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"OS X Mountain Lion arrives this summer. With all-new features inspired by iPad, the Mac just keeps getting better and better." Am I the only person that doesn

• antidaily 15y ago
  No, no one wants that (I hope). Read the Gruber preview and you'll feel more at ease. OS X and iOS are not merging. He describes Mountain Lion as "a series of steps toward defining a set of shared concepts, styles, and principles between two fundamentally distinct OSes." http://daringfireball.net/2012/02/mountain_lion http://daringfireball.net/2012/02/mountain_lion
  • hahainternet 15y ago
    I asked a few friends and couldn't get an answer. What features have been taken from OSX and put into iOS? It seems to me that contrary to Gruber's claim, OSX is moving towards iOS and iOS is moving towards its competition.
    • philwelch 15y ago
      What features have been taken from OSX and put into iOS? Oh, not much--just the whole kernel, userland, graphics layer, and half of the Cocoa API. EDIT: Also, Spotlight.
      • CrazedGeek 15y ago
        Features, not specs.
        • ntkachov 15y ago
          Whats the difference?
        • ceejayoz 15y ago
          Mail, Safari, iCal, accessibility, the Stocks / Weather dashboard widgets, Photo Booth, iWork, GarageBand, Airport Utility... Hell, iCloud had its roots in Mac.com.
    • gurkendoktor 15y ago
      The ports of iWork and GarageBand felt like that to me. iOS changing from a web-driven OS into something that can be much better compared to a desktop machine.
    • smackfu 15y ago
      OS X Safari tabs were added to the iPad version of Safari in iOS 5. Most of the rest of the features that people are listing don't seem right, like both iOS and OS X have a search called Spotlight but they aren't very similar in UI.
  • toddh 15y ago
    This strikes me as more of a transition period. Eventually mac sales will be controlled completely via the app store and its highly structured sand boxed environment. Gatekeeper allows runtime control. Icloud replaces the local file system. The style guide moves to the ipad side. And in a few years the mac just fades away...
  • billpatrianakos 15y ago
    I read the Gruber article too and I'm not totally at ease yet. In terms or UI I don't mind the new look of things but I do worry about things like iCloud. It's a really excellent idea but I'm not sure if I want my file system in the cloud. Not for security but just for control. I've been in love with the Mac for over five years now and I'm starting to worry. What if I want a different cloud file system other than iCloud? What if I want no cloud file system? Sure, right now it's no problem but what about the future? It's no secret that Apple is basically creating a hardware software empire where everything from the physical computer to the peripherals to the software and even web services are all Apple. I've been fine with that because the Mac never tried to force things on me. I've always had the option to use a different email client, Dropbox, music player, etc. without any trouble but I'm afraid Apple will move OS X in the direction of Windows where the OS assumes you're going to use its preferred software and services and if you don't it either makes it a hassle to use alternatives or it continuously throws up those annoying notifications. All that aside, I'm most afraid for how friendly it will be to developers. Snow Leopard was the last OS X that was perfect for me as a developer. In Lion I have to deal with things like LLVM as the default compiler outdated command line tools, some Ruby gems give me problems, the system won't allow you to save hidden files (i.e. ".htaccess") and the list goes on. I know that developers and power users are in the minority and that for average folks who are all about media and entertainment with a little work thrown in Mountain Lion will be aweso,e out of the box. I'm glad they're making such an awesome system for those people but I feel like they're leaving developers out and not even giving us a way to switch off some of those default behaviors. I'm only 25 but I feel like I sound like the old guy who thinks things were better "back in the old days". Maybe I am just resisting a good thing and I hope I learn to love it.
    • rch 15y ago
      I believe your concerns are completely warranted. Lion was a a significant step in the wrong direction, and this sounds like an enthusiastic leap along the same unfortunate lines.
    • tvon 15y ago
      Sort of tangental, but I know the command line tools are not GNU but are they otherwise outdated? I used to install various GNU coreutils packages but decided they weren't really adding anything and in some cases (ls) they were removing functionality. > the system won't allow you to save hidden files (i.e. ".htaccess") and the list goes on. I don't believe that is true, unless you're having problems with a specific editor?
• swombat 15y ago
  "Inspired by" doesn't mean "equal to"... I don't see any evidence that those features turn your mac into an ipad.
  • moe 15y ago
    Last time they took inspiration from iOS we ended up with "Launchpad", an inverted scroll-wheel, and the god-awful "restart all applications after reboot"-nuisance that cannot be fully disabled. Thanks but no thanks.
    • rayiner 15y ago
      Launchpad is great and the scrolling behavior makes total sense. We also got fullscreen mode, which is the first multiple desktop like thing I've ever gotten used to using (even after years of using Linux, where I could never make use of virtual desktops because I couldn't remember what windows had gone where). The iPad-inspired improvements in Lion were probably the biggest jump in my desktop productivity since I got a Mac to begin with (around 10.4).
    • philwelch 15y ago
      You like restoring all your applications by hand every time you have to run Software Update?
      • JeremyBanks 15y ago
        Yes, because then they don't all start at once, fight for RAM and swap around while leaving my computer a useless lagging mess when I just want to open a browser. It's probably okay in some cases, but it shouldn't be the default. Instead of prompting before shutdown, it could display a dialog on boot with a list of applications that had been running. Click on one to restore it, and have a "Restore All" option at the bottom. I'm a huge fan of the inverted scrolling, though.
        • philwelch 15y ago
          I noticed on my old MacBook there was a considerable delay relaunching apps, but with my new one, between more RAM and the SSD it's pretty instantaneous, as is the restart itself. I was always careful about quitting apps to free up RAM on the old machine though, but just relaunching Chrome and bringing all my tabs back up was enough to do the same thing.
• taylorbuley 15y ago
  It took me a while to get used to Lion's reverse scroll, which in retrospect seems like a layup for this release, but I've come to enjoy it.
  • tdfx 15y ago
    Took me about a week and a half to get over that mentally. Now I can't use my girlfriend's computer who is still on Snow Leopard.
    • sneak 15y ago
      Yeah. I fiercely admire Apple for having the balls to fix what was obviously backwards but heavily entrenched in the minds of the public. They almost always do the Right Thing.
    • dean 15y ago
      It's not just your girlfriend's computer that will be a problem for you -- it's _any_ other computer. Personally, I think it was a big mistake for Apple to do this. I find it very un-intuitive. Even if the design of the way windows scroll was ultimately an arbitrary decision, it's ingrained now. I think it was silly to change it.
      • rimantas 15y ago
        What's un-intuitive about it? On touchscreen—you move your finger up, content moves up. On Lion—you move your finger up, content moves up. Took me 40 minutes to get used.
• ed209 15y ago
  Since os 8.something I've always felt that my mac is a workhorse. It's like I've had to have a mac, I a professional designer damnit. But this update feels like it's creeping towards a heavily consumer facing product. My workhorse is being swapped for a show pony... (no doubt it'll still do the job, it just a totally unfounded feeling I have)
  • batista 15y ago
    But this update feels like it's creeping towards a heavily consumer facing product. Two questions: 1) you think you are different than a consumer how? 2) what exactly do you see this update taking away from you?
    • ed209 15y ago
      1) When I started on mac it was targeted at (mostly) professionals in desktop publishing etc. So it was more B2B than B2C. I accept that this has been changing for a long time already, probably since OSX. Now I am a consumer, that's my point. 2) Nothing. But now I'm buying a consumer product to do my work. It's like Iron Maiden using Garageband, or Philip Halsman using Instagram. (not that I would compare myself to them, but you get the idea)
      • robryan 15y ago
        It feels to me like the problem people have here is pretty much all in the marketing. You still have all the features and more from when you considered it a creative professionals machine, it's just the feel imparted by the focus and marketing is different.
        • ed209 15y ago
          it's even more than that. they made (are making) the tools so accessible to everyone, that what was once considered a craft (fine tuning a $50,000 recording desk) has now been reduced to a few settings on an $800 laptop. That's just way of the world, I'm not complaining, it's great to get these creative tools to as many people as possible. But my original point still stands. Of course you still have to have a tallent to make anything of these tools, no matter how point-and-click they are, even so they're robbing me of that feeling of achievement and pride that I had in being able to handle a tool that not many could... and yes, I'm aware that I'm beginning to sound like an old man.
• tristan_louis 15y ago
  You're not. The continuing IOSification of OSX is something that has been bugging me too and part of why, to date, I've yet to upgrade to Lion. It looks like Apple wants to create a more iOS-like approach across all its products, which is fine if you buy into the whole ecosystem. It also seems there's a trend here, with Apple bringing iOS increasingly into OSX and Microsoft bringing Windows Phone into Windows 8, the only operating systems which still are aimed primarily at computer users are Unix or Linux based.
  • randomdata 15y ago
    I have yet to use Lion, so I cannot comment if the iOS metaphor suits the personal computer, but I am all for the vendors trying something new. The desktop metaphor has been used for multiple decades now, with very little variation. While it has proven to work well, is it the best we can do, or are we stuck with baby duck syndrome?
    • Tyrannosaurs 15y ago
      98% of the time for me at least Lion remains near identical to previous OS X versions from a UI perspective (with the exception of full screen which was just a glaring omission from all previous version IMHO). The "Back to the Mac" line might be good marketing but massive over sell if viewed as literal truth. What they did was identify a few holes in the UI (for instance that you might not have every application you wanted in your dock but that going through your applications folder was a pain) and fill them with iOS-ish solutions. But if you don't want them, you don't use them, they've not taken any of the old stuff away.
      • phantomb 15y ago
        Why in the hell would navigating a bunch of sequential screens full of huge icons be less of a pain than an applications folder? Thank god for application launchers in any case. And they did screw with the old ui stuff in Lion. For example, they completely fucked up Spaces when they merged everything into Mission Control. It now takes twice as long to move between spaces; you're treated to a stupid iOS-style "fade in" animation, wasting even more of your time; the steps to move a window between spaces is now more complicated; and they removed rows. Why? I assume they wanted to make it look exactly the way it does on iOS, where you just have a horizontal series of windows. This is simple and intuitive. It's also stupid as hell.
• brackin 15y ago
  Tim Cook said the other day that the iPad is helping the Mac gain marketshare. That tagline is telling all of the iOS users. You liked your phone? Why not try a computer that integrates with it perfectly.
• wpeterson 15y ago
  Seriously. The last thing I want is my Macbook Pro to behave like my iPhone. I love them both, but they are drastically different products and uses.
  • roc 15y ago
    I feel the same way. But what in Mountain Lion sounds anything like that? All I see is popular out-of-the-box iOS apps/features being brought to the out-of-the-box OS X experience. What power users don't already have growl, dropbox, a dedicated notes app, a dedicated reminders app, an integrated chat client, etc? These Mountain Lion features are only iOS-like inasmuch as iOS had them out-of-the_box, while OS X users looked to third parties to provide them. If you ask me, Mountain Lion sounds like a more reasoned approach to "bring what works about iOS to OS X" than misfires like "Mission Control".
    • joejohnson 15y ago
      Exactly. Apple isn't trying to replace OSX with iOS. If anything, they want the two to talk to each other better. And, perhaps OSX could benefit from some of what they've learned developing UIs for the iPad.
• pwelch 15y ago
  No your not. I want my stuff to sync without issues like my notes, contacts, mail but I don't want my laptop/desktop to feel like my phone. Example: Launch pad, is anyone really using this?
  • calloc 15y ago
    Nope, and you don't have to. But for those users that are new to the platform (and I have watched quite a few) it makes them feel at home. They instantly know where to look for their apps, they can re-arrange them however they like. It is not for those of us who grew up on Mac OS, then Mac OS X, Linux and Windows, it is for those that have had an iPad or an iPhone and know there is a single location (home) where all your apps are. Launchpad fits that bill nicely.
  • aiscott 15y ago
    I've been using OS X for years as my main OS, and I do occasionally use launchpad. I've got a boatload of stuff installed and I don't always remember what I have. Launchpad provides a nice way of viewing all the apps. I don't use it everytime I launch somthing (I use alfred for that), but to refresh my memory every now and then. It doesn't work exactly like I would like it too, but it's not bad, and it's very out of the way if you don't like it.
  • jsz0 15y ago
    I use it. Sometimes I actually forgot what apps I have installed or forget the names of them if I don't use them frequently. If my hand is already on the trackpad I just have to pinch in and there they are. Quicker than going to the Applications folder.
  • kalleboo 15y ago
    I never use Launchpad, but I'm glad it's there since I've always had trouble explaining the Applications folder vs the Dock to people, and Launchpad solves that very nicely for non-technical people (especially ones with iPhones/iPads).
• ImprovedSilence 15y ago
  I actually like the idea of it being both (and and ipad becoming a desktop) Launchpad for ipad like utility, the normal desktop for desktop things, have both on both systems. Lets be honest here, we are moving away from a central computing device model, to a model with many peripheral devices. I'd like it if they all acted the same, and were capable of displaying the same content, as well as providing the same ability to create.
• sliverstorm 15y ago
  Apparently those of us who feel this way are dwindling in number.
• jsz0 15y ago
  Is there any specific reasons you wouldn't want AirPlay, Notes/Reminders/Messages, notifications, etc? It seems to me those are all very good features to add to OSX that happened to debut on iOS first.
• SODaniel 15y ago
  You might want to move away from Mac's then. For some reason that's where it's all heading. By the end of 2012 you will be squeezing and swyping all over your 27" screen.
  • easp 15y ago
    Which, of course, is BS