iOSification

If you listened to yesterday’s MacBreak Weekly, Leo Laporte and Ken Ray discussed Lion and how many of the features brought over from the iPad signaled the “iOSification” of the desktop. I’ve seen this sentiment expressed a lot ever since Lion was unveiled and it never sat well with me.

Saying this is the “iOSification” of OS X brings a negative connotation with it, implying that Apple is simplifying the desktop to a point where we won’t be able to do any “serious computing” on a Mac from this point forward. (A lot of Apple haters already feel you can’t do serious computing on a Mac, but those people haven’t sought the help they so badly require.)

Launchpad, full-screen apps, multitouch gestures, inverted scrolling - all of this came from iOS, but is it “iOSification” or just the logical next step in desktop operating systems?

Put it this way: if the iPad represented the first “post-PC” computer, then Lion represents the first post-PC desktop OS.

People synonimize “computer” with “complicated” - robust file systems, granular settings and hours of troubleshooting when something goes wrong. Lion changes that by employing another feature from iOS - getting the technology out of the way.

When I installed Lion, I downloaded it in two clicks from the Mac App Store, clicked through a few “Do you agree?” screens and 40 minutes later I was up and running. There were no optical discs, no customization screens and no “Lion Home Premium Business Ultimate Nachos Edition”. Apple has mastered the art of OS deployment and installation to the point where anyone can easily upgrade their machines without the help of a computer savvy relative.

Then you have the OS itself, with new features like AirDrop and Versions. AirDrop lets you send another nearby Lion user any file over Wi-Fi without the need for a third party app.

Versions autosaves your documents and their incremental changes without you having to remember to hit Ctrl-S every time you type something. And the Time Machine-esque retrieval system allows you to travel back through the history of your documents in case you need something from a previous iteration.

These features are new, but once you start using them, they feel like they should’ve been a part of every OS since 10.1. Apple is streamlining and automating common tasks that have frustrated users for years by integrating them directly into the OS, outside the hands of third party developers. Does it bode well for unitask app devs who might have to rethink their product strategies? No, but it’s infinitely better for users because they don’t have to rely on external developers to keep up with every system update.

Take Reader and Reading List in Safari as two good examples. Reader strips ads and most images out of webpages so users can just read the straight text easily on their screens. Services like Readable have been doing this for awhile, but Apple’s is built right in.

Reading List is Apple’s version of Instapaper. It’s nowhere near sufficient enough for hardcore readers, but for many average users, it’s just fine. Serious article hoarders will stroll to Instapaper because it’s suited for them, while casual readers will suffice with Apple’s elementary implementation.

Regardless of your feelings about whether Apple is destroying third party developers by “stealing” the core functionalities of their apps, it says two things about the company and those who make a living from its products:

1. You can only go so far with an operating system before you need to start pulling from others’ work. (See: iOS 5 notifications, Reader, Reading List, macro text shortcuts)
2. Third party developers were the first ones to see a “post-PC” world and build on it.

Where could Apple have gone with Lion had it not taken a little from everyone else? Not far, and definitely not far enough to warrant a new OS - maybe a point update, which brings me to point two: Apple saw how developers were building platform agnostic services, like Instapaper and Dropbox, and absorbed them into Lion to make one cohesive system that relies less on outside interference and more on homegrown solutions. These new features may not be as intense as what the “little guys” had built, but Apple’s implementations work well enough for most people, where “most people” represents the company’s core demographic.

And where did these services gain a majority of users? IOS, of course. It all comes full circle.

Lame pun alert: I guess it makes sense that Lion represents the “circle of life” for the Mac OS. Build up OS X over several years, use it and what you’ve learned to create iOS, take features from iOS and bring them back to OS X, lather, rinse, repeat.

IOS, specifically on the iPad, represented a new frontier for computing that took complication out of the equation and gave many people what they ultimately wanted in the first place - a clean environment to do every day things without having to use the same bloated, counterintuitive system they’d been staring at for the past 30 years.

Lion builds upon that philosophy by giving both average and novice users the best of both worlds. The file system is still there, but you don’t have to worry about it as much thanks to Versions. Your applications are still right where you left them, but Launchpad will help you find them more quickly. Batteries die and power goes out, so don’t worry if you didn’t save your work - everything will pop up exactly as you had it before it all went to hell.

Don’t think of this as “iOSification” - this is what computing should’ve been about all along. This is a logical progression based on user habits that have evolved over thirty years of experience with personal computers. This is what being post-PC is all about - getting the tech out of the way so you can get your work done.

Now if only I could get the hang of inverted scrolling…