What Next for OS X?

I still remember, with fondness, the first time I installed the OS X Public beta sometime back in 2000. It was an odd and exciting experience-you had to create an account! Everything was so shiny and lickable! And slow... But it was clear, even then, that this was the future of Apple's operating system. Even as I toiled day-in and day-out in OS 9 I knew that someday soon OS 9 would be dead. It would a number of years later (more than people thought) until Apple symbolically buried OS 9 in a coffin, and now, here we are still using OS X.

Just as it took Apple longer than expected to bury OS 9 , so too it took longer for OS X to become a usable everyday operating system. This didn't really happen until Tiger in 2004. That gives us 6 years with a usable operating system from Apple.

OS 9, released on the cusp of OS X lasted about 3 years before Apple officially dumped it. OS 8 lasted 2 years, OS 7 (co-operative multi-tasking!) 6 years, and OS 6 3 years.

Of course, what was different about OS X was that, at least in terms of the underlying technology, it was a completely different operating system. OS 6, 7, 8, 9 were iterations of a similar core.

What was not different about OS X was its use of the graphical user interface.

Indeed, it is not an exaggeration to state that if you compared the original Macintosh operating system (neé OS 1.0) to Snow Leopard (and also to Windows 1.0 and Windows 7) the basic premise is all the same: double-clicking on icons open things. With windows you click and drag things around with a mouse. All the rest, Aqua, multi-tasking, Cocoa, are iterative.

Put another way the Macintosh operating system hasn't really changed since 1984.

Now Apple's marketing machine and fanboys would have you think differently. And in a way they are right, of course. You can do so much more with today's Mac than you could with the one in 1984 (although I still love the original Mac). But that has as much to do with Moore's law regarding processor speed, ram and hard drive space as it does with the underlying kernal.

"What Next for OS X ?" has an entirely different feeling when we posit that things haven't really changed all that much since 1984.

In many ways Apple has answered this for us in the past 9 years. With the advent of the iPod (2001), iTunes, and now the iPhone and iPod Apple has dropped "computer" from its name. It doesn't derive the majority of its revenue from the Mac, and hasn't for years.

Some have proposed that the iOS will replace OS X on the desktop. I only see this happening if the iOS matures in a number of key areas, including a file-system, true multi-tasking, a dock that can hold more than 4 (or 6 icons), and so much more.

I'm afraid that with the iOS devices dominating revenue Apple has little incentive to innovate on its desktop operating system and this is a shame.

What is probably next for OS X then, is probably a series of rather mundane updates. Things will be fine-tuned pixel-wise, at the kernal level, and otherwise-but nothing revolutionary.

For those of us who are transitioning more and more of our computer time to mobile devices including the iPhone and iPad this is good news. But for those of us looking for something above and beyond the GUI metaphor of 1984, it is a shame.

One can hope that deep within the bowels of Cupertino there is a project that isn't focused on the next new media player, TV player, iPhone, or tablet computer. Rather, I dream of a project that looks to reinvent the way we interface with machines much as Apple did with the original Macintosh.

I'm not quite sure what interaction models it would use. Gesture-based seems ill-informed at worst and hokey at best-the stuff of over-excited geeks and gimmicky game systems to come.

The voice model of Hal too has been overhyped as the dominance and efficiency of the keyboard shows.

With 3D taking off in the cinema, and, as every television manufacturer hopes, the living room perhaps the newest computing paradigm will be in real 3D as opposed to the fake 3D BumpTop Google recently acquired.

Gesture, voice, 3D and how they relate to Apple's next operating system is probably a stretch at best. Apple isn't known for just jumping on the bandwagon a la Microsoft for the bandwagon's sake. Apple does it with measured product design, and big profits in mind.

And lastly, to name another latest trend is that wonderful misunderstood thing called the Cloud. Google's operating system, Chrome, is going to rely heavily on Cloud services. Even Microsoft is having to move in that direction, albeit very slowly on the client operating system side. Could it be that the new Mac OS X with be a Cloud operating system that actually works?

I return then to what I stated a few paragraphs ago with a somewhat heavy feeling in my heart. OS X, with its seemingly never-ending cat-coded names is likely going to see a series of maintenance upgrades.

I've named a number of options and choices here. What do you think the future of Mac OS X is?