Apple to Host 'Back to the Mac' Media Event on October 20th

[solideliquid]

I liked Gizomodo's take. Simba.

 

[BlakeLiebenTH]

This is great It looks like Apple was secretly working on Mac-related things behind the barrage of iOS-related stuff. They sure know how to surprise us

I can't wait for the 20th, this will be a real treat. It's great to see Apple is finally going back to focus on the Mac

 

[darkplanets]

Constellation names would be awesome for 11. Someone clearly likes astronomy at apple with the time machine theme and the 2 aurora desktops.

Agreed. It would be awesome. But then again, imagine the furor they would cause when they used Pluto, or anything else from the Kuiper belt.

 

[Bernard SG]

Frankly, I would hate a touch iMac if that was the only way to interact with it. I have been sitting back in my chair, feet on the desk, cat in my lap, barely reaching the mouse to scroll and flip through these pages. Sitting up to type, I am almost close enough to touch the screen. Don't want to be closer.

Thankfully I believe it is still a good ways off.

Obviously, it wouldn't be the only way to interact with it. I imagine the Lion OS to be a "dual" user interface, that is the traditional Mac OS X interface and an alternative one that's similar to iOS, making the mouse cursor disappear.

 

[RockLobster]

I really worry if Apple release some sort of touch-interface for new macs and macbooks so my 2010 mbpro 13 would feel sort of outdated. Really want some new cool features because honestly 10.6 wasn't a huge improve like Win7 after WinVista. I'm very excited, hope that update won't cost a lot. What I always liked about Apple is that OS update cost almost nothing. Every new Win cost really a lot to upgrade, so I hope 10.7 won't cost the earth

 

[MikhailT]

Keep dreaming. Apple will keep it 32 bit for a few more years. They want to reach the widest potential customer base. What I am hoping for is iLife 11 and Blu-Ray support in 10.7.

You do realize that iTunes does not have to be 64bit exclusive? iTunes can be universal and run in both 32/64bit just like Snow Leopard itself.

Lion should indicate the last iteration of OSX. There's no point in going from Lion to Cougar/Lynx, or whatever.

My guess is that XI (OS11) will be a complete redesign again. Maybe built with touch in mind right from the start.

Nope, XI is likely to remain on the Snow Leopard's kernel and the kernel will be used for the next 5+ years of OS X. The kernel itself has been re-engineered for the next decade, it's the rest of the OS that is going to be re-engineered over the next decade. For example, Apple is working on the next generation file system, UI refinements over several OS X updates and so on. XI or whatever the next "major" change is likely to start off with a new file system but Apple can just include it in a minor 10.7.x update as well, they have done that in the past.

It doesn't feel like Snow Leopard is that old, but here's hoping that we get another $30 upgrade path. (Doubt that'll happen though.)

While Snow Leopard itself does not feel old, for most people, it has been the same since Leopard. The core of the OS has been re-engineered in Snow Leopard, the front end hasn't and that's what most people see. Look at the difference between XP > Vista > W7, Vista is like Snow Leopard, 10.7 is likely to be vastly improved upon SL's technologies like W7 > Vista. It's going to be much faster, more sleeker because Apple has optimized the crap out of Snow Leopard's new technologies since it's original release back in August '09.

ABOUT DAMN FREAKIN TIME!

"Back to the Mac" just feels like they are admitting to having neglected Macs

Steve Jobs himself said that 2011 was going to be all about Macs in his response to a customer asking why Apple hasn't focused much on OS X lately.

Themeable UI. This will allow the return of apps like shapeshifter. I LOVED my themeable mac back in the day.

Truly Scalable UI. This will be built in to Cocoa, this will allow ILife, Cal, Finder and mail to look spectacular in...

The New Macbook Air. Just slightly smaller as we move the keyboard, edge to edge. Slightly new shape to improve rigidity and still be incredible thin, and the new laptop sized Retina/near-retina display. This puts this mac back into the exclusive lust area of the corporate CEO. And puts notice on the rest of the world (Adobe), to kill carbon and move to cocoa. A little bit heavier, because everyone wants a bigger battery. And the new benchmark Nits/microwatts. The brightest screen with the least energy use.

Rest of the macs to receive minor upgrades, the kid's laptops 13" and Plastic will receive nice Nvidia ION upgrades. Operating system access to the video cards, and hardware accelerated Quicktime. With hopefully, flip4mac, divx and flash already seeded for improved performance. Killer frame rates for video games.

VERY unlikely. Have you ever seen majority of people on Windows take advantage of the fact that W7 has excellent themeable UIs? Apple knows fully well that allowing theme-able UIs is not a good idea because it would kill any highly optimized GUI flow that they have perfected over the last several years.

Even though their software has different GUIs, they are fit for their own specialized workload. The OS itself will have a GUI that's generally optimized for general work.

I have to say I'm a little bit (but not so much) surprised.

OS X 10.6 is so polished and refined, I was sure this would be the last iteration of "Mac OS X". I would have thought that the next release would start the "XI" branch, and focus on a convergence of touch and iOS into Mac OS.

It's still possible they'll go that direction, but the presence of the Lion in the art suggests that they are staying with the OS X branch of naming schemes.

But perhaps both?

Unix operating systems can support very different skins, while maintaining compatability and usability. I could see Apple developing a consumer version of iOS as a full operating system. Really, given a few more essential features, and the majority of casual Mac users would be more than happy running an iOS desktop environment, along with the easy to use App store for expandability.

Full Mac OS X (or XI) could be used in a production environment, where much more refined control of the OS is necessary.

Users could flick a switch, and go between both, sort of like the old Launcher. Geez, does anyone remember the old Launcher?

iOS is the same OS as Mac OS X, it's the same core with a different skin on top to optimize the interfaces that works for the devices. Apple is likely to learn from some of the GUI parts in iOS and apply it to Mac OS X but it wouldn't be the same because keyboard/mouse can not be replaced with a multi-touch screen.

Realistically, do you think any mac with an intel processor will be sufficient to run the next release?

Or will they bump up the specs necessary?

The only thing that they may drop in the next release is the 32bit only CoreSolo CPUs, this let them on focus only on the 64bit kernel to optimize it to the highest levels.

Might be wrong here but do the latest gen SSD's still need TRIM? Meanwhile idle time garbadge colection is so well optimized that for example anything based on a Sandforce controller seems to work perfect with OSX.

The IGC does a good job but it can never replace TRIM for the same job. TRIM is a very important command that allows the software to work with the hardware to optimize it. SSDs cannot tell when a data block has been deleted and no perfect IGC in the world can ever do that because hardware can not understand context of the data. TRIM allows the software to tell the hardware the context and then the hardware can do something about it. Plus, we want the controllers in SSD to be less complicated, the more complicated it gets, the more expensive it gets to maintain the same performance.

Absolutely need TRIM ? No. However, it is a "nice to have" when processing tons of I/O and don't have much idle time and a limited over provisioning budget. So mainstream need? no. Very high performance and usage yes.

TRIM is no where near the panacea that folks were trying to make it out to be 1-2 years ago. It also doesn't work if drive is behind a controller on a non SATA bus. (e.g, on USB 3.0 , RAID controller , Light peak , etc. ). Any vendor who is leveraging TRIM as their primary 'free list' expansion mechanism is severely misguided. Don't buy from them.

Need TRIM so that support wider variety of SSD drives? Apple doesn't really support them now. Not sure why they would be eager to even remotely encourage folks to stuff a wider variety of them into their boxes.

If Apple isn't going to roll out a significantly better file system then TRIM is something useful to incrementally add to the old one to make it have marginally more utility/value.

Apple's SSDs are already getting bad reputations for very slow performance due to degradation from missing IGC and no TRIM support.

TRIM is coming to OS X, parts of it are already included in OS X and you can see the status of TRIM support in System Profiler, Apple wouldn't waste time on it if it wasn't coming.

IGC can never do the same job that TRIM does. RAID controllers themselves can add TRIM support, it's going to take some time for RAID controller companies to learn how to do it. USB 3.0/Light Peek don't matter, the TRIM command goes to the controller inside the SSD which can understand the command. USB just carries the command over it. Like everything else, it just is going to take time for TRIM to be added across all platforms, all protocols.

Hate to break it to you guys, but there won't be an OS11. We'll be using a desktop iteration of iOS eventually.

Mac OS X is the desktop version of the same core that makes up iOS.

OS X = the core
Mac OS X = OS X on Desktops
iOS = OS X on mobile devices

So, AppleInsider now says that 10.7’s preview was due at WWDC, but was delayed because of OS engineering resources being shifted. Considering the late WWDC date and session announcements this year (and no State of the Core OS keynote), makes sense.

I have to say I’m surprised by this news. While I always expected 10.7 in 2011, I didn’t expect we would see a preview this year since it didn’t happen at WWDC. I still think they’ll have to go through another WWDC before it gets released.

Apple has stated in the past that they are slowing down the development pace to spread it out longer, the more mature the software is, the harder it is to iterate it in the same amount of time. Imagine this another way, think of Lion as the actual successor to Leopard. In order to make Lion, they needed to build the technologies to allow them to do what they want to do for Lion but it would take too long for them to release Lion, so what they did instead was to put all the work into the core (part 1) into Snow Leopard and release it so that they can do the the rest of Lion into 10.7.

It's like W7, it's the perfect successor to XP, Vista included all the first generation technologies that needed to make W7.

If Snow Leopard wasn't released, that would mean it would take 3-5 years to release Lion with no competitor against W7.

 

[acslater017]

Cool idea

How about Mac OS 11.1 Cancer?

That's not a bad idea, especially given Apple's taste for space themes But the names of constellations are a bit more meaningless to the average person than names of cats. As random as they were, they brought to mind certain characteristics - power, speed, agility, gracefulness, etc. They were also not a mouthful - much easier to roll off the tongue than "OS 10.x"

In any case, it's been a long time since I've gotten excited about an OS release! Leopard 10.5 was probably the most exciting for me...I must've watched those feature videos 100 times.

 

[acslater017]

Apple bought MGM ;-)

That would be SO cruel if all they announced was the availability of MGM movies on iTunes...

 

[dazed]

Was just about to order a Mac pro. Guess I'll wait a week and see if there is a new iLife update or any other announcements that would affect my decision.

 

[DJ-R]

Obviously, it wouldn't be the only way to interact with it. I imagine the Lion OS to be a "dual" user interface, that is the traditional Mac OS X interface and an alternative one that's similar to iOS, making the mouse cursor disappear.

Cool. Giant iPod Touch! or giant iPad...

iGiant?

 

[iMaggot]

OSX lion ?
Sounds odd, But I can't wait to see whats new.

 

[1reflectsathome]

Cats, Cats, Cats

Hey guys if my memory serves me correctly, if Lion becomes the new mascot for OS 10.7, it will be the 8th cat. The 7 cats starting with OS 10.0 in 2000 in chronological order are:

Cheetah
Puma
Jaguar
Panther
Tiger
Leopard
Snow Leopard

So if Lion is #8, what cat names might become #9 and #10 to round out the top 10? I do thing Apple might go to 10 cats before considering another scheme of names but who knows, they could then recycle the cat names starting with Cheetah II.

 

[MacFly123]

Just a little something I made

 

[AlligatorBloodz]

Hey guys if my memory serves me correctly, if Lion becomes the new mascot for OS 10.7, it will be the 8th cat. The 7 cats starting with OS 10.0 in 2000 in chronological order are:

Cheetah
Puma
Jaguar
Panther
Tiger
Leopard
Snow Leopard

So if Lion is #8, what cat names might become #9 and #10 to round out the top 10? I do thing Apple might go to 10 cats before considering another scheme of names but who knows, they could then recycle the cat names starting with Cheetah II.

#9 Siamese
#10 lolcat

 

[1reflectsathome]

Cats, Cats, Cats

What all big cats are left besides Cougar?

Well there are at least 2 others.

White Lion
White Tiger

If Lion is next, maybe White Lion will follow.

 

[googlemonster]

My bet is that OS X Lion will include Facetime so iPhone users will be able to talk directly with desktop/web connected laptops. Hence back to the Mac.
This would be pretty cool and fairly revolutionary as far as I'm concerned.

 

[1reflectsathome]

#9 Siamese
#10 lolcat

Well looking at your pic, it appears to be a maccat. Must be a rare breed.

 

[ThomasJL]

Just a little something I made

Nice!

 

[EGOvoruhk]

My bet is that OS X Lion will include Facetime so iPhone users will be able to talk directly with desktop/web connected laptops. Hence back to the Mac.
This would be pretty cool and fairly revolutionary as far as I'm concerned.

Evolutionary != revolutionary

 

[evalex]

Remember all the talk about Intel Light Peak... and about how they were showing it on modified mac components... and about how Apple was supposedly "heavily involved" in its development... and that it was supposed to be a little over a year away from launch?

That was almost 2 years ago. I'm totally hoping for Light Peak. If they launched it, it would blow everything else out of the water.

I can picture it:

"Here's a 27" display with its webcam on running iChat....and here are some speakers....and here's another display with YouTube playing on it....and here's an external hard drive transferring data at SATA-speed...and here's an iPad updating on iTunes...and here's the macbook pro at the center of all of it. And one more thing- they're all connected to the same port. It's fully compatible with USB 3.0 and backwards-compatible with USB 2.0 and it's on all portable macs shipping immediately!"

Honestly, Light Peak's exactly what a macbook air would need.

 

[Bernard SG]

Well looking at your pic, it appears to be a maccat. Must be a rare breed.

Talking about this, anyone notice that teh lolkatz, when they're shown interacting with tech devices, it's almost always with Apple devices?

 

[koopa35]

based on timing of the announcement. i think 10.7 will be out this month. maybe im wrong but 10.5 was announced in october and shipped 10 days after.

 

[pknz]

based on timing of the announcement. i think 10.7 will be out this month. maybe im wrong but 10.5 was announced in october and shipped 10 days after.

No.

 

[koopa35]

No.

no what?

 

[pknz]

no what?

It's not going to be out this month.