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Something very odd is happening at Apple. Either there is a massive shortage of developers (unlikely) or developers have been moved to a new project (AppleTV ?)

Something very odd is happening at Apple. Either there is a massive shortage of developers (unlikely) or developers have been moved to a new project (AppleTV ?). Because Mountain Lion and iOS6 are by far the most underwhelming updates yet in terms of features.

chrisdroukas 14y ago
Eh. OS X has been on somewhat of a tick-tock update cycle since Leopard. Add features then refine them. Also, it's twenty bucks.
- dr42 14y ago
  The cost has nothing to do with the product, that's determined based on other factors, like how many Mac's OSX sells. There's no straightforward relationship between price number of features. The direction appears to be cheap upgrades, and merging feature sets between IOS and OSX so eventually there's one operating system that changes in unison.
  - Zirro 14y ago
    "The direction appears to be cheap upgrades, and merging feature sets between IOS and OSX so eventually there's one operating system that changes in unison." It is believed by some that Apple will not be pushing their operating systems in this direction: http://daringfireball.net/2012/02/mountain_lion http://daringfireball.net/2012/02/mountain_lion Specifically: "Mountain Lion is not a step towards a single OS that powers both the Mac and iPad, but rather another in a series of steps toward defining a set of shared concepts, styles, and principles between two fundamentally distinct OSes."
- taligent 14y ago
  I think I might have been misunderstood. I have no complaints with Mountain Lion and think it offers tremendous value. My point was whether there had been a movement of developers to a new iOS/OSX based project e.g. like an AppleTV. Because it seems that iOS6 and Mountain Lion combined seem to lack the combined punch of previous releases.
  - gdsf34dfsg 14y ago
    Agreed. I think they have gone quite carefully on iCloud. Beyond that, actual UI enhancements are minimal. It's more iClouding Apps. Or App improvements. Less to do with the OS itself.
  - jaylevitt 14y ago
    Frankly, if the only punch Mountain Lion packs is "breaks way less", I am first in line.
ary 14y ago
What exactly would have been overwhelming?
- tensor 14y ago
  ZFS file system. Fixing iCal and Address book by returning them to proper non-skeuomorph applications, maybe even adjusting the UI to the strengths of computers rather than bring in the inefficiencies of the paper tools we left behind. Proper Mail.app plugins. Not limiting the notification system to App Store apps. Finder replacement. Maybe with something like semantic tagging replacing folders, complete with proper filesystem level unix support. Even bigger pie in the sky features: distributed process migration. If you are at home and have multiple computers, why not borrow your desktops CPU to do heavy processing (say for photos or video?) In other words, features targeting professionals, the opposite of Apple current strategy. edit: these would be overwhelming to me
  - shawnz 14y ago
    While you have some legitimate suggestions spliced in here, the majority of your post says to me "The feature they should have added is to change everything back to the way it was, and change the business strategy". This is not really a very good interpretation of the question, for obvious reasons.
  - mkaltenecker 14y ago
    Skeumorphism is about taste. You just don’t share Apple’s. Simple as that. As long as it doesn’t impact the UI there is nothing wrong with skeumorphism. Every app can use the notification system. They only can’t use push notifications if they are not in the App Store. Not terribly relevant for the desktop.
    - tensor 14y ago
      I disagree that skeuomorphism is only about taste. It's not just a skin, it also removes and limits functionality. I can even give specific examples. If you have lion, go to your address book. It probably opens and lists people on the left with their details on the right. It looks like a book. Can you group people? It's certainly not obvious that such functionality (which is useful!) exists. Now click the red bookmark thing on top. Not very intuitive. It looks like a bookmark, not something that switches to a different view. Anyways, viola! The grouping interface! But now I can't see contact details. I need to "flip the page" back to see the details. This is a huge step backwards and is so inefficient that I completely stopped using groups when I moved to Lion. Now consider Mountain lion: http://6.mshcdn.com/wp-content/gallery/apple-os-x-mountain-lion-top-15-new-features/10-contacts.jpg http://6.mshcdn.com/wp-content/gallery/apple-os-x-mountain-l... Hey! It's the three column view from the old address book! Now I can see my groups, contacts, and details, just like before. Not as skeuomorph though. Now it's just an app that is skinned to look like a book. It doesn't function like a book. There are no pages to flip. It still has the dimensions of a book I guess, but that only makes that left page looks mighty constrained. UI is about displaying and working with information, and this skeuomorphism is arguably not a very good way of doing either. I can lodge similar complaints about iCal. For instance, why are months always on separate pages? When I'm near the end of a month, I have to keep switching back and forth (with a slow unneeded animation on top). It's a computer, surely we can come up with an interface that discards this old page limitation of paper calendars! Not if you are thinking with skeuomorphism though.
mkaltenecker 14y ago
Does the amount of stuff added matter? If the quality is good I honestly don’t care. Lion was a bit of a dud. Mountain Lion doesn’t add much but it improves massively on Lion. It corrects its mistakes. I’m very much ok with that, I don’t need flashy new features. I really don’t want Apple to start pulling features out of there ass (especially now that they switched to a yearly update cycle), mere refinements every year for something mature like OS X would be awesome.
elithrar 14y ago
They have also moved to an 18 month release cycle for OS X[1], so we should not expect huge swathes of changes in each release. [1]: http://forums.appleinsider.com/t/143731/mac-os-x-mountain-lion-release-signals-shift-in-secrecy-at-apple http://forums.appleinsider.com/t/143731/mac-os-x-mountain-li...
- yottabyte47 14y ago
  I thought they announced they were moving to a yearly release cycle. http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/44444/mac-os-x-updates-yearly-2013 http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/44444/mac-os-x-updates-yearl...
CoolGuySteve 14y ago
After Snow Leopard, they changed to a development cycle consistent of two week sprints followed by a one week convergence period. Stuff that can't get in by the specified milestone gets pushed back, moved, or cancelled. It actually makes for a nicer development model than the 'everything doesn't work for a year and then miraculously comes together 4 months before release' development model. For example, with Snow Leopard, XCode became garbage collected and was unusable for like 50 releases in a row. Ultimately, while you get a slightly less buggy release that comes out on time more or less, the features seem less ambitious.
bluthru 14y ago
Over 200 new features and plenty of behind-the-scenes refinements, all for $20 and 12 months after Lion. Sounds like they're firing on all cylinders in Cupertino. http://www.apple.com/osx/whats-new/features.html http://www.apple.com/osx/whats-new/features.html
- FireBeyond 14y ago
  Beg to differ / disagree. I'd say there's a lot less than 200 features, most are "refinements". I mean, really, is "Date Picker in Calendar now has a mini Calendar" is a "new feature"? A new widget on a control?
  - pooriaazimi 14y ago
    These are user features. Snow leopard and mountain lion (as their names might suggest) are all about under the hood refinements. Snow leopard was ten times better than leopard, but the most striking new user feature was scrollable stacks (in Dock)! So, don't judge ML too harshly. I used dev versions and they were rock solid (more stable than anything before 10.6.4 or 10.7.1).
r00fus 14y ago
Underwhelming by what means? Small features like VIP whitelists for Mail.app, the Finder "share" button, and bigger features like Power Nap are significant improvements for many users. I'm all about the future made into reality, but what kind of features do you see in other recent OS updates that are a) successful and not buggy as hell and b) ambitious enough to be not considered "underwhelming"?
masto 14y ago
There are lots of changes for developers, especially in iOS 6. IMO these are releases to enable new apps and new options (for example, one iOS feature just screams "get ready for different screen sizes"). I expect the next one will again focus on end-user features.
pooriaazimi 14y ago
The refined App sandbox and new system services (through XPC) are a major under-the-hood change. I don't have time to go through it, but they seem to have changed erything in OS X for XPC (watch WWDC sessions if you're interested). But I completely agree with your first point. iWork hasn't been updated since 2009... I just can't believe it. It's still not on iCloud so if you want to share files between iOS and iWork on Mac, you have to manually copy and upload them. It's disgusting.

chrisdroukas 14y ago

Eh. OS X has been on somewhat of a tick-tock update cycle since Leopard. Add features then refine them. Also, it's twenty bucks.

dr42 14y ago
The cost has nothing to do with the product, that's determined based on other factors, like how many Mac's OSX sells. There's no straightforward relationship between price number of features. The direction appears to be cheap upgrades, and merging feature sets between IOS and OSX so eventually there's one operating system that changes in unison.
- Zirro 14y ago
  "The direction appears to be cheap upgrades, and merging feature sets between IOS and OSX so eventually there's one operating system that changes in unison." It is believed by some that Apple will not be pushing their operating systems in this direction: http://daringfireball.net/2012/02/mountain_lion http://daringfireball.net/2012/02/mountain_lion Specifically: "Mountain Lion is not a step towards a single OS that powers both the Mac and iPad, but rather another in a series of steps toward defining a set of shared concepts, styles, and principles between two fundamentally distinct OSes."
taligent 14y ago
I think I might have been misunderstood. I have no complaints with Mountain Lion and think it offers tremendous value. My point was whether there had been a movement of developers to a new iOS/OSX based project e.g. like an AppleTV. Because it seems that iOS6 and Mountain Lion combined seem to lack the combined punch of previous releases.
- gdsf34dfsg 14y ago
  Agreed. I think they have gone quite carefully on iCloud. Beyond that, actual UI enhancements are minimal. It's more iClouding Apps. Or App improvements. Less to do with the OS itself.
- jaylevitt 14y ago
  Frankly, if the only punch Mountain Lion packs is "breaks way less", I am first in line.

ary 14y ago

What exactly would have been overwhelming?

tensor 14y ago
ZFS file system. Fixing iCal and Address book by returning them to proper non-skeuomorph applications, maybe even adjusting the UI to the strengths of computers rather than bring in the inefficiencies of the paper tools we left behind. Proper Mail.app plugins. Not limiting the notification system to App Store apps. Finder replacement. Maybe with something like semantic tagging replacing folders, complete with proper filesystem level unix support. Even bigger pie in the sky features: distributed process migration. If you are at home and have multiple computers, why not borrow your desktops CPU to do heavy processing (say for photos or video?) In other words, features targeting professionals, the opposite of Apple current strategy. edit: these would be overwhelming to me
- shawnz 14y ago
  While you have some legitimate suggestions spliced in here, the majority of your post says to me "The feature they should have added is to change everything back to the way it was, and change the business strategy". This is not really a very good interpretation of the question, for obvious reasons.
- mkaltenecker 14y ago
  Skeumorphism is about taste. You just don’t share Apple’s. Simple as that. As long as it doesn’t impact the UI there is nothing wrong with skeumorphism. Every app can use the notification system. They only can’t use push notifications if they are not in the App Store. Not terribly relevant for the desktop.
  - tensor 14y ago
    I disagree that skeuomorphism is only about taste. It's not just a skin, it also removes and limits functionality. I can even give specific examples. If you have lion, go to your address book. It probably opens and lists people on the left with their details on the right. It looks like a book. Can you group people? It's certainly not obvious that such functionality (which is useful!) exists. Now click the red bookmark thing on top. Not very intuitive. It looks like a bookmark, not something that switches to a different view. Anyways, viola! The grouping interface! But now I can't see contact details. I need to "flip the page" back to see the details. This is a huge step backwards and is so inefficient that I completely stopped using groups when I moved to Lion. Now consider Mountain lion: http://6.mshcdn.com/wp-content/gallery/apple-os-x-mountain-lion-top-15-new-features/10-contacts.jpg http://6.mshcdn.com/wp-content/gallery/apple-os-x-mountain-l... Hey! It's the three column view from the old address book! Now I can see my groups, contacts, and details, just like before. Not as skeuomorph though. Now it's just an app that is skinned to look like a book. It doesn't function like a book. There are no pages to flip. It still has the dimensions of a book I guess, but that only makes that left page looks mighty constrained. UI is about displaying and working with information, and this skeuomorphism is arguably not a very good way of doing either. I can lodge similar complaints about iCal. For instance, why are months always on separate pages? When I'm near the end of a month, I have to keep switching back and forth (with a slow unneeded animation on top). It's a computer, surely we can come up with an interface that discards this old page limitation of paper calendars! Not if you are thinking with skeuomorphism though.

mkaltenecker 14y ago

Does the amount of stuff added matter? If the quality is good I honestly don’t care. Lion was a bit of a dud. Mountain Lion doesn’t add much but it improves massively on Lion. It corrects its mistakes. I’m very much ok with that, I don’t need flashy new features. I really don’t want Apple to start pulling features out of there ass (especially now that they switched to a yearly update cycle), mere refinements every year for something mature like OS X would be awesome.

elithrar 14y ago

They have also moved to an 18 month release cycle for OS X[1], so we should not expect huge swathes of changes in each release. [1]: http://forums.appleinsider.com/t/143731/mac-os-x-mountain-lion-release-signals-shift-in-secrecy-at-apple http://forums.appleinsider.com/t/143731/mac-os-x-mountain-li...

yottabyte47 14y ago
I thought they announced they were moving to a yearly release cycle. http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/44444/mac-os-x-updates-yearly-2013 http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/44444/mac-os-x-updates-yearl...

CoolGuySteve 14y ago

After Snow Leopard, they changed to a development cycle consistent of two week sprints followed by a one week convergence period. Stuff that can't get in by the specified milestone gets pushed back, moved, or cancelled. It actually makes for a nicer development model than the 'everything doesn't work for a year and then miraculously comes together 4 months before release' development model. For example, with Snow Leopard, XCode became garbage collected and was unusable for like 50 releases in a row. Ultimately, while you get a slightly less buggy release that comes out on time more or less, the features seem less ambitious.

bluthru 14y ago

Over 200 new features and plenty of behind-the-scenes refinements, all for $20 and 12 months after Lion. Sounds like they're firing on all cylinders in Cupertino. http://www.apple.com/osx/whats-new/features.html http://www.apple.com/osx/whats-new/features.html

FireBeyond 14y ago
Beg to differ / disagree. I'd say there's a lot less than 200 features, most are "refinements". I mean, really, is "Date Picker in Calendar now has a mini Calendar" is a "new feature"? A new widget on a control?
- pooriaazimi 14y ago
  These are user features. Snow leopard and mountain lion (as their names might suggest) are all about under the hood refinements. Snow leopard was ten times better than leopard, but the most striking new user feature was scrollable stacks (in Dock)! So, don't judge ML too harshly. I used dev versions and they were rock solid (more stable than anything before 10.6.4 or 10.7.1).

r00fus 14y ago

Underwhelming by what means? Small features like VIP whitelists for Mail.app, the Finder "share" button, and bigger features like Power Nap are significant improvements for many users. I'm all about the future made into reality, but what kind of features do you see in other recent OS updates that are a) successful and not buggy as hell and b) ambitious enough to be not considered "underwhelming"?

masto 14y ago

There are lots of changes for developers, especially in iOS 6. IMO these are releases to enable new apps and new options (for example, one iOS feature just screams "get ready for different screen sizes"). I expect the next one will again focus on end-user features.

pooriaazimi 14y ago

The refined App sandbox and new system services (through XPC) are a major under-the-hood change. I don't have time to go through it, but they seem to have changed erything in OS X for XPC (watch WWDC sessions if you're interested). But I completely agree with your first point. iWork hasn't been updated since 2009... I just can't believe it. It's still not on iCloud so if you want to share files between iOS and iWork on Mac, you have to manually copy and upload them. It's disgusting.