Okay, no, I lied.
But it appears, after Steve Jobs keynote yesterday (or last night Australian time), that Mac OS X Lion is going to be very iPad-esque.
From the “sneak peak” posted on Apple’s website (here – http://www.apple.com/macosx/lion/), all I can say is wow!
I think this is really exciting. I’ve been a Mac-supporter for about a year and a half now, and rave to anyone I can about the increase in productivity (or atleast, the perception of) of using a Mac. Apple have got one thing down pat, simple interface and navigation design. And it’s one hell of a winner.
The new features, atleast from the sneak peak and the keynote, include:
- App Store, for Mac – bringing the success of the iDevice App Store to the Mac itself, could be interesting, and I wonder how many $1.99 apps I’ll waste my money on, like with my iPhone 4…
- Launchpad – attempting to bring the home screen interface from iPhone and iPad to the Mac, this could be interesting. I like how you are able to organise apps in folders etc also, just like the iPhone…
- Full screen apps – I don’t quite understand the need for this one on a Mac, except for their opinion that it’s less distracting, true that.
- Mission Control – I like it, similar to Windows 7 (I think even Vista had similar functionality?). Makes it easier switching between programs, especially if you have heaps open, ALT+TAB (or Command for the Mac users) can be a bit annoying when you have alot open.
- Facetime – alot of people (read: iPhone haters) have alot to say about how stupid it is to have video calling on an iPhone, that only works with, well, the iPhone… And only whilst connected to a wireless network. Perhaps some more attention to the iPhone side of things might help here, as well as Windows clients for Facetime. Standards based video calling built in to the iPhone would also be nice, so atleast you could have inferior quality video calling with your inferior friends (who are only inferior because they don’t use an iPhone, of course)
One thing I’d really be interested in seeing, is the ability to run iPad and iPhone apps natively in OS X… Having a desktop version of the Facebook application, for instance, could reduce the amount of time I actually sit on Facebook. Angry Birds, however, could be dangerous as a desktop app…