1. It will be called “Lion”

Don’t laugh. It might be just a name, but it tells us a lot about the product.
First, it’s a clear cut from the previous OS X versions. Unlike “Snow Leopard”, which was a stripped down, polished and accelerated version of “Leopard”, “Lion” is destined to be something completely new.
They could have chosen another cat. Frankly, even OSX “Simba” sounds better than “Lion”. What about Lynx, Cougar, or even Clouded Leopard? But the Lion is after all the king of the jungle, which indicates that Apple is aiming high.
Snow Leopard is an excellent system, but Apple was resting on their laurels lately. Now that Windows and Ubuntu are slowly catching up, it’s time for some real change.

2. It will feature a redesigned UI

OS X has seen some small but significant UI design improvements along the years. The main theme, Aqua, now features a sleek gradient instead of the brushed metal featured in the previous OS X versions, but even a gradient can get old.
Newer apps, like AppZapper, Transmit or the CS5 suite have demonstrated new kinds of UI designs, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see Apple change the way OS X looks.
Of course, when it comes to Apple, I’m always open to surprises, but the new UI is probably going to look like the one Quicktime X is using: dark, elegant and sleek.

3. Performance, performance, performance

Performance is like iOS apps, you can never get enough. Newer technologies allow more efficient coding, newer processors allow better multi-threading and multitasking.
But to be honest, OS X 10.6 is already bloody fast. So what could be improved? 3D performance is the answer. As it turns out, one of the largest gaming companies has recently opened its doors to Mac, and this will probably play a major role in OS X 10.7′s handling of heavy 3D graphics, or at least we shall hope so. I want to play Crysis on my MacBook!

4. Multitouch

Multitouch is at the core of Apple’s mobile technology, and it has already found its way to the Macintosh line: the truly phenomenal glass trackpad on unibody MacBook Pros and the Magic Trackpad rely on multitouch gestures to make the OS X experience so smooth.
More, deeper, and better multitouch integration is bound to be integrated to OS X in some way or another, be it thanks to hybrid MacBooks (A MacBook Air made of an iPad with a keyboard?) or simply gigantic multitouch surfaces on Cinema Displays.
Regardless of the way multitouch is used in OS X, one can safely state that the UI will have  a major impact here.

5. The cloud

I’m not a huge fan of the cloud. I like having my media on my own hard drives. But regardless of personal preferences, the fact remains that cloud storage becomes cheaper faster than physical storage does. Cloud apps becomes increasingly popular, and with the slow adoption of HTML5, they will be able to match desktop apps.
Apple knows that, and I would not be surprised to see their MobileMe scam being transformed into something actually quite usable. iTunes will, eventually, work like Spotify.

… And surprises

I recently ranted on and about Apple’s increasingly boring predictability. OS X Lion is the perfect occasion for Steve Jobs to rise back to his own standards and surprise the world with something revolutionary, something that we, mere mortals, simply can’t imagine.
October 20th will also probably be the day that iLife ’10 get’s unveiled, and maybe, who knows, some new hardware.
Any specific feature you’d like to see in OS X 10.7? Let us know in the comments.

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I cannot tell you the number of times I have gone to someone’s house to clean out a system that is used strictly for webrowsing and typing papers and the system is a total power house. Maybe it is just myself, but it seems wasteful to use a 2.4ghz Quad core sporting 8gigs of RAM to just compose papers.

Why does this happened? Well there are really two people to blame here. The first is the sales person. Odds are the system was purchased from someone who works on a commission and as such it is to their benefit to sell a more expensive computer than a cheaper one. The second is the consumer themselves. If they had been informed on what they are buying in the first place they never would have purchased something so ridiculously powerful for their simple needs.

Beyond these two factors I think another misconception that is ingrained in people is that technology has to be expensive. A computer that costs half as much? That can’t possibly last as long as the more expensive model or meet my needs as readily.

In the same manner I believe people have become accustomed to be gouged on the cost of software. The old “you get what you pay for” motto sticks in the back of their mind and because of this I think many don’t give free alternatives a fair chance.

OpenOffice meets the needs of easily 95% of home users (and a good deal of those that use office software at work) and most of those people using an, often times illegal, version of Photoshop would be able to accomplish the exact same tasks using the legally free GIMP. Beyond this beginning Linux distros such as Linux Mint or Pinguy OS easily fulfill all the desktop computing needs of your average user.

With all of this in mind, why don’t you see Linux, OpenOffice, or GIMP on the shelf at your local computer store? Simple:

There is no money in it for the retailer.

None of these products come with the, often hundreds of dollars, price tag attached that the commerical products have. Beyond this if a customer is using a Linux system the store will not have that same customer returning in six months to have their system cleaned out of viruses and “brought back up to speed”.

The lesson to be learned here/the point I would like to get across is this – if you are not familiar with technology, bring someone with you who is when you go to pick out new hardware/software! It could end up saving you a good deal of money in the long run.

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This raises a few questions and concerns. First of all, isn’t Canonical scared of legal actions from Apple? Apple is not quite the worst software patent troll, and not always the most agressive, but its recent history shows that it takes threats seriously and will use it’s patent on “multitouch”. The patent itself is ridicoulous, of course. As Dana Bankenhorn of ZDNet points out, Ubuntu is trying to go further than Apple has gone regarding Mac’s multitouch integration.

Apple may claim a patent on its mousetrap, but can it claim to control all methods for catching mice?

Of course, that’s not how law works. However ridiculous software patents can be, they are real, and companies like HTC are sweating under their power.

The easy answer would be to point out that Canonical is not based in the US, and therefore not subject to Apple’s patents as long as they don’t sell these products over there. Ubuntu is free, so inclusion of multitouch should not be a problem.

But will Ubuntu’s multitouch framework, dubbed uTouch, actually go beyond previous implementations? The answer seems to be “yes”.

The design team has lead the way, developing a “touch language” which goes beyond the work that we’ve seen elsewhere. Rather than single, magic gestures, we’re making it possible for basic gestures to be chained, or composed, into more sophisticated “sentences”. The basic gestures, or primitives, are like individual verbs, and stringing them together allows for richer interactions.

–Mark Shuttleworth

Mark Shuttleworth admits that what they are doing isn’t a revolution in human-computer interaction, but it “feels like a good step in the right direction.” I believe he is being modest here. Apple has a way of picking the best innovations in the lot, rebranding and perfecting them, and then releasing the next great thing. It has taken what already existed, and then revolutionized the computer industry by making it theirs. They’ve done that with the iPod, iPhone, and iPad, all of which were commercal sucesses. But Apple has also been very strong in the laptop business these last years, and multitouch has been a part of that.

If Ubuntu could make their uTouch framework efficient on all machines and then deliver what they are promising, there would be a revolution. unfortunately, that’s not what’s going to happen.

You’ll need 4-finger touch or better to get the most out of it, and we’re currently targeting the Dell XT2 as a development environment so the lucky folks with that machine will get the best results today. By release, we expect you’ll be able to use it with a range of devices from major manufacturers, and with addons like Apple’s Magic Trackpad.[...]
Window management will be gesture-enabled in Unity, so 10.10 Netbook Edition users with touch screens or multi-touch pads will have sophisticated window management at their fingertips.

–Mark Shuttleworth

The problem here is inherent to Ubuntu’s nature. Ubuntu, as the free OS it is, has to be designed to work on the widest range of devices that it could possibly run on. These devices are the ones that most people own, as they will buy their computer (touchscreen/multitouch included or otherwise) before knowing that they could install Ubuntu.

This means that the progress the Ubuntu has done will not be available for all Ubuntu’s users, not only because Canonical can’t control what hardware their users own, but also because hardware vendors might all have different goals regarding hardware, goals that may be incompatible with Canonical’s vision.

If you already are a fan of Ubuntu, your first reaction may be to think that “choice”–one of the open-source community’s favorite words–is a good thing, and that it’s evil for any OS to be tied to one particular vendor. You’d be right of course, but that’s not the whole story. Innovations in terms of computer interaction need two things.

First, they need the will and talent of the software developers, interface designers and the OS team as a whole. These people think of new ways in which users could interact with their software stack, primarily through the graphical user interface. But the user cannot interact with the software without the use of hardware. This hardware must be adapted to the needs of both the interface and the user. That’s where hardware designers come into play.

Apple’s pioneering in terms of computer interaction these last years has come from the fact that the same company controlled both the hardware and the software. It is not an inherant superiority of the OS itself–or the fact that allmighty Steve Jobs runs the company–that makes Apple appear more innovative, it is their ability to innovate when both ends of the product need to evolve.

Microsoft understood this, and while they’re still not going to be selling their own hardware, they are already setting hardware requirements for Windows v.next. That means that Microsoft will have some say on how hardware should evolve to suit their software. Ubuntu, unfortunately, will not have this luxury.

The nature of opensource makes it free, but this freedom comes with a price. In some respects, Ubuntu is the most innovative OS out there, and Canonical’s uTouch guidelines shows us why. Canonical is willing to try new things, and the UI (user interface) team has had some great ideas, but they are limited by the scope of their company and the type of product that they are distributing.

The answer, of course, would be for canonical to sign deals with PC OEM’s for some Ubuntu-approved computers that would provide the users the “full Ubuntu experience.” That would be if Canonical’s relations with the said OEM’s was easy, but the recent news about Dell’s offerings shows that it isn’t.

If Ubuntu were the future of computing, we’d see some real innovation. Canonical seems to be a company that’s ready to shake things up a little, and innovate in ways that prove they think far beyond just the next product, but they need to have a say on the hardware that their OS is installed on if they really want to make a splash. If they don’t, they’ll always be lagging behind Apple and Microsoft.

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