Beyond OS X

[Malfoy]

Wtf. I would leave Facebook immediately upon Apple purchasing it. They would probably put a yearly charge to use it, would start making their own marketplace for it and have paid apps to install to your profile, would make it less usable to people who don't own macs, etc.

almost all that sounds win win to me. Anything to cut down on the apps propogating facebook.

 

[ozontheroad]

With SL just around the corner, what I'm surprised about is the total lack of knowledge about the direction of the Mac operating system beyond the next release.

My view is that its time for Apple to take it to the next level. What do I mean by this - I mean that Apple should seriously consider being the first operating system to embrace social networking - by fulling building out and integrating social networking into their operating system and apps.

The own a mobile platform for mobile distribution. They own some of the best content addition/modification tools in the world with iLife. They provide email. They have great deals with music and entertainment providers. And they are collecting great data on users of iLife, iWork, and iPhones. Why not use all this to their advantage and create an operating system that truly integrates the social graph right into all their apps and OS?

Apple has never been afraid of not being the first to a industry. In fact, I think the lesson Apple has learned is that it doesn't always pay to be the first mover into an industry. What Apple has figured out that Facebook, Myspace and the rest have not - how to monotize things.

Apple could seriously take on Facebook if they truly wanted to. With their experience in UI, UX - they could become the winner in this field very quickly.

Thoughts?

utter everestian nonsense

 

[Boneoh]

I see what you're saying. In fact I've seen this debate in many forms for 30 years or more: is it better to do processing locally or in a central location? This has gone in cycles and taken many forms, from timeshared minicomputers vs. microcomputers on your desk, to X terminals vs. a networked topology of individual computing nodes, to thin clients with compute servers vs. a network of laptops and desktops. The "cloud" is only the latest incarnation of the central computing resource. But there will always be utility to local processing, and traditional OS technologies are not going to disappear in the foreseeable future. Just wait till the first time you try to edit that video in the cloud in time to meet a deadline and find that the broadband connection is down.

I agree with Eric S. on this one. This cycle comes and goes like the tides. Seems that the costs of hardware, support, security, storage, backups, etc. vary over time. The push back towards centralized is often an attempt to save money on support, make sure backups are done, security is up to snuff, etc. The problem is that the centralized bureaucracy tends to pass along the high costs back to the departments and end users.

Then along comes a cheaper decentralized technology that is too enticing to ignore. This helped the minis of the 1980's and the PCs of the 1990's. This goes along OK until there is some issue that gets the attention of the execs. A major security breach, data loss, a procurement fiasco, or just a critical mass of disparate h/w and s/w will drive the push back to centralized.

After 30 years of being in IT, I'm glad to have enough horsepower on the desktop to finally not be dependent on the centralized model

 

[Razeus]

Yes, it's true you need the OS to "manage" the software to the hardware, but this "managing" is become less relevent. Let's face, it: there's nothing more that people can do to the OS (or much software these days) anymore. Looking at Snow Leopard and Windows 7, they are focusing on efficiency and speed and a few aesthetic issues.

This is why I say the browser is the new development platform. Search, Facebook, Google Docs, online storage, media distribution, TV, radio, etc. etc. all being brought through the web browser. And this is just the beginning. So that's why I say what OS you use doesn't matter.

 

[emt1]

Oh god. Please no. No. No. No.

 

[illegallydead]

Wtf. I would leave Facebook immediately upon Apple purchasing it. They would probably put a yearly charge to use it, would start making their own marketplace for it and have paid apps to install to your profile, would make it less usable to people who don't own macs, etc.

No one said Apple is buying Facebook. The OP suggested that Apple is in a position to become a serious Facebook competitor if they so felt like it.

As people have said on numerous Facebook discussions, there is no way anyone would make people pay for Facebook. They know that hundreds of thousands if not millions of people would leave if they did. No investor with half a brain in their head would pay the billions it would take to purchase Facebook, then turn around and drive it's net worth into the ground by turning it into a pay scheme, which, again, would devastate the user base.

 

[Eric S.]

Yes, it's true you need the OS to "manage" the software to the hardware, but this "managing" is become less relevent. Let's face, it: there's nothing more that people can do to the OS (or much software these days) anymore.

There's a host of new technologies on the horizon that OS's will need to manage. Although I will agree in one aspect: in some I/O areas, notably storage technology (like SAS), intelligence is moving out of kernel drivers and into controller firmware so the OS becomes more of a message passing agent. But that's really a minor point; you have more intelligent chips but you still need the OS to manage them.

Looking at Snow Leopard and Windows 7, they are focusing on efficiency and speed and a few aesthetic issues.

Have you looked at what's new in Snow Leopard? There are significant new OS features to manage multicore systems and intelligently use graphics processors.

Windows 7 is basically a fixup job for Vista, but Vista was a significant OS enhancement over XP.

This is why I say the browser is the new development platform. Search, Facebook, Google Docs, online storage, media distribution, TV, radio, etc. etc. all being brought through the web browser. And this is just the beginning. So that's why I say what OS you use doesn't matter.

It might not matter in the end user experience. That doesn't mean there aren't significant challenges coming for OS technology. And with OS X and Windows we're basically still talking about personal computers. There's a whole world of server technology out there, massively increasing compute power that will manage the data needs of the future and has nothing whatever to do with browsers.

 

[Cabbit]

How about making the OS consume even less resources and allow you to do even more with less.

I would rather see computers able to do more with less every hardware and software generation so we can get computers that can last weeks on battery and a OS that has aesthetically pleasing and practical UI elements that do not interfere with with the applications.

Just because you can consume more Ram, more disk space, use better GPU's does not mean you have too.

 

[MisterMe]

But they do not force you to post anything to Facebook, that's why it's ridiculous. As illegally said, it would not be mandatory that everything you do be posted to Facebook, you would still have a choice on what you want posted.

What you and your little friend don't seem to get is that if you are going to compete with Facebook, then you have to compete with Facebook. You and he are suggesting some half-fast Facebook-type functionality integrated into the OS. Well, that is a prescription for failure. It is "In for a penny, in for a pound." If it considers doing this thing, then Apple either goes for a better Facebook than Facebook, or it leaves it alone. A large number of the members of this forum appear to favor the latter. No one favors the former.

 

[emt1]

How about making the OS consume even less resources and allow you to do even more with less.

I would rather see computers able to do more with less every hardware and software generation so we can get computers that can last weeks on battery and a OS that has aesthetically pleasing and practical UI elements that do not interfere with with the applications.

Just because you can consume more Ram, more disk space, use better GPU's does not mean you have too.

Best post in this whole thread.

 

[MasterNile]

What you and your little friend don't seem to get is that if you are going to compete with Facebook, then you have to compete with Facebook. You and he are suggesting some half-fast Facebook-type functionality integrated into the OS. Well, that is a prescription for failure. It is "In for a penny, in for a pound." If it considers doing this thing, then Apple either goes for a better Facebook than Facebook, or it leaves it alone. A large number of the members of this forum appear to favor the latter. No one favors the former.

I never said it was a good idea, all I said was there was no way it would be mandatory to post everything you do.

 

[SHIFTLife]

Building a social networking platform into the OS is a terrible idea. It goes against everything that an OS is meant to be. It's an Operating System. It is meant to run the system. Nothing more, nothing less. Leave social network up to Applications, where it belongs. If they build a social network application and include it in iLife, that's one thing, but to build application functionality into an OS is just plain bloat.