zomg

Posted by Misconstruct on March 8, 2011, 1:26 a.m.

So my MacBook Pro is in the United States right now, in Memphis, TN.

I'm so excited, i'm furiously masturbating with one hand while writing this with the other. And of course, I'm watching MacBook Pro unboxings, reviews, etc. on YouTube.

Watching all these videos, I'm reminded how much I love OS X. It may not be your cup of tea, but if you like Windows 7's taskbar, keep in mind it's fundamentally just a Dock lite. This'll be my first time using Snow Leopard, but it's not too different from plain old Leopard.

I'm greatly looking forward to Lion. Only Apple can get me excited about such astonishing features as "Full-screen apps". When I first read that being touted as a feature, I fucking lol'd. But then I watched the keynote where they demoed it, and now I understand. It's not so much about actually having full-screen apps, it's more about switching between them super easily. It's kinda like they removed the somewhat useless Spaces feature and replaced it with a much more simple and useful approach where a full-screen application becomes its own Space, basically. Fucking awesome.

Versions is a kinda cool but not too useful feature. It's essentially just an easy way of accessing your Time Machine backups of a specific document you have open in an application, so you can roll back to a previous version. Useful on occasion, but I don't frequently find myself needing to revert a document back farther than when I last saved it.

Launchpad seems kinda useless, essentially just a stack presented iPad style in fullscreen.

But anyway, a lot of the direction that Apple is going in with Lion makes me think they're gearing it up to be used on, say, an iPad. I mean, you've got a version of OS X with a lot of the same UI paradigms as you see on iOS. And now OS X even has an App Store. And lastly, Apple's already capable of squeezing hardware capable of running OS X into something as small as a MacBook Air.

It's seems inevitable to me that eventually a full version of OS X will eventually take the place of iOS on iPads.

So um… YEAH!

Upgrade wishlist:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820167042

Comments

Misconstruct 13 years ago

Yeah I used to have a dock on XP back before I was fortunate enough to acquire a Mac. Congrats on the new iPad.

Man, i'm gonna have to invest in a Momentus XT hybrid drive for my new MBP… 17 second boot times without the high price tag and low capacity of a SSD? Fuck yeah!

On second thought, I might just scrap the optical drive and put a small SSD in its place.

PY 13 years ago

Rather than being a "dock lite" it's an inherently different take on the same objective - application-centric window management. Hell, both OS X and Windows take inherently different views on window management itself, OS X with an document-centric view and Windows with an window-centric view (Most noticeable in that closing the last window in windows closes the application, doing so in OS X simply closes that document and leaves the application running)

The two can't really be compared in terms of each other, they look superficially similar but that's where the similarities end. They're both tailored to their OS' window management ideology. Windows' taskbar gives you no real method to manage applications, just the windows those applications have, and OS X's taskbar gives you no real method to manage windows.

They're both good, they both work, neither are the same, nor an imitation of the other.

I also disagree that the iPad will ever run full OS X - apple are moving OS X closer to iOS, not the other way around. Their ideologies work best in a walled garden, and that's what the locked down world of tablets and smartphones have given them, why would they ever abandon something that allows them total control?

Misconstruct 13 years ago

Sounds like someone's been reading their Ars Technica. When I said that Win 7's taskbar was like a Dock lite, I simply meant that it's been designed for users to pin their favorite applications down there like you'd do with the Dock.

Regarding OS X and iOS, yes OS X is moving closer to iOS. Some of the iOS-esque features that Lion is introducing make perfect sense on a full desktop or laptop, but some simply don't. Hence my speculation that OS X is moving closer to iOS because it's going to replace it.

Oh and Mac OS 7 rocks. I had a Performa for a while until I decided to rename the Finder thinking it'd change its name up in the application switcher. Later I had a Quadra for a while until the hard drive died. Fun times.

PY 13 years ago

I've never been much of a fan of Ars, but they do occasionally get it right. I agree that Lion's UI changes aren't a bad thing, but I simply cannot see apple ever letting go of its walled garden. It just isn't going to happen, this is a company who realised people were selling things through apps, and want a cut of that too. These are people who disallow applications depending on their mood, and slap age ratings on to web browsers despite them showing exactly the same information as the built in safari. These are the people who spent months changing how the iphone and itunes communicate to stop third parties from emulating it effectively, and the people who don't allow you to communicate with your device except through their own proprietry systems. They will never let go of that control and allow a free OS onto their devices, it's just not going to happen.

Misconstruct 13 years ago

They have a free OS on their laptops and desktops. I can see them keeping iOS for the iPhone as locked down as it is now, but the iPad is essentially a PC in terms of how people want to use it. If they put OS X on it, it'd be a much better device and it'd make it very hard for all the Android tablets to compete. The only thing that could compete would be if Microsoft made a very tablet-centric version of Windows. Or possibly Chrome OS.

Hmmm… maybe i'll scrap the optical and hard drives and put two Intel 510 series SSDs in raid 0… haha

PY 13 years ago

Apple seem to want to change computing with the iPad, not just shove it onto a less useful interface. I still can't see them giving up the control they have for *anything*, and it's not like the ipad isn't selling.

KaBob799 13 years ago

@Misconstruct

Well microsoft has been added touch screen features with each new version of windows, so by the time windows 8 is out windows tablets will probably be competitive.

Misconstruct 13 years ago

Yeah, you are correct, KaBob. Will they be competitive? We'll see.

PY 13 years ago

Well, if you can say anything about microsoft, it's that they make statistically good UIs. Maybe not as arty as apple's, but they get the job done. No, apple will win because "zomg apple" and most people don't even look for alternatives.

Misconstruct 13 years ago

Well the Zune's UI is better AND more stylish than the iPod's, so I suppose Microsoft does get it right every now and then. lol

Yummy, MacBook is a mere 72 miles away from me right now.

Edit: Now a mere 20 miles away. Actually less though because it's out for delivery. I should have a shiny new MacBook Pro waiting for me when I get out of school in a little under 4 hours.