Like I said in my macOS explainer, the new interface is the ultimate Rorschach test for where you see the future of the Mac. Wouldn't they have to announce multitouch Macs at the same time so multitouch Mac apps would also be ready in time? Now, Apple announced Apple Silicon in June so developers would have Apple Silicon apps ready when it ships this fall. And it was still torturous in many ways, for all of us, but we were also seeing so many new parts arrive it distracted some of us from some of the bigger pain loops. In other words, they've been spending their 3 versions in the desert this whole time. But the other could just as easily be multitouch. One obvious end game was Apple silicon, which they finally announced just a couple of weeks ago. Things like Swift and APFS, sure, but also the launch daemon and the windowing manager, the security model and even Catalyst - UIKit on Mac. No, re-writing and swapping out parts, years after year, version after version. Not ripping and replacing it like they did with the Classic macOS and OS X. See, for the last several years, they've basically been rebuilding macOS in mid-flight. What I didn't consider is that, one, Apple doesn't always announce the purposes of their transitions, and two, that they were already doing the mother of all transitions. Where they announce and start in one version, transition through another, and finish… ish… in a third. Here, I think MY mistake was assuming it would take Apple several torturous, Windows-like cycles to make macOS multitouch. Point is, executives misdirect, technology evolves, minds change. The OLED on a modern iPhone or Galaxy phone is extra-dimensionally better than the early versions, and the iPhone SE may be cheap compared to the iPhone 11, but it's by no means cheaply built or powered. The Apple Pencil is lightyears ahead of the old Palm Pilot stylus. Or, fairer to say, a few things have changed my mind. Especially since, unlike Microsoft, they already had a hugely popular multitouch system, and never enough resources, and taking engineers off what was going to become iPadOS just to graft multitouch onto macOS… Well, that seemed to make the kind of sense that just never did or would.īut, a few things have changed since then. In other words, even if they did want multitouch Macs, taking a Windows 8 to Windows 10 amount of time to implement it just seemed like a non-starter. See, I kind of assumed Apple wasn't just being philosophical but was being practical. Let me know in the comments if you want to see it.Īnd that's why, when Apple said they were happy to let the Mac be the Mac - namely an indirect, pointer-based system - and the iPad be the iPad - namely a direct, multitouch-based system - I didn't really take them at their word but I did take them at their circumstances. that's probably the topic for a future column. Apple built iOS from OS X as multitouch to begin with, and while their market share was never as big as Windows then or Android now, their profit share became enormous, and so they're either caught… or bouyeed… depending on how you look at it, by both a legacy GUI and modern multitouch operating system.Īnd may well have an even more modern augmented reality OS on the way. So, they were forced to spend years crossing the desert from Windows 8 to Windows 10, trying as best as they could to make their legacy GUI into a modern multitouch operating system.Īpple, though. Not from WindowsCE or Windows Mobile, not from Windows Phone and not for Windows RT. Microsoft wasn't able to make a modern operating system. And ChromeOS, well, that was born during the age of multitouch. Google bought Android just as multitouch was taking off and refactored it from a BlackBerry to an iPhone faster than you can say where's the Pixel 4a. Google doesn't have a legacy graphical user interface. Sometimes it's an attempt to misdirect the competition, sometimes technologies change or improve to the point where a no becomes a yes, and sometimes, just sometimes, someone at Apple managed to change Steve or Jony or Phil or Craig or Tim's mind.īecause, of course, Apple went on to ship the video iPod, iTunes for Windows, Apple Pencil, iBooks, the iPad mini, the iPhone SE, and the iPhone X. You can't use a small tablet unless you shave your fingers down.
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