FEA
TURE
to be, “more Mac-like.” However you spin it, the ashes of Vista have spawned quite a phoenix.
Who wins and what does this mean?
As affirmed by most pundits, in a head-to- head competition Snow Leopard still wins on points, but just barely. The true victory for PC users is that finally, after 25 years of development there is now an operating system for the PC that actually does rival the Macintosh OS. Furthermore, judging by the widely sampled reactions of average PC users, once a PC user has experienced Windows 7 they are less inclined to switch to OS X. In this regard Mac users can still tout the combination of security and the best-of-both-worlds capability of running Windows on a Mac.
What this means is that the ball is definitely in Apple’s court. The next major upgrade of OS X needs to be truly stellar. Now that Apple’s revolutionary new operating system is celebrating its 10th anniversary (the
same time span that took us from the insanely clunky System 6 to the debut of OS X), it is time for the folks in Cupertino to do a bit more than just polish the apple and work on their mobile gizmos.
What is needed is a major reworking of the OS that incorporates serious technical advances along with an overt change in cosmetics. In addition the technical and functional advances, Apple also needs to put an end to the practice of eliminating popular and useful features in the name of progress, which means that they need to examine what has been tossed out in past revisions of both the OS and iApps and reincorporate them wherever it makes sense (three examples out of many: restore the pro-oriented cataloguing features in iPhoto, restore the user- friendly interface to iMovie, and restore ability to easily search specific hard drives and other locations a la OS 9).
With all the focus on the iPad and
iPhone 4 is Apple up to this Windows 7 challenge? Is Apple prepared to take things to a much higher level and reaffirm the quarter century of supremacy of the Mac operating system? With the overt focus on portable devices, the inexplicable elimination of the Mac software category of the Apple Design Awards, and other factors one is not exactly filled with confidence.
There may have been thousands of Windows users over the past few years who switched to the Mac, but was this because of any major developments on the Mac side or was it because Vista was such a mess? The folks on the mothership cannot allow themselves to be distracted by their other successes, particularly in light of recent leaks about Windows 8 and plans to further emulate Apple’s approach. One more major upgrade with the Windows OS and it will be the Mac that will be playing catch-up.
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