inconsequence

There have been two successful OS transformations on the desktop. One was Mac OS Classic to Mac OS X, which was implemented using virtualization. The other was DOS to Windows, which was a slightly weirder affair (initially, Windows was a DOS application, then Windows NT ran DOS under virtualization). You might argue Windows was a horrible kludge, but its more elegant step-sibling (OS/2) handled DOS compatibility by virtualization and failed miserably in the marketplace.

It seems pretty clear, especially given the power of current hardware, that virtualization is the way to handle an OS transformation. Indeed, many commentators have suggested that Microsoft should replace Windows with a brand new modern, lightweight OS, and manage compatibility by virtualization.

Right now, iPhone OS runs under Mac OS X via virtualization. Multitouch is not well-supported (for obvious reasons), but that’s simply a hardware issue (Macs don’t have touchscreens).

Of Apple’s two operating systems, one of generates over two-thirds of its revenue, and an even larger proportion of its profits. And that OS isn’t Mac OS X. Apple is notorious (I might say famous, but chose not to) for doing a lot with a little — there are probably fewer people working on Mac OS X right now than on Microsoft Word. But we haven’t even heard a whisper about Mac OS X 10.7.

So, the question is, whither Mac OS X?

Merging it with iPhone OS is impractical for numerous reasons, not least of which is that iPhone OS runs very lean and mean and Mac OS X conspicuously does not. A virtualization solution would allow iPhone OS to continue working beautifully on low-powered devices (by not providing the compatibility box) while allowing higher-powered devices to offer full backwards compatibility.

Of course, Apple already has an iPhone virtualization box for Mac OS X, so a “unification OS” could be released tomorrow if Apple wanted to make Mac OS X that OS, but I think a Tablet computer that boots instantly into iPhone OS and lets you run Mac OS X in a virtual box as needed is far more desirable than a Tablet computer that boots in 30s into Mac OS X and lets you run iPhone OS in a virtual box. Either would be pretty compelling, though.

The other question is, what benefits are there to keeping the two platforms separate? I would argue there are none. iPhone OS devices with a Mac compatibility box would, in essence, answer all the “closed platform” criticisms — the Mac platform is rich and open, and running it on a virtual machine would sandbox it from the managed world of iPhone. Indeed, virtualization affords Apple the option of opening iPhone OS devices without adding risk for users who don’t want it. The only real reason not to go down this route right now is hardware.

There’s your Mac App Store, by the way. It’s the App Store, and iPhone OS running on your Mac.

So, I predict that iPhone OS will subsume Mac OS X within three years. Obviously, it will long since have ceased being iPhone OS, of course. Hence, the title of this post.

I wonder why no-one seems to mind the fact that Silverlight isn't available on the iPhone or iPad

Here’s a direct link to the Windows Phone 7 Series Youtube Videos (you don’t need to install Silverlight to view them). My impression of the videos is that the typographic user interface looks great, but—like a lot of dotcom boom web designs—I have no clue how you’re actually supposed to use the damn thing.

It seems to me that Windows Phone 7 Series is Pepsi or New Coke vs. the iPhone’s Coke Classic. It looks great and works dandy if your goal is to “aimlessly play around with it for five minutes”, but if you actually want to use the thing then you’re screwed. The top half of the home screen is achieving the same thing the row of buttons at the bottom of the iPhone home screen does. Yes, “Music” in huge sans serif white-on-black looks great, but … it’s occupying 20% of the screen.

As Apple desperately attempts to catch up with Microsoft's UI, who knows what we'll see?

One of the things the iPhone’s UI decidedly is not is “based on the iPod UI”. Indeed, the iPod functionality on the iPhone is a pared down Mac OS X, not a bulked up iPod. The original iPod’s minimalist UI is barely sufficient for the needs of someone trying to pick a song to play.

E.g. the lack of UI affordances in the classic iPod UI can make it quite difficult to differentiate “choosing a song” from “wanting to change the volume” from “wanting to see where you are in a song” from “wanting to change your rating for a song”. Each of these things takes a full screen and overloads the basic controls. To select a song you scroll to it and the press the middle button. The play the song you  press the middle button. To set a song’s rating you press the middle button, scroll the rating, then press the middle button. Er, I think.

Luckily for the iPod, it was competing against clueless vendors of audio hi-fi equipment whose idea of UI design was “if you want to select which tracks to play, follow the following twenty-seven step process that we guarantee you’ll never remember”. These are the people who left blinking “0:00″ displays around the world. The iPod’s UI wasn’t so much “great” as decent.

Microsoft’s new phone is essentially taking a decent music player UI and using it for everything.

Oh, and I look forward to getting emails ending with… “from Steve Ballmer’s Windows Phone 7 Series Phone”.

Post Script

Edward Tufte has some things to say on the subject. “In the splashy panoramas, there are hints of design-by-focus-group (which is like hiring temps as your design consultants). Instead of impressing focus groups, designers should do a thought experiment: Imagine what Steve Jobs and Jonathan Ive would have to say about your interface.” Which is pretty much in line with my whole “New Coke” comparison. It does raise the question of whether the purpose of WP7S is in fact a product or a publicity stunt.

The original 128kB Macintosh

The Economist has a piece on the iPad that is, as is often the case with said publication, a lot more on point than anything else I’ve heard or read on the topic.

The enthusiasm of the Apple faithful may be overdone, but Jobs’ record suggests that when he blesses a market, it takes off. And tablet computing promises to transform not just one industry, but three — computing, telecoms and media. Companies in the first two businesses view the iPad’s arrival with trepidation, for Apple’s history makes it a fearsome competitor. The media industry, by contrast, welcomes it wholeheartedly. Piracy, free content and the dispersal of advertising around the Web have made the Internet a difficult environment for media companies.

…

True, there are worries that Apple could end up wielding a lot of power in these new markets, as it already does in digital music. But a new market opened up and dominated by Apple is better than a shrinking market, or no market at all.

…

If Jobs manages to pull off another amazing trick with another brilliant device, then the benefits of the digital revolution to media companies with genuinely popular products may soon start to outweigh the costs.

I’m getting sick of tech bloggers who don’t understand why on earth anyone would want a tablet that doesn’t have insert feature here. I’m almost as sick of tech bloggers explaining to their friends (who agree with them) that it’s Utter Utter Genius because it’s like a Prius or an Automatic Transmission or even The Shape of Things to Come (although this last post is perhaps the most insightful and to-the-point).

If I were to pick an analogy, I’d pick a computer analogy. The iPad is the Mac. Or to put it another way, it is to the Mac what the Mac was to the IBM PC in 1984.

So, to all of my fellow tech bloggers struggling for meaningful analogies — go back in time to 1984 and review the Macintosh.

When the Mac came out you couldn’t write Mac programs on a Mac (not compiled ones, anyway). You needed a Lisa. It lacked a lot of capabilities that other computers had, e.g. it had no expansion slots, no hard disk, no color display. It’s actually quite normal for emerging computer platforms to be crippled from a development standpoint — tethered to the platform from which they were spawned by an umbilical cord of cross-compilers, etc.. This doesn’t mean that, if Apple were to transition its entire product line to what is now referred to as iPhone OS, the new platform would lack any significant capabilities possessed by “computers”.

The difference between a computer and a car is that a computer is a general-purpose device. A Prius is a car. You can’t hack a Prius to function as a food processor, even if you know exactly how it works. Cars aren’t general-purpose devices. The analogy sucks. The only reason you can’t write iPhone software using an iPhone is that Apple expressly won’t allow such apps in the app store (I have a friend who would have shipped one by now if it did). The Newton — a commercially unsuccessful platform by pretty much any measurement — had at least one native visual IDE.

Will the iPad ever be as “open” to third-party development as the Mac is? That’s an interesting question. There are reasons both for and against — would you rather be forced to get software through an “app store” if it made trojans (for example) a non-issue?

Is the iPad merely an information appliance for the “unwashed masses” which might be useful for “non-professionals” and casual use by “pros” but always merely a supplement to “real computers”? No. It’s the next incarnation of the personal computer. At least, it or things like it. Exactly how the security vs. openness issue is resolved is yet to be seen — Apple is at least trying something (and what Apple is doing is far less draconian than what game console vendors do). Four years ago Apple was shipping PowerPC computers; last year they stopped supporting the PowerPC altogether. I predict that if the iPad takes off, Mac OS’s days are numbered.

Post Script

I was beaten to the punch.

Trees? Where we're going we don't need trees.

Dear J.J. Abrams,

The fundamental problem for Environmentalists is envisioning the future. Selling it, if you will.

The people who are best at selling the future are the creators of Science Fiction. William Gibson typed Neuromancer on a manual typewriter — creating a technological dystopia — and inspired generations of computer scientists to make the stuff he described come true. Star Trek showed people using “tricorders” and many companies, Apple included, squandered billions trying to make one.

One of the big problems for the Environmental Movement right now is that the people who are selling us the future — notably you and James Cameron — are assuming that we’ll just go on burning high octane gas and — in Cameron’s case — destroy the world or — in yours — somehow everything will be OK. Indeed, James Cameron started out at the tail-end of Mutually Assured Destruction assuming we’d blow ourselves up with nuclear weapons, and then switched to assuming we’d live in an unending corporate dictatorship — presumably that’s what we have to look forward to if Sarah and John Connor ever actually manage to win. Star Trek has us burning prodigious quantities of gas for in our spare time, and antimatter in our day jobs. Awesome.

It’s fairly certain that — assuming some kind of sanity prevails — life in The Future will — for the lucky — just get better and better. But portraying a future in which everyone is continuing to waste natural resources and destroy the environment isn’t going to sell today’s people on trying not to. Wouldn’t it be nice if it were implied in Stargate Universe, for example, that The Ancients were really power efficient instead of good at pulling the guts out of stars to power their insanely (and pointlessly) huge spaceships? “Hey look, the Ancients have a gadget for recharging our stupidly inefficient flashlights” could be replaced with “Hey look, the Ancients have incredibly efficient flashlights”.

There’s no particular reason why we can’t have fantastic future lives and still live within an energy budget. Unfortunately, the only time Science Fiction portrays an efficient future it’s an unpleasant joke — think of Korben Dallas’s apartment in The Fifth Element, or poor people dying of asphyxiation after failing to put coins in their oxygen meters in Judge Dredd. I’m pretty sure that medieval people didn’t think the world would be so much better if they could just burn stupendous quantities of fossilized wood. Apocalyptic visions have their place — but if we’re going to be starry-eyed optimists (e.g. Trekkies) why not try to portray a future that makes sense?

Gene Roddenberry envisioned a future Earth without racism, sexism (until the network shut that idea down), or money. Instead of merely updating a 60s vision of the future (where problems from the 60s have been solved) with better special effects, why not refresh the franchise conceptually as well, and envision solutions to other problems we’ve discovered since?

Oh, and while your Star Trek remake was very well put together, could the plot of the next one make a little more sense please?

Cheers,

Tonio

I didn’t actually watch the Superbowl, but this is my favorite of the ads: