Yesterday, Steve Jobs hosted an event at Apple's campus called "Back to the Mac." It was obvious that the event would include a preview of Mac OS X 10.7, code named "Lion," and I had assumed that the title "Back to the Mac" just meant that after all of the attention that Apple has been paying to the iPhone and iPad, it was time to refocus attention on Mac hardware and software. In part that was true, and Steve Jobs did emphasize yesterday that even though iPhone/iPad etc. get a lot of attention nowadays, fully a third of Apple's revenue still comes from the Mac.
But it turned out that there was another meaning to "Back to the Mac." Jobs explained that Apple took the Mac's OS X operating system to create the iOS operating system used by the iPhone and iPad, and now Apple's plan for the next version of OS X is to take some of what was learned in developing the iOS and bring it back to OS X. As Jobs stated:
What is the big idea, what is the philosophy behind Mac OS X Lion? Well, that's where "Back to the Mac" comes from. What we've done is we started with Mac OS X and we created from it a version called iOS, which we used in the iPhone. And we invented some new things, and we've perfected it over the last several years, and it's now used in the iPad as well. Well what we'd like to do is — we're inspired by some of those innovations in the iPad and the iPhone — we'd like to bring them back to the Mac. And so that is what Lion is about. Mac OS X meets the iPad.
Thus, the new version of Mac OS X, due in Summer of 2011, will include, among other things, the following features that debuted on the iPhone and iPad:
- Multi-Touch gestures. On a notebook, you can use the trackpad. On a desktop, you can either use the touch sensitive Magic Mouse that Apple ships with its new Macs, or you can use the Apple Magic Trackpad that the company introduced earlier this year.
- App Store. Over 7 billion apps have been downloaded for the iPhone and iPad in the current App Store. Apple is planning to introduce a Mac App Store that will include one-click downloads, both free and paid apps, automatic app installation and updates, and the ability to use downloaded apps on all of your personal Macs. Unlike the other features Jobs debuted yesterday that will come out in Summer of 2011, the Mac App Store will actually be introduced by January of 2011 and will work with the current version of Mac OS X.
- App home screens. On the iPhone, all of your apps are listed on the home screens. Apple will bring this same idea to Mac OS X by adding a feature called Launchpad. When brought up, your computer screen fills with app icons (and folders containing app icons) and you just click an icon to launch an app.
- Full screen apps. Apps on the iPhone and iPad generally don't devote screen real estate to menus and only show one app at a time. Thus, the entire screen is devoted to using the app. Apple plans to bring this idea to programs on the Mac. For example, yesterday released a new version of iPhoto that has a full screen mode.
- Auto save. Everyone knows the agony of having a computer crash when it has been a while since you saved your work, so Apple has plans to integrate auto save throughout the next version of Mac OS X.
- Apps resume when launched. Presumably this will make it faster to get back to your work.
The idea of applying the iPhone back to the Mac is not just limited to software. Apple also introduced a new laptop computer yesterday, the new MacBook Air, that takes what Apple learned about making small and powerful iPhone and iPad devices and applies it to an impossibly thin but full featured laptop computer.
Like the iPhone and iPad, the new MacBook Air will turn on instantly, uses flash storage instead of a hard drive, and is thin and light. And like the iPad, the new MacBook Air has great battery life. It comes in two models, 11 inch and 13 inch, and starts at $999.
Finally, Jobs debuted a feature that most iPhone 4 users have been requesting since the iPhone 4 was launched earlier this year — the ability to use FaceTime to talk to a computer. The new FaceTime program for the Mac allows an iPhone 4 owner to video chat with a person using a Mac and vice versa. Right now the program is only in the beta stages, but it seems to work fine in my tests. Hopefully Apple will bring the program to Windows as well.
I figured that Apple would introduce something yesterday that would be useful to iPhone owners, such as the new FaceTime program for the Mac. I didn't expect Apple to so obviously seek to incorporate iPhone technology into the Mac software and hardware. Although I have to use a PC at work, I've been a Mac user at home for over 20 years, and I am excited at the prospect of seeing some of what I love about the iPhone become a reason that I love my Mac even more.
