Desktop OS Identity Crisis – The iOSsification Of Mac OS X

TechnologyReview’s Christopher Mims notes that both Apple and Microsoft’s new desktop operating systems borrow elements from mobile devices, in sometimes confusing ways, with both reflecting a tectonic shift in personal computing, incorporating elements from the companies’ mobile operating systems alongside more conventional desktop features.

Mims suggests that demos of both operating systems suggest that users could face a confusing mishmash of design ideas and interaction methods, and cites Peter Merholz, president of the user-experience and design firm Adaptive Path, observing that while the iPad’s runaway success has indicated the existence of a latent, unmet need for a new form of computing, “moving PCs in a tablet direction isn’t necessarily sensible.”

Independent software developer Cathy Shive is quoited by Mims saying she was “appalled” when she first saw Steve Jobs’s demo of Lion, and surprised by the direction both Apple and Microsoft are taking, noting that a fundamental dictate of usability design is that an interface should be tailored to the specific contextand hardwarein which it lives, and a desktop PC is not the same thing as a tablet or a mobile device, but “It seemed like what [Jobs] was showing us was a giant iPad.” She contends that “Apple has been seduced by their own success, and they’re jumping to translate that over to the desktop … They think there’s some kind of shortcut, where everyone is loving this interface on the mobile device, so they will love it on their desktop as well.”

I t agree, and I think it’s fair to predict that a lot of desktop-users aren’t going to be feeling the love. I *like* my new iPad 2, and appreciate that within the constraints of practical handheld computing, GUI compromises needed to be made, but there is virtually nothing I find functionally superior or preferable in the iOS way of doing things compared with traditional Mac OS user interface conventions. The iOS’s angularities are what I like least about the iPad. I dislike gesture based control, I don’t like full-screen application windows and the need to check out of one application in order to look at another. Text selection is a frustrating nightmare of imprecision, and so on.

I’m sure there will be many things to like about OS X 10.7 Lion, but the various iOSsifications it will incorporate will not be among them in my estimation. A moot point in the near term, as I have too many mission-critical, legacy apps. and utilities that probably won’t run in 64-bit only Lion to consider upgrading any time soon.