How much will Apple change iOS and OS X?
Next week, at Apple’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference, the company will take the wraps off its upcoming versions of OS X and iOS. Such unveilings have become routine at WWDC, but I have a strong feeling that this year’s unveilings will feel anything but routine. This is shaping up to be a critical year for both of Apple’s operating systems—and the new versions of each should reflect this.
For starters, many believe that iOS (and likely OS X as well) could receive a major cosmetic makeover. Familiar skeuomorphic elements, such as wooden bookcases and leather-bound calendars, might be dumped in favor of a cleaner, flatter, black-and-white look. While this would be a significant shift in design, it shouldn’t have much effect on how each operating system performs. But the demise of skeuomorphism may be only the beginning of sweeping changes coming to this year’s OS updates.
OS X 10.9 and iOS-ification
When OS X 10.7 Lion arrived a few years ago, Mac users got their first taste of a collection of new features inspired by OS X’s mobile sibling. These iOS-ification features included Launchpad, full-screen apps, the Mac App Store, a resume capability for applications, expanded multitouch gestures, and a limited implementation of app sandboxing.
With each recent OS X release, the Mac starts to look a bit more like iOS.
With OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, Apple pushed still further in this direction, introducing Notification Center, Documents in the Cloud, and new apps (such as Notes and Reminders) that precisely mimicked matching apps on iOS devices.
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