Kenny Hemphill
Apple’s decision to rename its iPhone operating system was one of the few surprises to emerge from WWDC last month. That Apple should feel that, with the launch of the iPad, the name ‘iPhone OS’ is no longer appropriate is entirely understandable. Less so that it should choose a name that rolls off the tongue as inelegantly as ‘iOS’.
More interesting than the choice of name, however, is what it tells us about the strategic direction Apple is taking with its operating systems.
When the original iPhone OS was previewed to developers, we discovered it was essentially a modified version of Mac OS X. Indeed, the launch of Mac OS X Leopard was delayed because members of the team were busy getting iPhone OS ready. Many of the improvements that were made for iPhone OS, such as its supremely efficient video playback, filtered back into Mac OS X when Snow Leopard was released. And, of course, many of the multi-touch gestures used to control the iPhone’s operating system now work on the trackpad on the MacBook, MacBook Air and MacBook Pro.
With so much crossover between the two, it would seem that a single naming convention would make sense, and, of course, that wouldn’t have been possible if the iPhone operating system was still called iPhone OS. The much broader ‘iOS’ makes that possible, and, I believe, likely.
Apple’s hardware range can now be split broadly into three categories: server, personal and mobile. So it would seem to make sense that its operating system flavours do the same: iOS Server, iOS Personal and iOS mobile. And that would mean the end of Mac OS X.
Before you get too misty-eyed and nostalgic, it’s worth remembering that the term ‘Mac OS’ has only been in use for a little over a decade, since the launch of Mac OS 8. Before that the operating system was known as ‘System’, as in ‘System 7.’
Changing the name of the personal and server versions of Mac OS would solve two problems for Apple: what to do when it’s time to announce a successor to Mac OS X 10.9 and what to do when it runs out of wild cats after which to nickname its operating system. The idea of having a Mac OS X 10.10 is surely too silly for even Apple to contemplate. It would certainly make minor updates increasingly complicated to track.
The unified naming convention would also make sense as a precursor to introducing more iOS features to the Desktop. One area that would appear to be ripe for this is the user interface.
The search for a successor to the current graphical user interface with keyboard and mouse control has so far defeated everyone. There have been several attempts over the years to allow computers to be controlled by more friendly means, but, aside from specialist applications such as computers for those with disabilities, they have failed. Speech recognition and voice control work well for some tasks in specific environments, but they’re not the answer.
Gesture control and multi-touch, however, could be. The iPhone’s gesture controls are largely intuitive and work very well. And Apple has slowly been introducing them to the Mac by enabling multi-touch on MacBook trackpads. It seems only a matter of time before it takes that one step further.
Back in February, a blog post on The New York Times site speculated that Apple could make Mac OS X work more like the iPhone OS by enabling touchscreen gesture control. It noted, however, that ‘adding full multi-touch to OS X would require a hefty redesign of many components in the code’. Part of the problem is that Mac OS X is comprised of huge chunks of legacy code that have been modified and shoe-horned together to create what we currently call Snow Leopard.
Apple, though, knows it needs to do something. Google’s Android OS, currently the most dangerous competitor to iOS, will work the same way on computers as it does on phones, and that, for Google, could be a significant advantage. It will leave the Mac and Windows looking dated and out of touch.
If not a full redesign of the operating system, then what? Perhaps the best interim solution is something posited by an Apple engineer quoted in The New York Times blog post: an iOS layer on top of Mac OS X that would allow certain applications to be controlled using gestures, while others continued to run as normal.
The end game, though, is a single operating system that allows developers to code once and roll out their apps to iPhone, iPad and Mac, and perhaps allows Apple to distribute Mac apps in the same way as it does for those for the iPhone and iPad.
