. I would rather have a solid OS like Windows 7 once in 3 years rather than an unstable OS every year.

nagrom 15y ago

I'm still running Snow Leopard after being scared off Lion from reports about instability when it was first released. Is Lion mature enough to replace Snow Leopard now, or should I just hold off and see what happens when Mountain Lion is released?

Craiggybear 15y ago
Yeah, I'm still with Leopard 10.5.8 ... I don't like the direction they're taking with OS X but I'd seen this coming for a while. I can see the next release after this being effectively a completely walled garden desktop OS without even a command prompt.
- gkefalas 15y ago
  Really? Because I can't, at all, and I'd rather not be proven wrong as I'd loathe it as much as you would (but it sounds like it's not like you'd upgrade anyway).
- mitchellhislop 15y ago
  Really? On a machine that makes Apple a ton of money from developers (where do you think most iPhone apps are written) will get an OS without a command prompt? And you can see this happening?
- neilparikh 15y ago
  Command line for Apple registered developers only is more likely.
ugh 15y ago
I’m running Lion on a four year old MBP and never had any stability problems, not even with any of the developer previews. Safari used to behave strangely and still kind of does (once in a blue moon it will reload every single page you have open, which can be very annoying and even disastrous). That’s the most egregious issue I had with Lion.
- nagrom 15y ago

vegardx 15y ago

I can't really say I love the direction Apple is taking with Mac OSX. They make really radical changes to how things work, and for a phone that might be okay, I don't use my phone that much, but with every update (or so it seems, after Snow Leopard) I have to change my workflow. With Lion I even didn't fully recover. As an example, with Lion they more or less removed Spaces entirely. This was a killer feature for me (and many many developers / professional users), instead they replaced it with some sort of fullscreen-ish-applications.

tptacek 15y ago
They removed Spaces? Huh? Browser, Chat/Mail, Emacs & Terminals, Illustrator & Pages; I'd go nuts if I couldn't get my workspace set up that way, the way it's been since I had to buy virtual desktops as a third party app before 10.5. It works exactly the same way in Lion. Better, from the perspective of moving apps from Space to Space. The only thing I see different in Lion is that you can't do two-dimensional layouts of Spaces.
- snth 15y ago
  You can't arbitrarily drag windows from space to space in the "expose" view in Lion, as far as I can tell. You have to 1) Switch to the space the window is open in and then 2) Drag the window from the current space to another. I liked Spaces much better.
  - yusefnapora 15y ago
    That is annoying, but you don't have to fully switch to the space containing the window. In mission control, you can three-finger swipe through your spaces to get to the expose view for the space that has the app you want, then drag it to the smaller space icon at the top. Still more work than the old way, but you don't have to leave mission control.
- NathanKP 15y ago
  Personally the issue I have with the Lion implementation of Spaces, is that it is not two-dimensional. I use a 2x2 grid of spaces on Snow Leopard, and I love it because I have my workflow set up to go around in a circle: Coda in one screen, Tower for version control and deployments in the next screen, Terminal and MySQL Chrome for managing the remote server and verifying deployments, Chrome for web testing. After I've made the loop so to speak, I'm ready to go back to Coda to fix a bug or work an another feature, and the circle begins again. So my mental model works in a circle, with each next step only a screen away. In Lion the screens are laid out in one line, and I feel like it is harder to get to the screen I want. I have to remember the number of the screen rather than just the position of the screen. (For example upper right, lower right, lower left, upper left.)

worldimperator 15y ago

I love how the points 'Gatekeeper' and 'All-new features for China' so naturally are presented side-by-side. Why would anyone want to run an unsafe program like a tor client ? Ask your local gatekeeper.

mambodog 15y ago

Many around these parts will make glib insinuations about the "Gatekeeper" feature heralding Apple's clawing away the freedoms of it's users, one-by-one, until we are all prisoners of "the computer as a jail made cool". However, it seems to me that Gatekeeper's presence embodies a rather more embarrassing admission that, yes, Mac OS is on the verge of needing some kind of malware protection; in the wake of the Mac Defender malware surfacing last year, it was really only a matter of time.

nirvana 15y ago
You're right, but Gatekeeper does something else: It marks the line in the sand. So long as that choice is there as an option in settings for me to make, Apple is in the right. If they ever take that choice away, and they start dictating what I can run or not run, they will have crossed that line, and lost me as a customer forever. I think a lot of people think that Apple taking away that choice is inevitable. I don't think so- I think it would be completely out of character. But if I'm wrong, I'm gone.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
  - Tyrannosaurs 15y ago
    Apple's pattern with iOS has actually been one of slowly opening up. Just web apps, then native apps with massive restrictions on what you can do and how you can build them, then native apps with a few less restrictions on what you can do and how you can build them (for instance compiled from non-objective C sources). I get that people don't like where they are now but the pattern isn't one of closing down, it's slow but in the other direction. I don't think it's a jump to assume it might keep moving if Apple see the benefit of allowing it. Gatekeeper might, just might, be them seeing how such a model might work.
    - fpgeek 15y ago
      > Apple's pattern with iOS has actually been one of slowly opening up. Tell that to Amazon or Barnes & Noble or Netflix or Hulu or anyone else burned by the In-App Purchase mess. I'd bet none of them would say Apple's pattern has been to open up iOS.

llambda 15y ago

Of all the exciting new features that must be contained in this release, I am most excited about Notification Center (finally) being ported to the desktop. It's kind of a sad thing to say, because Growl was for many years a fine notifications platform. However I always wondered why there was no standard provided by Apple. It didn't matter much until Growl's development took a radical new direction. No, I'm not referring to charging for the product, the app would have been worth the $2. But I am disgruntled about its bugginess and backwards-incompatibility. Presently Growl is crippled on my system. It works for apps that have updated to the new protocol. For others it doesn't. And it still suffers from bugs. So my hope is that Notification Center will prove to be a unifying standard for Mac apps.

super_mario 15y ago
Notifications API is only for apps distributed through Mac app store. So, if you are independent developer, don't get too excited.
- llambda 15y ago
  Are you sure about that? The introductory video explicitly says, "...and even notifications from third-party apps." [1] But that could be limited to apps in the App Store. Do you have a citation for that? [1] http://www.apple.com/macosx/mountain-lion/features.html#video-mountainlion http://www.apple.com/macosx/mountain-lion/features.html#vide...

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tptacek 15y ago

Notification Center seems like something that will work better on OS X than it does on iOS.

jinushaun 15y ago
I still don't see a "Clear All" button for clearing notifications...

jinushaun 15y ago

"And then the reveal: Mac OS X — sorry, OS X — is going on an iOS-esque one-major-update-per-year development schedule. This year’s update is scheduled for release in the summer, and is ready now for a developer preview release. Its name is Mountain Lion." Yearly updates? Most exciting nugget of news in the post, IMO. The only problem is that iOS updates are free, while OS X updates are not. With one update per year, they run the risk of version fragmentation if users have to pay to keep up with the upgrade cycle.

sosuke 15y ago
Lion was 35 bucks I think? Maybe they will go the free update route, that would be awesome!
fpgeek 15y ago
As long as Apple controls which versions of OS X iTunes runs on (and they've been rough on Mac users in the past - at least as compared to Windows users), they have all the tools they need to avoid "fragmentation".
sipefree 15y ago
There's a reason for that. U.S. accounting law requires that non-subscription devices that are upgraded have a fee associated with the upgrade under Apple and many analysts’ interpretation of the law. This is why iPod Touch owners have to pay for upgrades while iPhone users do not. I think Apple may have relaxed that recently though, and I wouldn't be surprised if they release Mountain Lion for free.
- neilparikh 15y ago
  iPod Touch updates have been free for a while now, I think.
- mitchellhislop 15y ago
  If I recall, this is also why FaceTime, when it left beta, cost $.99.
- wmf 15y ago

sjwright 15y ago

Am I the only one who thinks gatekeeper is the most exciting new feature in Mountain Lion? I hope they take the concept even further! The best thing about the iPad is how it can't run untrusted code, and that no third party app can escape the sandbox. My goodness, since my parents got iPads, the number of support calls I've had to field has plummeted. If Apple can do the same for their iMac, I'll be forever grateful. Of course I'll leave it switched off, thanks.

feralchimp 15y ago

They should have called this "the Dentata". You know, code signature verification with teeth. Can I get an amen for free code signing certificates that derive from the Apple Root CA? Not $99, not $5, free. Overall: more like this on more OS's.

CJefferson 15y ago

The most worrying point to me (which other people might have already known) as that you can only access iCloud, or the new notifications, in your app if users get it through the app store. This clearly means that non-app store apps are second class citizens. I had wanted to use iCloud in a program I'm working on at the moment. I'm now going to have to seriously think about if I'm willing to make my app only available through the app store, or not use iCloud.

jonhendry 15y ago
It means apps with access to iCloud get some extra scrutiny, helping prevent malware tampering with iCloud. I suppose notifications could be abused as well (perhaps some kind of notification-phising, where an app posts notifications that appear to be from something else?)
- CJefferson 15y ago
  What it means is that you can't release an app that uses iCloud anywhere else. No releasing on your homepage. No mailing out to people. No humble indie bundle. No steam. No developing an app with paying apple $99/year.
  - jonhendry 15y ago
    Well, yeah. The implication being that Apple doesn't want your filthy unexamined app to be touching iCloud's servers.
  - c1sc0 15y ago
    I think you mean 'without'

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

chj 15y ago

the last sentence is pure gold. apple, are you listening?

jroseattle 15y ago

This last comment is interesting: "On the Mac, Notification Center alerts are decidedly inspired by those of Growl, a longstanding open source project that is now sold for $2 in the Mac App Store. I hereby predict “Apple ripped off Growl” as the mini-scandal of the day." It brings to mind Steve Jobs's rant against Android (the whole I-will-spend-every-last-cent scene) for "ripping off" Apple. But this is a case of "inspiration". I've not seen the feature, but choosing the words "inspired by" makes everything sound a-OK. And that's a very fine line to walk. The Reality Distortion Field is just kool-aid with capitalization.

joejohnson 15y ago

I'm glad to hear there will be a better Notification system. Growl is decent, but it would be nice if such simple functionality was handled by the OS and was free.

notatoad 15y ago

the new naming seems weird to me. i get that "Mac OS X" was too long, but i would have thought they'd drop the X rather than the mac. Mac OS runs on Macs, iOS runs on iDevices. makes me wonder if they're going to drop the mac branding altogether.

raldi 15y ago

So what cat names are left for future OS X releases?

jopt 15y ago
Lynx?
grecy 15y ago
If my math is correct, they only need one more before XI
- raldi 15y ago
  Care to show your math?
  - grecy 15y ago
    10.8 = Mountain Lion. 10.9 = Last needed cat name. 11 = New naming scheme that doesn't involve big cats.
    - msbarnett 15y ago
      There's really no reason to assume that 10.9 couldn't be followed by 10.10. The final release of 10.4 was 10.4.11.
      - grecy 15y ago
        I've always felt 10.10, 10.11, etc. would be horrible for marketing. But you are absolutely correct, there is no reason to assume it won't happen. Interestingly, the Engadget article mentions more than once they thought 10.7 would be the last 10 before the jump to 11.
        raldi 15y ago
        What Engadget article?

richcollins 15y ago

Apple is calling it “Gatekeeper”. It’s a system whereby developers can sign up for free-of-charge Apple developer IDs which they can then use to cryptographically sign their applications. If an app is found to be malware, Apple can revoke that developer’s certificate, rendering the app (along with any others from the same developer) inert on any Mac where it’s been installed. I would love to see iOS move in this direction as well

beatpanda 15y ago

When journalists say they're different from bloggers, what they're talking about is the kind of navel-gazing bullshit that Gruber spends half his time on here — describing the event itself, and his presence and experience there, making sure the reader knows that he was among only a few dozen people invited to this exclusive one-on-one press briefing. A more competent writer would have spent maybe a sentence or two explaining the novelty of the briefing and then moved on. Gruber spends four paragraphs. I don't need to know that they gave him free coffee, or that the chair was comfortable. The whole thing comes off as sickeningly conceited.

barumrho 15y ago
I think you missed the point of this post.
ebbv 15y ago
> The whole thing comes off as sickeningly conceited. So like a typical Gruber piece, right?
eykanal 15y ago
For what it's worth, and focusing on this isn't worth much at all, I read it completely differently. Gruber was trying to convey a sense of how different this is from the Apple of days gone by. He's trying to demonstrate that Apple has gone from having huge keynotes at Macworld to having medium-size keynotes in their own auditoriums to having one-on-ones with key members of the press. The point isn't "look at how awesome I am", the point is "look at how completely different this is from everything they've ever done in the past".
greyish_water 15y ago
Whereas what you've written...
gecko 15y ago
I don't think that's quite true. If you read stories in the New Yorker, or the Atlantic, or similar publications, then you'd find equally "naval-gazing" writing from "real" reporters. When I write a post, or when a journalist writes a story, or when you write a comment, you want to have an angle: something that sets your writing apart from the other thirty people who are writing about the same thing. Many publications today will cover detailed information about Mountain Lion. Gruber knows that. Further, there's not actually much new in Mountain Lion: Gruber successfully summarizes the new release in a handful of words in a middle paragraph. While I suppose he could go into more detail on interface minutia between Contacts and Address Book, or pontificate on why Notification Center on OS X looks more like Growl and less like the iOS pull-down, even doing that would provide him relatively little material. Instead, Gruber focused on the culture of the event. From a company so well known for massive product releases and on-stage demos, the idea of doing not just one, but a large number of in-person demos across the country represents a substantial shift. It could symbolize any number of things, from a lack of confidence to a desire to repair image damage from Foxconn, which is why Gruber finds a need to emphasize how polished the presentation was and how the event was set-up in detail. I can understand why this might feel like naval gazing, but to me, it's anything but. Gruber is in a unique position to comment on the cultural shifts of Apple, precisely because he's so involved with that selfsame culture. If he's going to comment on Mountain Lion's release this morning, that's going to be his angle. It's completely fine if you don't find it interesting, but questioning his competency, or calling this approach conceited, is wrong.

parfe 15y ago

That’s when Schiller tells me they’re doing some things differently now. I wonder immediately about that “now”. I don’t press, because I find the question that immediately sprang to mind uncomfortable. And some things remain unchanged: Apple executives explain what they want to explain, and they explain nothing more. What useless reporting! How about just asking a follow up question about what is different? Or why OS X will not support Siri in this release? Strike out all Gruber's writing involving the feel of the room and this might as well be a feature list on Apple.com. And instead of a room full of writers, journalists, and analysts, it was just me, Schiller, and two others from Apple — Brian Croll from product marketing and Bill Evans from PR. Not even a head nod to let us know he has at least a small sense of what his purpose at this meeting is. Just any hint of self-awareness that he's merely an extension of Apple Marketing would suffice. One of the most valuable companies on the planet sees value in free advertising through Gruber. I'm not sure if that reflects more poorly on Gruber as the stooge, or his readers as pawns.

MrJagil 15y ago
As this event is rather unusual, I personally find the "feeling of the room" quite interesting. Though I must concede Gruber is rather poor when poetic. Ps, if Schiller's presentation was as thorough as Gruber describes it, then I hardly see this as free marketing. Time is money, especially for a guy in Schiller's position. Also the coffee.
chadgeidel 15y ago
Hmm, I got the idea he understood what this was about from this paragraph: "This is an awful lot of effort and attention in order to brief what I’m guessing is a list of a dozen or two writers and journalists. It’s Phil Schiller, spending an entire week on the East Coast, repeating this presentation over and over to a series of audiences of one." (emphasis mine)
- parfe 15y ago
  That's exactly it though! Gruber thinks he's on an select list of writers and journalists. Instead, I believe he's an item on the Apple marketing checklist. Can you find another author who got the same treatment as Gruber? This random article I stumbled across while looking myself takes Gruber's assumptions as fact, which I believe to be Apple's intention. "The company is also changing the way it handles press events, according to worldwide marketing VP Phil Schiller. While Schiller has refused to go into any more detail, Daring Fireball's John Gruber notes that last week, he and others in the media were given separate, solo product briefings on Mountain Lion." http://www.macnn.com/articles/12/02/16/os.x.updates.to.become.annual.releases/ http://www.macnn.com/articles/12/02/16/os.x.updates.to.becom... Gruber actually wrote, "I'm guessing" because he didn't have the sense, integrity, or care to ask "Hey guys, how many other people will you be giving this personal, private, ego-stroking presentation to?"

brudgers 15y ago

To me, the most interesting difference in how Apple presented Mountain Lion was that the announcement appears to have been made on Eastern Time rather than Pacific Time or in the middle of the night through website changes.

padobson 15y ago

I'm not sure iCloud can work in Apple's walled garden. The whole point of cloud storage is to make things accessible seamlessly across all devices. People who use a Mac at home and a PC at work or own an iPad and an Android phone are going to find Dropbox and the like a much better solution. I know Apple is using iCloud to sell hardware and not the other way around, but I cant help but think iCloud can never be what Dropbox is so long as they don't make it available cross platform a la iTunes.

CubicleNinjas 15y ago

So many critics here of Gruber and his writing style. I just see jealousy. This change in Apple's approach is very encouraging and goes to show that for all of their success, they have not their moxy.

ary 15y ago

That’s when Schiller tells me they’re doing some things differently now. Seems to me that not everyone at Apple was thrilled with the one-man spectacle that Jobs made the company into. I'd wager that most of the executives (especially Forstall) are going to raise their public profiles in the coming years in an attempt to use the rather high launching pad that is Apple to make a mark. Under Jobs that wasn't easy.

wisty 15y ago

Does anyone remember that Steve Jobs interview, in which he waxes lyrical about the benefits of putting your docs on a big iron server?

WiseWeasel 15y ago

Really hoping they integrate Siri into Spotlight in 10.8. It would be nice to be able to hit 'command-space' to bring up Spotlight, then just type, "remind me to call Fred at 5", and it would set a reminder, and sync it to your iPhone. Or maybe "set a timer for 5 minutes on my phone", or "add an appointment for dentist tomorrow at noon", "find a good thai restaurant nearby", etc. It's embarrassing how much faster these kinds of tasks are on the iPhone than the Mac now, though network issues can still be a problem inside buildings, and the voice recognition isn't perfect. If I could just type my requests to my Mac, I think I'd find myself using it a lot more often. It would be like a realization of Jef Raskin's (and maybe even more his son Aza's) ideas on 'humane' and command-line interfaces as the ultimate UI.

signalsignal 15y ago

Thank God. I always hated Growl.

fuckapple 15y ago

apple products are overhyped shit. most of the world's bullshit patent problems go away if they do. don't buy their slave-labored garbage. why do they have so much money in the bank? same reason robber barons did. cost of production doesn't factor in externalities and market price is kept artificially high by trumped up demand.