Anyone hoping that Steve Jobs would make some sorting of bombshell announcement during his keynote at the 2007 Worldwide Developers Conference came away discomfited .
The intelligence about the coming Mac OS X ( Leopard ) was mostly a civilisation and clarification of what Apple outlined last August at WWDC 2006 . The new matter caper did announce — the translucent computer menu bar ; the Dock ’s pseudo-3 - D tray ; the revised , iTunes - comparable Finder ; and the ordered systemwide look - and - feel of window — were mostly decorative .
But this is n’t necessarily bad . The relatively low number of significant changes to Leopard since WWDC 2006 is , more than anything else , a sign of OS X ’s maturity .
Solitary refinements
From the former 1980s until the acquittance of OS X , Mac users obsessively speculated about the next Mac OS . Pink , Taligent , Copland , Gershwin — the list of next - generation Apple operating systems that never add up to fruition is long . user wanted something new , something that would be as big a spring from the then - current operating system as the original Mac was from the Apple II . When Apple transitioned from OS 9 to OS X , we finally get it .
The initial major releases of OS X were exciting because the early versions had such gaping holes and serious functioning flaws . The only reason it was potential for Apple to meliorate type O ecstasy so much between 10.0 and 10.4 was that there was so much way for improvement .
I ’m not reason that there ’s no elbow room pull up stakes . It ’s just that OS X 10.4 is so basically practiced that succeeding upgrades are likely to be on the exfoliation of small refinements .
Apple ’s farseeing - terminal figure strategy for desktop computing seems to be refining OS X , not substitute it .
This history is analogous to that of the automobile industry . In its former age , the state of matter of the art advanced at a singular clip . Today , new car amount out each year , but with low refining . Those changes tote up up : a 1997 railroad car ( even in mint condition ) is distinctly distinguishable from a 2007 model . But a 2005 and a 2008 ? Not so much . That ’s jolly much where we are with OS X. Tiger is the 2005 model ; Leopard is the 2008 .
The 3.5-inch revolution
With the iPhone , on the other hand , Apple is steer into uncharted district . The fundamental element of the Mac interface are overlapping windows , the menu ginmill , and the mouse Spanish pointer ; the iPhone hasnoneof these . Every Mac ever sold has had both a keyboard and a place machine providing single - pixel preciseness ; the iPhone has no physical keyboard , and while using your finger is convenient , it ’s far less precise than using a mouse , trackpad , or stylus .
To accommodate this want of preciseness , the iPhone ply much bigger on - screen object than any Mac , on a smaller screen door . As the sizing of screen background video display has increase , the Mac substance abuser port has been able-bodied to exhibit more and more entropy on screen . The iPhone deliberately displaysless . When list message or songs , for example , rather than stress to suit as many as it can on screenland , the iPhone uses a generous row height , make them leisurely to bug .
The iPhone interface is n’t about down and improving something that already exist . It ’s about completely new ideas in user - port design . So it ’s no admiration that many Mac developers so desperately hope to write their own software for it .
Currently , Apple ’s only program line about third - political party software development for the iPhone has been that the iPhone will run entanglement applications through its built - in Safari web browser app . That ’s a keen feature for such a diminutive gadget — no argument there . But a Web page inside a web web browser is no more a venue for a real iPhone app than it would be for a tangible Mac app .
Even if Apple privately plans to allow the developing of third - company iPhone software in the futurity — with an iPhone mutant of Cocoa , Dashboard - like widgets , or both — the company wo n’t say anything until those plans are quick . “ Underpromise and overdeliver ” is a strategy that has served Apple well in recent years .
There has been some supposition that Apple might fetch iPhone innovations , such as the multitouch screen door interface , to the Mac . Anything is possible , but I call up that multitouch Mac displays are unlikely and would be unwise . And the childlike trueness is that OS X does n’t take an port rotation .
The iPhone ’s concealment measures just 3.5 inches , but it ’s now the biggest frontier in user interface design .
[ John Gruber writes and release the Mac Web siteDaring Fireball . ]
