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Apple announces Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion

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Re: Apple announces Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion

#171

Post by roc »

Tyrannosaurs wrote: post #100
pwthornton wrote: post #85

The thing I'm by far the most excited about is AirPlay Mirroring. If I'm reading this correctly, I'll be able to mirror anything from my Mac to my TV using an Apple TV. This will be great for watching Internet videos, going through my iPhoto library with my wife, looking at home videos, etc. All without needing a stupid cable from my couch to my TV. The deeper iCloud integration is also intriguing. I assume this mean…

And that's the point the Apple TV goes from a hobby to a major product. Spending a £1000 on a Mac - I reckon another £100 for an Apple TV with that functionality as the hook is a pretty easy up sell.

I would disagree. Neat as Airplay is, it isn't going to move Apple TVs.

Apps and/or Content deals with video distributors (Comcast/Verizon/etc) are going to be where it turns the corner. I suspect the whole hobby has been in a holding pattern while Apple has tried to line up the content deals and that the fallback plan is to just enable Apps and let the chips fall where they may. [1]

That's probably even the stick they'll use to get the cable companies to the table: Either they sign up and get preferential treatment in the interface, or they get shoved into being a dumb IP pipe that much faster.

[1] Delaying as the internals for an Apple-quality, app-running, 1080p set-top box get cheaper and cheaper hasn't hurt, I'm sure.

Re: Apple announces Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion

#172

Post by philwelch »

hahainternet wrote: post #159
antidaily wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, no one wants that (I hope). Read the Gruber preview and you'll feel more at ease. OS X and iOS are not merging. He describes Mountain Lion as "a series of steps toward defining a set of shared concepts, styles, and principles between two fundamentally distinct OSes." http://daringfireball.net/2012/02/mountain_lion

I asked a few friends and couldn't get an answer. What features have been taken from OSX and put into iOS? It seems to me that contrary to Gruber's claim, OSX is moving towards iOS and iOS is moving towards its competition.

What features have been taken from OSX and put into iOS?

Oh, not much--just the whole kernel, userland, graphics layer, and half of the Cocoa API.

EDIT: Also, Spotlight.

Re: Apple announces Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion

#173

Post by batista »

batista wrote: post #155
batista wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If malware on OSX is as small a problem as you're suggesting, why is Apple bothering with any of this? Is it to wrestle further control of the app eco-system on OSX? Or is it just security theatre? Or both? Something else? I don't understand the question. Apple has been improving OS X security mechanisms in every OS X update. From "address space layout randomization" to the "first run warning". This is another step i…

I stated what malware writers will do. No, you stated what you THINK they will do. For one, most Macs are updated very often, what with Software Update and Mac Store updates. So updating a black list of applications wouldn't be a problem. Second, they cannot just get a certificate, because they will have to interact with Apple and the developer program. You know many malware writers that want to give their details aw…

The last three lines of your comment are complete nonsense. You have failed to parse and understand what I wrote.

Yeah, because it is so off base, right, you writing:

"If malware on OSX is as small a problem as you're suggesting, why is Apple bothering with any of this? Is it to wrestle further control of the app eco-system on OSX? Or is it just security theatre? Or both? Something else?"

And me translating the above as you saying that if they don't do it to defend against ALREADY EXISTING malware then it's either a security theater or a mystery to you why they'd do it.

Re: Apple announces Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion

#174

Post by cpr »

Sigh.

Others have hinted at this, but I'll say it outright: I've been a pretty solid Mac user/developer for 25 years (with a 3-year interlude on Windows + ThinkPad towards the end of classic MacOS, when the lack of true multitasking and a "real" operating system just got unbearable).

I suppose it's inevitable, but I really hate to see the Mac become just another part of the whole iOS ecosystem.

There's nothing specific I can point to, but it does feel like the end of general-purpose computing for those of us who really like Apple hardware.

Edit: Perhaps I'm wrong, and the cloudification is happening everywhere: with Chromebooks/Chrome OS, with Win8, etc. So maybe this is the inevitable regardless of which platform(s) one enjoys.

Linux, here we come? ;-)

Re: Apple announces Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion

#175

Post by yequalsx »

feralchimp wrote: post #102

I for one welcome our new OS-level code signature verification overlords. May they smite evil and incompetence swiftly and brutally...except when 'evil' is defined by foreign governments, domestic law enforcement, or fair competition with built-in features. With great power comes great "you guys better not fuck this up."

"If an app is found to be malware, Apple can revoke that developer’s certificate, rendering the app (along with any others from the same developer) inert on any Mac where it’s been installed. "

Yeah, it's not a great reach to think that in five years there will be no Option 3 and malware will include any program that the government of the nation that your computer is in deems undesirable. Apple and Microsoft will likely be forced to have such capabilities by various national governments.

Re: Apple announces Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion

#176

Post by randomdata »

tristan_louis wrote: post #101
ori_b wrote: post #65

" OS X Mountain Lion arrives this summer. With all-new features inspired by iPad, the Mac just keeps getting better and better. " Am I the only person that doesn't want an ipad on the desktop?

You're not. The continuing IOSification of OSX is something that has been bugging me too and part of why, to date, I've yet to upgrade to Lion. It looks like Apple wants to create a more iOS-like approach across all its products, which is fine if you buy into the whole ecosystem. It also seems there's a trend here, with Apple bringing iOS increasingly into OSX and Microsoft bringing Windows Phone into Windows 8, the…

I have yet to use Lion, so I cannot comment if the iOS metaphor suits the personal computer, but I am all for the vendors trying something new. The desktop metaphor has been used for multiple decades now, with very little variation. While it has proven to work well, is it the best we can do, or are we stuck with baby duck syndrome?

Re: Apple announces Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion

#177

Post by rsynnott »

mikerg87 wrote: post #31

But where is the Mac Touch hardware ? you could see for a while where touch was it and we have these nice laptops and big iMac displays but we will use a mouse ?! I really want my next imac to be a docking station with a tear away tablet Windows 8 is definately banking having this sort of hardware in laptops and displays being available. You dont do Metro on the desktop unless you think that kind of hardware will be…

You'd have to either make your operating system work very well with both touch and mouse/trackpad/keyboard (very difficult), treat touch as a gimmick (as with those Windows 7 HP iMac-like things with touch screens), or make touch (which is ergonomically highly problematic on anything but a smallish tablet) the first-class citizen.

Re: Apple announces Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion

#178

Post by mike-cardwell »

batista wrote: post #173
batista wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I stated what malware writers will do. No, you stated what you THINK they will do. For one, most Macs are updated very often, what with Software Update and Mac Store updates. So updating a black list of applications wouldn't be a problem. Second, they cannot just get a certificate, because they will have to interact with Apple and the developer program. You know many malware writers that want to give their details aw…

The last three lines of your comment are complete nonsense. You have failed to parse and understand what I wrote. Yeah, because it is so off base, right, you writing: "If malware on OSX is as small a problem as you're suggesting, why is Apple bothering with any of this? Is it to wrestle further control of the app eco-system on OSX? Or is it just security theatre? Or both? Something else?" And me translating the above…

I was attempting to prompt you into retracting your ridiculous statement about malware not being a problem. I wish I hadn't bothered now. I'll leave you to it.

Re: Apple announces Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion

#179

Post by roc »

wpeterson wrote: post #164
ori_b wrote: post #65

" OS X Mountain Lion arrives this summer. With all-new features inspired by iPad, the Mac just keeps getting better and better. " Am I the only person that doesn't want an ipad on the desktop?

Seriously. The last thing I want is my Macbook Pro to behave like my iPhone. I love them both, but they are drastically different products and uses.

I feel the same way. But what in Mountain Lion sounds anything like that?

All I see is popular out-of-the-box iOS apps/features being brought to the out-of-the-box OS X experience.

What power users don't already have growl, dropbox, a dedicated notes app, a dedicated reminders app, an integrated chat client, etc?

These Mountain Lion features are only iOS-like inasmuch as iOS had them out-of-the_box, while OS X users looked to third parties to provide them. If you ask me, Mountain Lion sounds like a more reasoned approach to "bring what works about iOS to OS X" than misfires like "Mission Control".

Re: Apple announces Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion

#180

Post by rsynnott »

oinksoft wrote: post #57
krig wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope you realize that Debian and Ubuntu and most of the large distros already have this: Known, vetted packages, signed and trusted, distributed through a central database. Frankly, I think it's a great idea. People in general shouldn't be downloading and executing random binaries on their machines. I think it would be great if the major distros also refused to install unsigned binaries without explicitly being tol…

I don't think that's a very good comparison. A project in the Mac world begins and ends its life as a .app. This effort by Apple means that the vast majority of users will only see "approved" software. In the Linux world, most software begins as a .tgz, and earns packagers as it becomes more popular. There are only a few things really keeping a package out of the main Debain repositories: Being "non-free" (which take…

> In the Linux world, most software begins as a .tgz, and earns packagers as it becomes more popular.

But _normal_ users, that is not-very-technical people using Linux as a desktop, _never_ see that tgz. They wouldn't even know how to install it.

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