

Mac OS X 10.7 Lion - the death knell of the Mac as we know it - ianhowlett
http://www.viewshound.com/technology/2011/6/mac-os-x-107-lion-the-death-knell-of-the-mac-as-we?utm_campaign=article&utm_medium=post&utm_source=HackerNews

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tobylane
You can't go one step without falling down the slope? When was there ever a
slippery slope? Sufficient research and consumner use of touch screens came up
with some interesting features also controllable by a mouse (which optionally
can be a touchpad/trackpad), so we were all allowed to benefit.

We went into space. Why didn't we move off the planet? But we did get Velcro.

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msz
"I predict that Mac OS X 10.8 or 11 – whichever number they choose – will also
remove this, and all Apple devices will only ship with touch screens." - this
does not make sense.

There was a quite recent keynote where Steve said this precise solution is
impossible for usability reasons, and won't be implemented. You can't
comfortably operate a vertically aligned touchscreen. That's why they went
with huge trackpads.

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olsonjeffery
> Steve said this precise solution is impossible for usability reasons, and
> won't be implemented.

Just like third-party native apps, "multitasking", notifications, "the large
screen iphone form-factor", etc, etc ad nauseum. Experience tells us: when
Jobs says "we won't be doing that," it often means: "we're actively
researching a way to do _exactly_ that."

Additionally, there's a lot of momentum headed in this direction, already:
recent Windows 8 demos show a heavily touch-influenced design (almost to the
point of _perhaps_ implying that touchscreens will be required, but who
knows.. microsoft tends to scale back their ambitions when it comes to actual
releases). Also, GNOME 3's UX centerpiece (gnome-shell) is, while not-at-all
there yet, heavily built around the design concept of integrating touchscreen
capabilities into the core workflow. Ditto for Ubuntu's Unity, which has
already integrated gestures on touchscreen capable interfaces/trackpads
(something they've been chasing down since, oh, 10.04).

With the above in mind, the tl;dr from this article (OSX goes mandatory
touchscreen at some point in the future) is not _that_ crazy to imagine.

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msz
Optional touch-based interface is possible. A mandatory and exclusive one -
highly unlikely.

And if we're to bring about the Experience, it also tells us that Apple
doesn't really care about any surrounding momentum. They set the trends.

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ianhowlett
I moved from Windows to Mac about 3 years ago and I still miss an easy way to
maximise a window to full screen. I prefer to see only one thing at a time, I
find it much less distracting. Full screen mode, if done right, would be great
for me. At least the choice of full screen or how it is now would be good.

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hkuo
I use an app called Divvy. I don't think I could ever go back to life without
it.

