Daniel Hruska John Gruber, a well-known Apple evangelist, on his website Daring Fireball he describes a press conference that was arranged just for him. He could thus look under the hood of the catching OS X Mountain Lion before other users.
“We're starting to do some things differently,” Phil Schiller told me.
About a week ago we were sitting in a nice hotel suite in Manhattan. A few days earlier, I had been invited by Apple's public relations (PR) department to a private briefing on a product. I had no idea what this meeting was supposed to be about. I've never experienced anything like this before, and apparently they don't normally do this at Apple either.
It was clear to me that we would not be talking about the third-generation iPad – it will make its debut in California under the watchful eye of hundreds of journalists. How about new MacBooks with Retina displays, I thought. But that was just my tip, a bad one by the way. It was Mac OS X, or as Apple now calls it for short - OS X. The meeting was very much like any other product launch, but instead of a huge stage, an auditorium and a projection screen, the room was just a couch, a chair, an iMac and an Apple TV plugged in to Sony TV. The number of people present was equally modest - me, Phil Schiller and two other gentlemen from Apple - Brian Croll from product marketing and Bill Evans from PR. (From the outside, at least in my experience, product marketing and PR people are very close, so you can hardly see a contradiction between them.)
A handshake, a few formalities, a good coffee, and then… then the one-man press started. The images from the presentation would certainly look stunning on the big screen at Moscone West or Yerba Buena, but this time they were displayed on an iMac placed on the coffee table in front of us. The presentation began by revealing the theme ("We've invited you to talk about OS X.") and went on to summarize the success of Macs over the past few years (5,2 million sold in the last quarter; 23 (soon to be 24) in a row their sales growth outstripped that of the entire PC market in the following quarter; the great launch of the Mac App Store and the rapid adoption of Lion on Apple computers).
And then came the revelation: Mac OS X – sorry, OS X – and its major update will always be released annually, just like we know it from iOS. This year's update is planned for summer. Developers already have the opportunity to download a preview of the new version called Mountain Lion.
The new feline brings, I'm told, a lot of new features, and today I'll get to describe ten of them. This is exactly like an Apple event, I still think. Like Lion, Mountain Lion follows in the iPad's footsteps. However, just as it was with Lion a year ago, this is only a transfer of the idea and concept of iOS to OS X, not a replacement. Words like "Windows" or "Microsoft" were not spoken, but the allusion to them was obvious: Apple is able to see the bottom line and the difference between software for a keyboard and mouse and software for a touch screen. Mountain Lion is not a step to unify OS X and iOS into a single system for both Mac and iPad, but rather one of many future steps to bring the two systems and their underlying principles closer together.
Main news
- The first time you start the system, you will be prompted to create one iCloud account or to log into it to automatically set up email, calendars, and contacts.
- iCloud storage and the biggest dialogue change Open a Impose for the 28-year history since the launch of the first Mac. Applications from the Mac App Store have two ways of opening and saving documents – to iCloud or classically to the directory structure. The classic way of saving to the local disk has not been changed in principle (compared to Lion and indeed all other predecessors). Managing documents via iCloud is more pleasing to the eye. It resembles the iPad's home screen with a linen texture, where documents are spread across the board, or in "folders" similar to those of iOS. It is not a replacement for traditional file management and organization, but a radically simplified alternative.
- Renaming and adding apps. To ensure some consistency between iOS and OS X, Apple renamed its apps. iCal was renamed to Kalendář, iChat na News a Address book na Contact. Popular applications from iOS have been added – Reminders, which were part of it until now iCal, Notes, which were integrated in Mail.
Related topic: Apple grapples with redundant app source codes - over the years, there have been inconsistencies and other quirks that may have made sense at one time, but now don't. For example, managing tasks (reminders) in iCal (because CalDAV was used to synchronize them with the server) or notes in Mail (because IMAP was used to synchronize them this time). For these reasons, the upcoming changes in Mountain Lion are certainly a step in the right direction to create consistency - simplifying things is closer to how by application they had look rather than "this is just the way it's always been" attitudes.
Schiller had no notes. He articulates every word as precisely and rehearsed as if he were standing on a podium at a press event. He knows how to do it. As a person used to speaking in front of thousands of people, I was never as prepared as he was for a one-person presentation, for which he has my admiration. (Note to me: I should be more prepared.)
It seems like an insane amount of effort just, it's just my tip right now, because of a few journalists and editors. After all, this is Phil Schiller, spending a week on the East Coast, repeating the same presentation over and over again to an audience of one. There is no difference between the effort spent preparing for this meeting and the effort needed to prepare the WWDC keynote.
Schiller keeps asking me what I think. Everything seems obvious to me. Moreover, now that I have seen everything with my own eyes - with that apparently I mean well. I remain convinced that iCloud is exactly the service that Steve Jobs envisioned: the cornerstone of everything Apple intends to accomplish in the next decade. Integrating iCloud into Macs then makes very good sense. Simplified data storage, Messages, Notification Center, synced Notes and Reminders - all as part of iCloud. Each Mac will thus simply become another device linked to your iCloud account. Take a look at your iPad and think about which features you would also like to use on your Mac. This is exactly what Mountain Lion is - at the same time, it gives us a glimpse into the future of how the mutual symbiosis of iOS and OS X will continue to develop.
Ale this everything seems a little strange to me. I'm attending Apple's presentation to announce a non-event event. I've already been told that I'll be taking the Mountain Lion developer preview home with me. I've never been in a meeting like this, I've never heard of a developer version of an as-yet-unannounced product being given to editors, even if it was only a week's notice. Why didn't Apple hold an event announcing Mountain Lion, or at least post a notice on their website before inviting us over?
Apparently it's that Apple is doing some things differently from now on, as Phil Schiller told me.
I immediately wondered what that "now" meant. However, I am not in a hurry to answer, because once this question appeared in my head, it became quite intrusive. Some things remain the same: company management makes clear what it wants to make clear, nothing more.
My gut feeling is this: Apple doesn't want to hold a press event for the Mountain Lion announcement because all these events are contrived and therefore expensive. Right now acted one because of iBooks and things related to education, another event is coming up - the announcement of the new iPad. At Apple, they don't want to wait for the release of the developer preview of Mountain Lion, because they want to give developers a few months to get their hands on the new API and help Apple catch flies. It's a notification without an event. At the same time, they want Mountain Lion to be known to the public. They are well aware that many fear the decline of Macs at the expense of the iPad, which is currently riding a winning wave.
Well, we would have these private meetings. They clearly showed what Mountain Lion was all about - a website or a PDF guide would do just as well. However, Apple wants to tell us something else - Mac and OS X are still very important products for the company. Resorting to annual OS X updates is, in my opinion, an attempt to prove the ability to work on multiple things in parallel. It was the same five years ago with the launch of the first iPhone and OS X Leopard in the same year.
The iPhone has already passed several mandatory certification tests and its sale is scheduled for the end of June. We can't wait to get it into customers' hands (and fingers) and experience what a revolutionary product this is. iPhone contains the most sophisticated software ever delivered in a mobile device. However, getting it done on time came at a price - we had to borrow several key software engineers and QA people from the Mac OS X team, which meant we wouldn't be able to release Leopard in early June at WWDC as originally planned. Although all the features of Leopard will be finished, we will not be able to complete the final version with the quality that the customers demand from us. At the conference, we plan to provide developers with a beta version to take home and begin final testing. Leopard will be released in October and we think it will be well worth the wait. Life often brings situations in which it is necessary to change the priority of some things. In this case, we think we made the right decision.
The introduction of annual updates to both iOS and OS X is a sign that Apple no longer needs to drag programmers and other workforces to the detriment of one of the systems. And here we come to the "now" - changes need to be made, the company must adapt - which is related to how big and successful the company has become. Apple is now in uncharted territory. They are very well aware that Apple is no longer a new, skyrocketing company, so they must change adequately to their position.
It seems important that Apple doesn't just see the Mac as a secondary product compared to the iPad. Perhaps even more important is the realization that Apple isn't even considering putting the Mac on the back burner.
I've been using Mountain Lion for a week now on a MacBook Air loaned to me by Apple. I have a few words for it: I like it and I'm looking forward to installing the developer preview on my Air. This is a preview, an unfinished product with bugs, but it runs solid, just like Lion a year ago at the same development stage.
I'm curious how the developers will approach the conveniences that will be accessible only to applications from the Mac App Store. And these are not small things, but major news – document storage in iCloud and the notification center. Today, we can meet many developers who provide their older versions of applications outside of the Mac App Store. If they continue to do this, the non-Mac App Store version will lose a significant part of its functionality. However, Apple does not force anyone to distribute their applications through the Mac App Store as in iOS, but subtly pushes all developers in this direction due to iCloud support. At the same time, he will then be able to "touch" these applications and only then approve them.
My favorite feature in Mountain Lion is surprisingly one that you can hardly see in the user interface. Apple named it Gatekeeper. It is a system in which every developer can apply for his ID for free, with which he can sign his applications with the help of cryptography. If this app is detected as malware, Apple developers will remove its certificate and all its apps on all Macs will be considered unsigned. The user has the choice to run applications from
- Mac App Store
- Mac App Store and from well-known developers (with certificate)
- any source
The default option for this setting is exactly the middle one, making it impossible to run an unsigned application. This Gatekeeper configuration benefits users who will be sure to run only safe apps and developers who want to develop apps for OS X but without the Mac App Store approval process.
Call me crazy, but with this one "feature" I hope it goes in the exact opposite direction over time - from OS X to iOS.
Wow, Gruber's text arrived in the Czech Republic in six weeks! The internet is omnipotent.
You could have translated it and posted it faster :)
I wonder if G. gave his consent to the translation for free or if he wanted something in return.
Yes, he agreed to translate the articles, his only condition was a link back to the source, which we always do anyway.
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from OS X to iOS. "
Well, I hope not. iOS in its current form is absolutely unusable for serious work. Just the fact that "uniform save" is missing speaks for itself more than enough. It bothers me a lot on the iPad, but what about the desktop?
Try to read the last two paragraphs one more time, preferably twice and slowly. Doesn't it say by any chance that iOS should also inherit some things from OS X? The idea is related to applications…
You probably have a different version of the text available, but even CMD-F did not find a mention of the technical details of that shared storage. If in the future only applications from the AppStore will have access to it, then it is a highly secure solution, but otherwise it sucks for normal work.
The following part of the text is meant as follows: "I hope that it will be possible to get applications outside of Apple on iOS as well, just as it will be from the developer ID on Mac". "do you understand?"
In chrome, the layout of the site is completely messed up :)
Everything is displayed correctly for me (18.0.1025.142).
Great article! A job well done ;)
To translate "comfortable hotel suit" as "comfortable suits" really takes balls. And to translate "event" as "event", that's the most.
A colleague confused "suite" and "suit", thanks for the warning.
My colleague is sorry ;-) "Event" is, I think, an old word when it comes to Apple's announcement events.