
Mountain Lion: John Gruber's personal briefing - MaxGabriel
http://daringfireball.net/2012/02/mountain_lion
======
beatpanda
When journalists say they're different from bloggers, what they're talking
about is the kind of navel-gazing bullshit that Gruber spends half his time on
here — describing the event itself, and his presence and experience there,
making sure the reader knows that he was among only a few dozen people invited
to this exclusive one-on-one press briefing.

A more competent writer would have spent maybe a sentence or two explaining
the novelty of the briefing and then moved on. Gruber spends four paragraphs.
I don't need to know that they gave him free coffee, or that the chair was
comfortable. The whole thing comes off as sickeningly conceited.

~~~
bjcy
I don't think that Gruber would argue that this piece falls into what we would
call stereotypical journalism. It's not a piece that purports to be a View
From Nowhere.

I think that this piece is akin to pieces you might read in the New Yorker or
the Atlantic, in that you see a writer's analysis of a topic or event through
their experience, both past and present.

It's doubtful that Gruber is rubbing this in all of our faces. More likely,
he's noting it's novelty as a change (or a confirmation, really) of Apple's
motivations.

Gruber is a competent writer. His pieces exhibit voice and clarity, though you
might disagree with him (I often do), but a contrary opinion is no less
competent for its, well, contrariness.

That's the spirit of HN. If you disagree with someone but they challenge you
and add value to the discussion, you upvote and challenge back, sharpening
both of your stances.

~~~
astrodust
I liked the perspective on this one. The OS itself? Yadda yadda. That will be
covered in excruciating detail through the next news cycle. The event, though,
will probably be glossed over.

Describing things like this is a way of seeing into the machine and finding
out how it works. This kind of event marks an interesting departure from
previous WWDC-type promotions. It's an important thing in and of itself.

~~~
BrandonM
I totally agree. I'm not a Gruber fan and I've never owned a Mac, but I was
still interested in his analysis of why they held the meetings in the fashion
they did. Letting us in on some of Apple's inner workings and their collective
"thought process" is a valuable service to readers.

------
parfe
_That’s when Schiller tells me they’re doing some things differently now._

 _I wonder immediately about that “now”. I don’t press, because I find the
question that immediately sprang to mind uncomfortable. And some things remain
unchanged: Apple executives explain what they want to explain, and they
explain nothing more._

What useless reporting! How about just asking a follow up question about what
is different? Or why OS X will not support Siri in this release?

Strike out all Gruber's writing involving the feel of the room and this might
as well be a feature list on Apple.com.

 _And instead of a room full of writers, journalists, and analysts, it was
just me, Schiller, and two others from Apple — Brian Croll from product
marketing and Bill Evans from PR._

Not even a head nod to let us know he has at least a small sense of what his
purpose at this meeting is. Just any hint of self-awareness that he's merely
an extension of Apple Marketing would suffice. One of the most valuable
companies on the planet sees value in free advertising through Gruber. I'm not
sure if that reflects more poorly on Gruber as the stooge, or his readers as
pawns.

~~~
macrael
Gruber was clearly not the only person briefed in this way. A cursory glance
at other tech news outlets show that _many_ reporters were given the same
treatment.

Engadget: [http://www.engadget.com/2012/02/16/apple-os-x-mountain-
lion-...](http://www.engadget.com/2012/02/16/apple-os-x-mountain-lion-10-8-in-
depth-preview/)

PC Mag: <http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2400311,00.asp>

Tech Crunch: <http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/16/os-x-mountain-lion/>

Time: [http://techland.time.com/2012/02/16/apples-
os-x-10-8-mountai...](http://techland.time.com/2012/02/16/apples-
os-x-10-8-mountain-lion-the-mac-gets-even-more-ipad-like/)

USA Today:
[http://www.usatoday.com/tech/columnist/edwardbaig/story/2012...](http://www.usatoday.com/tech/columnist/edwardbaig/story/2012-02-16/apple-
os-x-mountain-lion/53111484/1)

Cnet: [http://news.cnet.com/8301-27076_3-57378751-248/apple-mac-
os-...](http://news.cnet.com/8301-27076_3-57378751-248/apple-mac-os-x-
mountain-lion-takes-more-bites-out-of-ios/?tag=content;siu-container)

Jim Dalrymple: [http://www.loopinsight.com/2012/02/16/first-look-os-x-
mounta...](http://www.loopinsight.com/2012/02/16/first-look-os-x-mountain-
lion/)

Slashgear: [http://www.slashgear.com/meet-apple-os-x-mountain-
lion-16213...](http://www.slashgear.com/meet-apple-os-x-mountain-
lion-16213730/)

The Verge: [http://www.theverge.com/2012/2/16/2801047/mac-
os-x-10-8-moun...](http://www.theverge.com/2012/2/16/2801047/mac-
os-x-10-8-mountain-lion-preview-photos-video)

Macworld:
[http://www.macworld.com/article/165407/2012/02/hands_on_with...](http://www.macworld.com/article/165407/2012/02/hands_on_with_apples_new_os_x_mountain_lion.html)

~~~
parfe
_Gruber was clearly not the only person briefed in this way_

I gave up after reading a handful of those. Which of those people did Apple
brief "in this way"?

Anyone could have written those articles just from the copywriting on
<https://www.apple.com/macosx/mountain-lion/features.html>

~~~
macrael
I only picked articles that made their source clear.

"We can report on Mountain Lion a half-year before it ships because Apple, for
the first time, decided to give the computer press a look at a new OS X
version long before its release. Normally, we see a new OS X version at most a
few days before the shipping date. The early version of Mountain Lion that
Apple gave us is substantially the same one that its registered developers
will be able to download starting today. After using Mountain Lion intensely
for a few days, I'm deeply impressed with its new convenience and security
features, its subtle interface improvements, its cloud-based file synching,
and its compatibility with software written for earlier versions."
<http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2400311,00.asp>

"For the past week, I’ve been using an initial demo version of OS X Mountain
Lion." <http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/16/os-x-mountain-lion/>

"We got our hands on an early version of the OS -- so early, in fact, that
it's something of a pre-developer build. (Heck, there isn't even an image of a
mountain lion to choose from in the default wallpapers.) The version available
to developers today should address some of the kinks we encountered during our
testing, not that we suffered all that many hiccups."
[http://www.engadget.com/2012/02/16/apple-os-x-mountain-
lion-...](http://www.engadget.com/2012/02/16/apple-os-x-mountain-lion-10-8-in-
depth-preview/)

~~~
parfe
Your quotes make no distinction between a bike courier leaving a package to
the front desk, and the Senior VP of Apple Worldwide Marketing giving a
private presentation to an individual.

~~~
macrael
The article on Time was more explicit:

"Apple recently briefed me on the new features and loaned me a MacBook Air
loaded with a beta version of Mountain Lion. I’ve been test-driving for the
past week." [http://techland.time.com/2012/02/16/apples-
os-x-10-8-mountai...](http://techland.time.com/2012/02/16/apples-
os-x-10-8-mountain-lion-the-mac-gets-even-more-ipad-like/)

------
mambodog
Many around these parts will make glib insinuations about the "Gatekeeper"
feature heralding Apple's clawing away the freedoms of it's users, one-by-one,
until we are all prisoners of "the computer as a jail made cool".

However, it seems to me that Gatekeeper's presence embodies a rather more
embarrassing admission that, yes, Mac OS is on the verge of needing some kind
of malware protection; in the wake of the Mac Defender malware surfacing last
year, it was really only a matter of time.

~~~
nirvana
You're right, but Gatekeeper does something else: It marks the line in the
sand. So long as that choice is there as an option in settings for me to make,
Apple is in the right. If they ever take that choice away, and they start
dictating what I can run or not run, they will have crossed that line, and
lost me as a customer forever.

I think a lot of people think that Apple taking away that choice is
inevitable. I don't think so- I think it would be completely out of character.

But if I'm wrong, I'm gone.

~~~
tptacek
It's a sensible feature, and there's no reasonable way to implement it without
that settings option, and the options they've chosen make total sense.

I agree with you: not having the option would be very bad... but it's very
unlikely they'll ever take the option away.

Why would they? The overwhelming majority of their users will never touch it.

~~~
nkassis
"The overwhelming majority of their users will never touch it."

That's unless they want to install any app currently available on the Web that
isn't signed. There is a lot of legacy software people keep using, even Mac
users. I don't see that setting staying default for very long.

~~~
kemiller
According to a screenshot the Macworld Hands-on
([http://www.macworld.com/article/165407/2012/02/hands_on_with...](http://www.macworld.com/article/165407/2012/02/hands_on_with_apples_new_os_x_mountain_lion.html))
you can whitelist individual apps on the fly.

~~~
sukuriant
If that is the case, that's actually incredibly useful.

------
dchest
We are here, ladies and gentlemen.

    
    
        Users have three choices which type of apps can run on Mountain Lion:
    
          Only those from the App Store
          Only those from the App Store or which are signed by a developer ID
          Any app, whether signed or unsigned
    
       The default for this setting is, I say, exactly right: the one in 
       the middle, disallowing only unsigned apps.

~~~
narkee
Say I use my Macbook for development, and I compile a small toy C program
using gcc. Does that mean now that I cannot run the produced binary by
default?

Forgive me for being naive, but what does "app" mean in this context? Is a
shell script an app? What about a python script with GUI elements?

~~~
Craiggybear
Good question. I can't see this just yet, but it will happen. Probably by 10.9
which won't even have a command prompt -- or at least not one you can access
easily without invalidating warranty or some such nonsense.

~~~
batista
Yeah, or 10.30, which will not even have a UI, just an OS-to-Mind interface.

Can we please stop repeating BS?

People like to make it sound like some kind of slippery slope, but including
Mountain Lion, NOTHING has been taken away from users re: freedom, from OS X
10.0.1 to 10.8.

In addition to running whatever from whatever, 10.7 gave you the option to use
an App repository. You know, like the one, say, Debian had from decades, only
not restricted to OSS.

In addition to running whatever from whatever AND from the App Store, 10.8
adds the ability to only run signed apps. You, know, like the security
solution that is considered one of most effective ones by security boffins.

~~~
daeken
> NOTHING has been taken away from users re: freedom, from OS X 10.0.1 to
> 10.8.

Well, no, that's not quite true. See also: PTRACE_DENY_ATTACH in random
binaries (e.g. iTunes) and the gimped DTrace implementation.

Are these showstoppers or the end of freedom as we know it? Not be a long,
long way. Are they (fairly small) limitations on the freedom of users? Yes.

~~~
wtallis
Introducing new features that aren't completely open is not the same as taking
away existing freedoms.

------
dsr_
Amazingly cost-effective marketing. Most people don't go to an Apple Event,
they read the press coverage. So why spend a million dollars on an Event when
you can spend a few thousand dollars on your pet journalists, who will then
report to all that the coffee was really good?

~~~
alanfalcon
Yeah, hah hah, the "pet" journalists are pampered by the Apple iCoffee, but in
all seriousness I'm very glad that Gruber got this one-on-one treatment
because his reporting is as much about the fact of the meeting and the way of
the meeting as it is about the content of the meeting. And that's entirely
relevant to the audience of Daring Fireball! I don't expect the NY Times to do
more than report on the content of the meeting, but I love getting this well
written and well thought out little "inside Apple" from Gruber. The other guy
whose account I'd love to read would be Andy Ihnatko's take were he invited to
such an event.

~~~
FireBeyond
I'm usually fairly anti-Gruber. But this was, in all respects, an interesting
and insightful read, well thought out, and offered little in the way of
Gruber's worshipping at the pedestal of Apple.

------
Tloewald
I assume an embargo was lifted and we'll get a bunch of these. Another
possible implication may be that Mac OS X becomes a free update for everyone.

The three tiered app security thing is huge and great. I love it. I hope
they've ditched some skumorphism.

~~~
beaumartinez
> _I hope they've ditched some skeuomorphism._

It's worse than ever—have a look at some of the screenshots[1]. My favourite
is the tweet dialog[2].

[1]
[http://www.macworld.com/article/165407/2012/02/hands_on_with...](http://www.macworld.com/article/165407/2012/02/hands_on_with_apples_new_os_x_mountain_lion.html)

[2]
[http://images.macworld.com/images/article/2012/02/tweetsheet...](http://images.macworld.com/images/article/2012/02/tweetsheet-
full-272427.jpg)

~~~
batista
_It's worse than ever—have a look at some of the screenshots[1]. My favourite
is the tweet dialog[2]_

Actually there's nothing of the "bad skeuomorphic UI" about the tweet dialog
--it's just that its' background resembles a lined notepad.

Other than that, it looks and behaves like any other text entry box and has
non skeuomorphic send etc buttons.

So, "worse than ever"? Hardly.

~~~
sirn
What about Game Center[1]?

[1]:
[http://assets.sbnation.com/assets/953451/Screen_Shot_2012-02...](http://assets.sbnation.com/assets/953451/Screen_Shot_2012-02-15_at_7.46.56_PM.jpg)

~~~
ugh
If it’s only a skin there really is no problem (except if the skin makes it
harder to identify standard UI elements).

It’s only when skeumorphism impacts behavior that it becomes a serious
usability issue. For example: The Address Book used to have three panes. Since
Apple pressed the app into book shape for Lion they had to ditch one pane to
keep with the book aesthetic. That’s a problem.

~~~
dcurtis
Funny you should mention that particular case, because it is fixed in Mountain
Lion:
[http://screenshots.dustincurtis.com/Contacts-20120216-082547...](http://screenshots.dustincurtis.com/Contacts-20120216-082547.jpg)

------
rjj
I'm struck by the self-awareness that it takes to NOT have a marketing event
for the announcement of your new operating system. Wow.

Also, fascinating how the iPhone is the first step in the halo effect but at
the same time is also the most profitable. They are building on the halo
effect and lock in of the iPhone/iPad to the Mac ecosystem.

------
CJefferson
The most worrying point to me (which other people might have already known) as
that you can only access iCloud, or the new notifications, in your app if
users get it through the app store.

This clearly means that non-app store apps are second class citizens. I had
wanted to use iCloud in a program I'm working on at the moment. I'm now going
to have to seriously think about if I'm willing to make my app only available
through the app store, or not use iCloud.

~~~
jonhendry
It means apps with access to iCloud get some extra scrutiny, helping prevent
malware tampering with iCloud.

I suppose notifications could be abused as well (perhaps some kind of
notification-phising, where an app posts notifications that appear to be from
something else?)

~~~
CJefferson
What it means is that you can't release an app that uses iCloud anywhere else.

No releasing on your homepage. No mailing out to people. No humble indie
bundle. No steam. No developing an app with paying apple $99/year.

~~~
jonhendry
Well, yeah. The implication being that Apple doesn't want your filthy
unexamined app to be touching iCloud's servers.

------
gkefalas
Hm.

* The "Gatekeeper" concept is interesting, but I expect we'll hear a lot of grumbling about the default setting. We also all remember the concern about the App Store eventually becoming the only way to get software for your Mac; this will do little to allay that.

* Hopefully Launchpad will have some keyboard-based shortcuts, search-as-you-type (the way a Stack does), perhaps a separate/faster editing view than drap-and-drop, and other usability enhancements to make it more useful. I like it in concept, especially with the trackpad pinch shortcut, but not enough to keep using it once I got all of my programs installed.

* Whither new iWork?

* Some of the tweaks Gruber talks about really make logical sense, and I'm excited to see them. I hope that reliability & clarity hasn't suffered by the time of release; each release of OS X has seemed jam-packed with more "stuff" at the expense of much of that stuff's stability and polish, it seems.

* Gruber didn't mention a new Finder, so we're left to guess and find out in just a few days.

* I wonder who the other journalists are. This format for a press reveal of a product is... interesting, I guess, is the word I'd use right now.

~~~
morisy
Briefings like that aren't unusual ... just highly unusual for Apple. I've sat
in dozens of similar ones unveiling new versions of hardware, software or
services for both consumer and business. It offers less launch-day spectacle,
but it also offers the chance for more thoughtful analysis that can still be
coordinated with embargoes.

It is, of course, a very large departure for Apple, which generally doesn't
even return calls from anyone but Pogue or the WSJ, and even then doesn't
generally comment.

~~~
gkefalas
Right, I meant they're unusual for Big Fruit. And also, the period between
this reveal and release this summer is equally unusual...

I'd say that the lag between announce & release is a little more worrisome and
something that I wouldn't want to see become a trend at Apple. I've always
felt that a big part of their press was their general tendency to release
right at announcement of a product or soon thereafter. Though, now that I
think about it, I guess their OS releases have, by necessity, had to have some
lead time associated with them.

~~~
gyardley
Yep, OS releases have a lot of lead time vs. physical products.

OS X Lion was demoed on stage in October 2010, made available as a developer
preview in February 2011, and launched to the public in July 2011.

------
pavlov
So John Gruber is basically an official Apple announcement channel now?

~~~
Tloewald
It's being announced all over the place.

~~~
pavlov
The difference is that other journalists who got the preview also write about
other products, whereas Gruber only writes about Apple.

When an Apple-exclusive blog gets preferential treatment and news scoops
directly from Apple, it's reasonable to ask whether it's anything more than
Phil Schiller's astroturfing outlet.

~~~
smackfu
You could say the same about MacWorld.

~~~
pavlov
Being compared to MacWorld is hardly an endorsement of an independent
blogger's journalistic integrity.

~~~
smackfu
But it is rather odd to complain that getting a briefing to a "biased"
reporter is unusual. It's like Thurott getting briefed on Windows stuff,
S.O.P.

------
jinushaun
_"And then the reveal: Mac OS X — sorry, OS X — is going on an iOS-esque one-
major-update-per-year development schedule. This year’s update is scheduled
for release in the summer, and is ready now for a developer preview release.
Its name is Mountain Lion."_

Yearly updates? Most exciting nugget of news in the post, IMO.

The only problem is that iOS updates are free, while OS X updates are not.
With one update per year, they run the risk of version fragmentation if users
have to pay to keep up with the upgrade cycle.

~~~
sipefree
There's a reason for that. U.S. accounting law requires that non-subscription
devices that are upgraded have a fee associated with the upgrade under Apple
and many analysts’ interpretation of the law.

This is why iPod Touch owners have to pay for upgrades while iPhone users do
not.

I think Apple may have relaxed that recently though, and I wouldn't be
surprised if they release Mountain Lion for free.

~~~
wmf
Either the law was changed or Apple changed their interpretation a few years
ago.

------
ugh
Ah! That’s iOSification in a good way. It’s nice that they are finally
fighting cruft. That even lets me overlook the skeumorphism. (I don’t care so
much if it’s only looks and not functionality. Sometimes Apple oversteps that
line but a more careful examination is necessary to figure that out.)

Next stop: De-crufting iTunes.

~~~
siglesias
_Next stop: De-crufting iTunes._

Totally agreed. It's been pretty apparent for a while now that iTunes should
be broken up into Music, Books, and Movies, each playing to its own strength
and linking to a separate "iTunes store" app. And also that iPhoto should be
renamed Photos, with full iCloud syncing.

------
llambda
Of all the exciting new features that must be contained in this release, I am
most excited about Notification Center (finally) being ported to the desktop.
It's kind of a sad thing to say, because Growl was for many years a fine
notifications platform. However I always wondered why there was no standard
provided by Apple. It didn't matter much until Growl's development took a
radical new direction. No, I'm not referring to charging for the product, the
app would have been worth the $2. But I am disgruntled about its bugginess and
backwards-incompatibility. Presently Growl is crippled on my system. It works
for apps that have updated to the new protocol. For others it doesn't. And it
still suffers from bugs. So my hope is that Notification Center will prove to
be a unifying standard for Mac apps.

~~~
super_mario
Notifications API is only for apps distributed through Mac app store. So, if
you are independent developer, don't get too excited.

~~~
llambda
Are you sure about that? The introductory video explicitly says, "...and even
notifications from third-party apps." [1] But that could be limited to apps in
the App Store. Do you have a citation for that?

[1] [http://www.apple.com/macosx/mountain-
lion/features.html#vide...](http://www.apple.com/macosx/mountain-
lion/features.html#video-mountainlion)

------
vegardx
I can't really say I love the direction Apple is taking with Mac OSX. They
make really radical changes to how things work, and for a phone that might be
okay, I don't use my phone that much, but with every update (or so it seems,
after Snow Leopard) I have to change my workflow. With Lion I even didn't
fully recover.

As an example, with Lion they more or less removed Spaces entirely. This was a
killer feature for me (and many many developers / professional users), instead
they replaced it with some sort of fullscreen-ish-applications.

~~~
tptacek
They removed Spaces? Huh? Browser, Chat/Mail, Emacs & Terminals, Illustrator &
Pages; I'd go nuts if I couldn't get my workspace set up that way, the way
it's been since I had to buy virtual desktops as a third party app before
10.5.

It works exactly the same way in Lion. Better, from the perspective of moving
apps from Space to Space.

The only thing I see different in Lion is that you can't do two-dimensional
layouts of Spaces.

~~~
snth
You can't arbitrarily drag windows from space to space in the "expose" view in
Lion, as far as I can tell. You have to 1) Switch to the space the window is
open in and then 2) Drag the window from the current space to another. I liked
Spaces much better.

~~~
yusefnapora
That is annoying, but you don't have to fully switch to the space containing
the window. In mission control, you can three-finger swipe through your spaces
to get to the expose view for the space that has the app you want, then drag
it to the smaller space icon at the top. Still more work than the old way, but
you don't have to leave mission control.

------
tptacek
Notification Center seems like something that will work better on OS X than it
does on iOS.

~~~
jinushaun
I still don't see a "Clear All" button for clearing notifications...

------
feralchimp
They should have called this "the Dentata". You know, code signature
verification _with teeth_.

Can I get an amen for free code signing certificates that derive from the
Apple Root CA? Not $99, not $5, free.

Overall: more like this on more OS's.

------
jroseattle
This last comment is interesting:

"On the Mac, Notification Center alerts are decidedly inspired by those of
Growl, a longstanding open source project that is now sold for $2 in the Mac
App Store. I hereby predict “Apple ripped off Growl” as the mini-scandal of
the day."

It brings to mind Steve Jobs's rant against Android (the whole I-will-spend-
every-last-cent scene) for "ripping off" Apple. But this is a case of
"inspiration".

I've not seen the feature, but choosing the words "inspired by" makes
everything sound a-OK. And that's a very fine line to walk.

The Reality Distortion Field is just kool-aid with capitalization.

------
worldimperator
I love how the points 'Gatekeeper' and 'All-new features for China' so
naturally are presented side-by-side. Why would anyone want to run an unsafe
program like a tor client ? Ask your local gatekeeper.

------
WiseWeasel
Really hoping they integrate Siri into Spotlight in 10.8. It would be nice to
be able to hit 'command-space' to bring up Spotlight, then just type, "remind
me to call Fred at 5", and it would set a reminder, and sync it to your
iPhone. Or maybe "set a timer for 5 minutes on my phone", or "add an
appointment for dentist tomorrow at noon", "find a good thai restaurant
nearby", etc.

It's embarrassing how much faster these kinds of tasks are on the iPhone than
the Mac now, though network issues can still be a problem inside buildings,
and the voice recognition isn't perfect. If I could just type my requests to
my Mac, I think I'd find myself using it a lot more often. It would be like a
realization of Jef Raskin's (and maybe even more his son Aza's) ideas on
'humane' and command-line interfaces as the ultimate UI.

------
nagrom
I'm still running Snow Leopard after being scared off Lion from reports about
instability when it was first released. Is Lion mature enough to replace Snow
Leopard now, or should I just hold off and see what happens when Mountain Lion
is released?

~~~
Craiggybear
Yeah, I'm still with Leopard 10.5.8 ... I don't like the direction they're
taking with OS X but I'd seen this coming for a while.

I can see the next release after this being effectively a completely walled
garden desktop OS without even a command prompt.

~~~
mitchellhislop
Really?

On a machine that makes Apple a ton of money from developers (where do you
think most iPhone apps are written) will get an OS without a command prompt?

And you can see this happening?

------
padobson
I'm not sure iCloud can work in Apple's walled garden. The whole point of
cloud storage is to make things accessible seamlessly across all devices.
People who use a Mac at home and a PC at work or own an iPad and an Android
phone are going to find Dropbox and the like a much better solution.

I know Apple is using iCloud to sell hardware and not the other way around,
but I cant help but think iCloud can never be what Dropbox is so long as they
don't make it available cross platform a la iTunes.

------
sjwright
Am I the only one who thinks gatekeeper is the most exciting new feature in
Mountain Lion? I hope they take the concept even further! The best thing about
the iPad is how it can't run untrusted code, and that no third party app can
escape the sandbox. My goodness, since my parents got iPads, the number of
support calls I've had to field has plummeted. If Apple can do the same for
their iMac, I'll be forever grateful.

Of course I'll leave it switched off, thanks.

------
127001brewer
_...is going on an iOS-esque one-major-update-per-year development schedule.
This year’s update is scheduled for release in the summer, and is ready now
for a developer preview release._

I found this comment very interesting. It seems like Apple will be updating OS
X aggressively. Will this force Microsoft to do the same with Windows?

(As an aside, if iCloud will be used to "sync" your iWork documents between
your Mac + iPad + iPhone, then that will be a great thing.)

~~~
emehrkay
That would be a GREAT thing if Microsoft did. I think the yearly release is
the most exciting thing, it is the software that matters when it comes down to
it.

~~~
recoiledsnake
Actually it won't be a good thing if Microsoft did the same thing. For
starters, big features that need a lot of design and development (think
Windows 8 GUI) take much more than a year. Also Windows needs to be tested
across a lot more hardware and much bigger software ecosystem than OS X, so
longer alpha and beta cycles are needed. They already release minor upgrades
via service packs. I would rather have a solid OS like Windows 7 once in 3
years rather than an unstable OS every year.

------
richcollins
_Apple is calling it “Gatekeeper”. It’s a system whereby developers can sign
up for free-of-charge Apple developer IDs which they can then use to
cryptographically sign their applications. 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._

I would love to see iOS move in this direction as well

------
ary
_That’s when Schiller tells me they’re doing some things differently now._

Seems to me that not everyone at Apple was thrilled with the one-man spectacle
that Jobs made the company into. I'd wager that most of the executives
(especially Forstall) are going to raise their public profiles in the coming
years in an attempt to use the rather high launching pad that is Apple to make
a mark. Under Jobs that wasn't easy.

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smackfu
Not surprised they didn't give a big briefing. An hour of "this is just like
the iOS version, but on OS X" would get pretty bad press.

------
brudgers
To me, the most interesting difference in how Apple presented Mountain Lion
was that the announcement appears to have been made on Eastern Time rather
than Pacific Time or in the middle of the night through website changes.

------
joejohnson
I'm glad to hear there will be a better Notification system. Growl is decent,
but it would be nice if such simple functionality was handled by the OS and
was free.

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raldi
So what cat names are left for future OS X releases?

~~~
grecy
If my math is correct, they only need one more before XI

~~~
raldi
Care to show your math?

~~~
grecy
10.8 = Mountain Lion.

10.9 = Last needed cat name.

11 = New naming scheme that doesn't involve big cats.

~~~
msbarnett
There's really no reason to assume that 10.9 couldn't be followed by 10.10.

The final release of 10.4 was 10.4.11.

~~~
grecy
I've always felt 10.10, 10.11, etc. would be horrible for marketing.

But you are absolutely correct, there is no reason to assume it won't happen.

Interestingly, the Engadget article mentions more than once they thought 10.7
would be the last 10 before the jump to 11.

~~~
raldi
What Engadget article?

~~~
grecy
[http://www.engadget.com/2012/02/16/apple-os-x-mountain-
lion-...](http://www.engadget.com/2012/02/16/apple-os-x-mountain-lion-10-8-in-
depth-preview/)

"Right now, at least, the company's not ready to close the book on chapter X"

and

"This may not be the jump to OS 11 we were expecting after Lion"

------
wisty
Does anyone remember that Steve Jobs interview, in which he waxes lyrical
about the benefits of putting your docs on a big iron server?

------
notatoad
the new naming seems weird to me. i get that "Mac OS X" was too long, but i
would have thought they'd drop the X rather than the mac. Mac OS runs on Macs,
iOS runs on iDevices. makes me wonder if they're going to drop the mac
branding altogether.

------
chj
the last sentence is pure gold. apple, are you listening?

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signalsignal
Thank God. I always hated Growl.

------
CubicleNinjas
So many critics here of Gruber and his writing style. I just see jealousy.

This change in Apple's approach is very encouraging and goes to show that for
all of their success, they have not their moxy.

