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sc_markt · Mar 3, 2006, 07:44 PM

So does anybody know if Apple is planning a whole new OS (starting from scratch) for the future? I cannot believe that OS X is the last OS for Apple even if there are continual yearly updates to it.

mac_man · Mar 3, 2006, 08:06 PM

next

MACdows
or
WindMAC

Horsepoo!!! · Mar 3, 2006, 08:19 PM

Probably not the last OS...but the foundation is good for another 10 years or more.

OS X is 100 times more flexible OS 9 ever was. Judging by the patents Apple has filed recently and the jobs Apple is offering, you can expect OS X to look and act much differently a few years down the road.

I'm talking about gesture input, resolution independence, metadata file browsing.

They might call it something new...but I'm pretty sure the underpinnings will remain the same for the next 15 years with refinements and tweaks every release.

In fact, OS X is gonna last until the next paradigm shift...and by that I mean, cheap 3D displays (as opposed to the 2D displays we have today), voice-operated computing. A shift of that magnitude might warrant an entire rewrite of the OS...but then again, maybe not.

sc_markt · Mar 3, 2006, 08:42 PM

Originally Posted by Horsepoo!!!

Probably not the last OS...but the foundation is good for another 10 years or more.

OS X is 100 times more flexible OS 9 ever was. Judging by the patents Apple has filed recently and the jobs Apple is offering, you can expect OS X to look and act much differently a few years down the road.

I'm talking about gesture input, resolution independence, metadata file browsing.

They might call it something new...but I'm pretty sure the underpinnings will remain the same for the next 15 years with refinements and tweaks every release.

In fact, OS X is gonna last until the next paradigm shift...and by that I mean, cheap 3D displays (as opposed to the 2D displays we have today), voice-operated computing. A shift of that magnitude might warrant an entire rewrite of the OS...but then again, maybe not.

I agree, I can see OS X lasting a long time. But if I was SJ, I be thinking that now that we've got a kick-ass modern OS that will last for a while, its now time to get a group together to start thinking beyond OS X to a modern, future OS that is faster and more secure than anything else (including OS X).

- Mark

Steve's Sanity · Mar 4, 2006, 01:21 AM

Mark, while I agree with you - it's a good idea to be future oriented and not to let things languish - let's not give Jobs any ideas about yet another transition to embark on at this point. We just barely finished the OS X transition when Jobs felt it necessary to defect to Intel, and if someone gives him the idea that OS X is inadequate he may well throw that out for good measure.

sc_markt · Mar 4, 2006, 11:28 AM

Originally Posted by Steve's Sanity

Mark, while I agree with you - it's a good idea to be future oriented and not to let things languish - let's not give Jobs any ideas about yet another transition to embark on at this point. We just barely finished the OS X transition when Jobs felt it necessary to defect to Intel, and if someone gives him the idea that OS X is inadequate he may well throw that out for good measure.

I definitly do not think OS X is inadequate and am just curious to know if Apple isn't going to wait to the last minute to decide they need a new OS. I think OS X has a lot of years left in it. I just don't want Apple to one day realize that some other company has a more modern OS and now Apple needs to catch up again like when they realized that they didn't have preemptive multitasking and memory protection in classic so I think they started the Copland project which crashed. And if this day should happen AND SJ is not running Apple, well, we've seen whats happend before. And don't forget the BeOS came out of nowhere and from everything I've read of it, it was quite advanced.
As far as I'm concerned, there are 3 good reasons to start looking at a future OS:
1, OS X has a lot of life left in it. This gives Apple lots of time to really come up with the next killer OS.
2, Steve Jobs is running Apple. I'd hate to think what would happen if SJ wasn't at the helm and Apple needed a new OS to catch up with the competion.
3) They have a lot of cash.

- Mark

Maflynn · Mar 4, 2006, 12:38 PM

I don't think anything is even on the drawing boards at this moment. Even Steve said the yearly flow of major upgrades is slowing and I believe that will continue, each major release will take longer and longer to hit the market.

Mike

mdc · Mar 4, 2006, 01:15 PM

While I don't see Apple stopping the use of OS X any time soon, I do not see why they haven't already given thought to the future of their operating system.

By what Steve said about Apple having every version of OS X running on Intel cpus, I have a feeling they have a good idea of the future.

angelmb · Mar 4, 2006, 02:51 PM

If I am not wrong Jobs said that Mac OS X was going to be the Apple OS for the next ten years… give it some more time

Weyland-Yutani · Mar 4, 2006, 02:55 PM

My estimation is that OS X will be the Apple OS until Macs run Windows. Make of that what you will

cheers

W-Y

romeosc · Mar 4, 2006, 03:29 PM

What Os does your toaster or washing machine run..... In the future most programs will become
web based, only thing you nedd is a clean powerfull browser or whatever it will be called by then.

Big Mac · Mar 4, 2006, 07:06 PM

Originally Posted by romeosc

What Os does your toaster or washing machine run..... In the future most programs will become
web based, only thing you nedd is a clean powerfull browser or whatever it will be called by then.

That may work for the lowest end of the market where people will accept eMachines and AOL PCs, but people accustomed to normal computers will never agree to lease all of their software and have their vital data be completely at the mercy of corporate servers and corporate dictates.

P · Mar 5, 2006, 03:34 AM

Right now OS X is not missing any big, vital features. OS 9 was missing several - preemptive multitasking and a modern memory model with protected memory, to just take two. Apple will be forced to switch by the time they realise that they cannot add some feature to the current OS.

Some people are very intrigued by .NET, Mono, WinFX etc and think that every OS will need a feature like that some time. Maybe so, but it's definately possible to add a new API on top of an existing OS without breaking the old - after all, that's what Apple did with Carbon on top of the old Openstep.

Gavin · 09:12 AM

What we have now is a modular system with the underlying pieces being common to many different OSes. These parts have input from thousands of developers all over the world. So in many ways Apple is not really in control of where it is heading. Nor do they need to be. There is power in ridding the open source wave, and its momentum is a big deterrent to getting off.

I doubt we will see anything like the change from 9 to X. The UNIX bits under the hood are flexible enough to handle whatever the future throws at it; after all, it's been around for almost 40 years now running on everything from house sized mainframes to car stereos.

I see parts of the interface gradually being replaced over time with new display technology and API goodies, but we have already seen that with each upgrade so far. This pace could go on for decades, gradually evolving into something new without ever being replaced outright.

The next radicle change will probably be the hardware. Like a shift to organic computers that don't even have an OS. You'll still have a mouse on your desk, but it will be floating in a jar running your teleconference with its mind.

kick52 · Mar 8, 2006, 08:00 AM

apple said they could get 10 years more marketing from the os x brand.

msuper69 · Mar 8, 2006, 08:40 AM

Originally Posted by Weyland-Yutani

My estimation is that OS X will be the Apple OS until Macs run Windows. Make of that what you will

cheers

W-Y

Not bloody likely.

jwoods · Mar 8, 2006, 06:49 PM

I think OS X is here to stay, but I suspect over the years the interface (GUI) will change. 10 years from now is hard to predict. Just look at what has changed in the last 5 years with various technologies.

Interesting times, my friends, interesting times.

Weyland-Yutani · Mar 8, 2006, 07:19 PM

Originally Posted by msuper69

Not bloody likely.

Oh yes. I'm positive that my previous post will come true.

cheers

W-Y

mintcake · Mar 14, 2006, 01:05 PM

Coming at it from a slightly different angle, well, a marketing angle I guess, when are Apple going to release OS XI, and how significant a change is it going to be over OS X? Obviously no-one can answer that but let's have some speculation.

I guess previous posters are right that OS X (for want of a better descriptor) is going to be the foundation for some time to come, but I'm assuming that sooner or later they'll run out of feline predators and decide to turn it up to XI (even if in actuality XI is just another version of X).

I was new to Mac with OS X so I have no idea how frequently they changed Arabic numerals (OS7, OS8, OS9) and how significant those updates were compared to the major OS X updates. Were they genuinely technical in nature or just marketing ploys?

slugslugslug · Mar 14, 2006, 08:39 PM

Marketing, for sure. What arrived as Mac OS 8 was originally supposed to be 7.7. OS 8 was supposed to be the name for the next, built-from-the-ground-up, fully PPC-native OS. I think the under-the-hood changes between 8 and 9 were considered far more significant than those from 7.6 to 8, but I don't really know how any of those compared to what (I think) were pretty massive changes from 5->6->7...

P · Mar 15, 2006, 10:28 AM

At first the System and Finder developed very quickly, up to version 6. Updates were free, and noone really bothered about the version numbers. System 5 never actually existed - System Tools 5 was System 4.2 and Finder 6.0, and System Tools 6 included System 6.0 and Finder 6.1 (in an effort to straighten things out).

By the time it was out, however, Apple had a barinstorming session about how to move forward. All ideas were color-coded with blue for things that were possible to retrofit on top of the current OS and pink for ones that would require a more substantial rewrite. The decsions was taken to make the next OS implement the blue ideas and the one after that implement the pink ones. There were some "more than pink" ideas that were designated red.

The next OS was System 7, which was given the codename Blue (naturally) and was the biggest update Apple had done so far. It was delivered very late in 1991, and after that development split up into the future (pink) track and the current (blue) one. Since it was assumed that the next big update would be System 8, and because 7 had been such a big deal, Apple slowed down on the numbering and designated the next version System 7.1. It was probably about the same size as System 6, but since the versions were now being sold, marketting got involved, and that never ends well. 7.1 was followed by the illfated 7.5 (as a response to Win95). There were initially no more releases planned before the pink one - Copland, OS 8.

The pink OS had been many things along the way (called just Pink or PowerOpen as well), but Copland was the last incarnation. When Apple needed a boost and Copland was delayed again, then CEO Amelio came up with the idea of a temporary release - Tempo - to tide users over until Copland. That temporary release got split up into Harmony, Tempo, Allegro and Sonata - designated 7.6, 7.7, 7.8 and 7.9 - every half year. Harmony was indeed released as 7.6, with a bugfix in 7.6.1, but it all failed after that when Amelio finally was forced to kill Copland. As a fix, he bought NeXT and Jobs came back onboard.

The rest of the story you know - Jobs took over the helm, and as a way to kill the clones renamed Tempo - OS 7.7 - into OS 8.0. Allegro and Sonata came as 8.5 and 9.0 to fill up the gap to OS X (with Allegro being the bigger update, so Sonata got the marketting boost a full number upgrade). Calling it OS "ten" but using roman numerals was a way to get the final X commonly associated with UNIX OSes without infringing on the UNIX trademark.

msuper69 · Mar 15, 2006, 10:38 AM

Originally Posted by P

...Calling it OS "ten" but using roman numerals was a way to get the final X commonly associated with UNIX OSes without infringing on the UNIX trademark.

And to think that after all these years of using OS X, I never once thought of the X being related to UNIX.

Good insight!

And those who think the next version will be OS XI are wrong, wrong, wrong! I think the next Mac OS will be named something completely unrelated to the current OS X. Maybe simply MacOS. But no way OS XI.

mintcake · Mar 15, 2006, 10:51 AM

P, thanks for that post, very interesting and informative, cheers.

production_coordinator · Mar 15, 2006, 07:33 PM

IMHO, due to the Unix underpinnings, Apple is no longer chained to creating EVERYTHING for OS X. I know that Steve Jobs isn't going to make the same mistake twice with Apple's OS. He wants to leave his mark on the computer world, and I think he has more up his sleeve than the iTunes music store, ipod, and music (and even downloadable films). I believe that he must get the OS to a specific point before he can implement his plan... an the Intel transition is part of it.

NOBODY is going to buy a Mac to run windows on it... NOBODY. The people that do, will do so because they WANT to run OS X, but are FORCED to run Windows... and they probably already have a POS Dell hidden away.

We benefit GREATLY from having a Unix foundation. http://www.apple.com/opensource/ shows just the tip of the iceberg.

gbhgbh · Mar 20, 2006, 09:56 PM

Apple may decide on a new paradigm for the interface, but not a new operating system from scratch. It may do something like the "Public Square" concept for organizing and rely on heavier use of Spotlight, or whatever their human interface research tells them is best. But it will leave the core of the OS to the OpenSource community. If you're interested in a developing OS, take a look at GNU HURD
http://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/hurd.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Hurd

I'm sure there are other developments going on that others can post. But the interface should be able to run on top of these without too much trouble.

Catfish_Man · Mar 20, 2006, 10:18 PM

Originally Posted by P

Right now OS X is not missing any big, vital features. OS 9 was missing several - preemptive multitasking and a modern memory model with protected memory, to just take two. Apple will be forced to switch by the time they realise that they cannot add some feature to the current OS.

Some people are very intrigued by .NET, Mono, WinFX etc and think that every OS will need a feature like that some time. Maybe so, but it's definately possible to add a new API on top of an existing OS without breaking the old - after all, that's what Apple did with Carbon on top of the old Openstep.

I'll be interested to see what they come up with. Objective-C is getting garbage collection in 10.5, which will be a big step forward. It's still C based though, with all that that implies both good and bad. it'd be interesting if Apple decided to adopt mono...