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iPad / iPhone holding back OS X?

U

unwinded

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jul 31, 2007
163
0
After the recent news that iPad sales might be cannibalizing the sales of laptops, that had me wondering about Apple's product focus for the future and specifically that of OS X on the desktop.

We have these wonderful computers with multiple cores, multiple threads per core, the ability to shut down cores and speed up cores, etc. And we have these GPUs that supposedly can assist with taking some load off the CPU for apps programmed to take advantage of GPGPU computing (like OpenCL/Cuda).

GPGPU is still in its infancy I guess and there aren't a lot of mainstream apps taking advantage of it that I'm aware of. There are also issues with sequential code and making it parallel for efficiency or something like that. Multiple cores have been mainstream for a few years now so hopefully things like grand central dispatch will only help make it easier to develop multi-threaded apps.

Then there is the iPad with it's single core ARM CPU, 256MB of RAM, and some pretty darn good sales. And the iPhone/itouch running similar hardware (512MB RAM for the iPhone) also with pretty darn good sales. Apple has made a lot of money of that phone, and although I'd like to think the Apple store is always packed because of Macs I know better. So I fear that Apple (if they haven't already) might put much less emphasis on Mac R&D going forward and divert most of their resources to the more profitable/popular iOS hardware. From a business stand point that certainly makes sense.

Does anybody think that developers will put less of an effort in Mac OS X apps and not take advantage of the new tech? It's gonna be a while before we see a multi-core GPGPU iPhone/iPad...
 
Apple appears to be shifting markets. Much to my disappointment. OS X has been neglected in my opinion, resulting in Windows 7 being just as good as it. Unless Apple shape up with Macs, my next computer will be a PC, as Macs are just not worth the premium price anymore.
 
roadbloc said:
Apple appears to be shifting markets. Much to my disappointment. OS X has been neglected in my opinion, resulting in Windows 7 being just as good as it. Unless Apple shape up with Macs, my next computer will be a PC, as Macs are just not worth the premium price anymore.
Click to expand...

I have to agree that they're shifting markets - it's almost certain that people have been taken off of OS X to work on iOS stuff. Not that there's anything fundamentally wrong with OS X they need to fix (I still would say it's slicker than Win 7 for a lot of things), but the features they seem to be adding for the mac atm are gimmicky to say the least. I mean iTunes 10, Ping - what's that about?!
 
tpg said:
but the features they seem to be adding for the mac atm are gimmicky to say the least. I mean iTunes 10, Ping - what's that about?!
Click to expand...

That's not a Mac feature, that's an iTunes feature - unrelated since iTunes is Mac/Win.

I disagree on them "slacking off" on OS X. I think it's just gotten fairly mature at this point and there's less room for dramatic new features. Under the hood changes like GCD and OpenCL are where it's at, and these have yet to be fully utilized since companies still need backwards compatibility (one of the hardest aspects about developing for OS X IMO).

iOS development has given us QuickTime X which is a huge improvement over QT7 for basic playback. Safari has gotten some nice performance boosts since JS has to be made to perform as fast as possible on those slower single-core mobile devices. We'll continue to see more advancements on both OSs from development on both.

I think the future of the Mac is looking good. Just don't expect it to all stay the same :)
 
kainjow said:
I think the future of the Mac is looking good. Just don't expect it to all stay the same :)
Click to expand...

I agree. iPhone OS (aka iOS nowadays) has existed only ~3 years while OS X has been out for over 9 years. There is much more to add for the iOS than there is for OS X. I can't think of any features that would be needed in OS X, I mean for average Joe.

Apple has done a lot in mobile segment lately so I think people are just expecting them to do the same with Macs.
 
Actually the two are merging. Apple is gradually shifting directions. The "future" is not your standard OS running on a laptop. iOS is Apple's long-term project and it is being developed for the long term. Get used to it.
 
kainjow said:
I disagree on them "slacking off" on OS X. I think it's just gotten fairly mature at this point and there's less room for dramatic new features. Under the hood changes like GCD and OpenCL are where it's at, and these have yet to be fully utilized since companies still need backwards compatibility (one of the hardest aspects about developing for OS X IMO).
Click to expand...

+1 Computers in general have needed under the hood changes for years. Now that we are getting there you will start to see a lot of good things coming in the future.

There is really not much cosmetically that you can add to OSX. Apple releasing things such as OpenCL and Grand Central Dispatch is huge but its also extremely complicated to program for (although Apple has taken a lot of the sting out). Developers will need to see where these plans fit into their applications and it will take a few years to see these things start to be implemented.

In my opinion, Apple is doing the right thing with these under the hood changes. It will attract developers who want to make more powerful apps but have been limited due to technology.
 
*LTD* said:
Actually the two are merging. Apple is gradually shifting directions. The "future" is not your standard OS running on a laptop. iOS is Apple's long-term project and it is being developed for the long term. Get used to it.
Click to expand...
I shall get used to it and I shall be back off to Windows if the future for Apple's computers is a handheld touchscreen device.

I feel there always will be a use for a standard desktop computer, with a monitor, a keyboard, a mouse and some deskspace dedicated to it. And the fact that it is just not possible to do audio production on a iPad like device.

Computers are not going anywhere. Hopefully Apple will be smart enough to realise that.
 
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