[Messiahtosh]

It can't just be me that believes that as iOS matures and as OS X (now sans the "Mac") hits its prime, that the two operating systems will eventually merge? Is this being discussed and I somehow missed it? If not, what are the arguments that they stay separate? Wouldn't it be great if an eventual version could run both extremely high end stuff like Final Cut Pro and the most basic iOS App?

Also, I do wonder what Apple is going to do about the limitations of the tablet typing problem. It is still an issue. A tactile-feedback screen may be a long ways off, but then I would imagine most would think that a docking station is too clumsy of a solution?

Where is the software headed in terms of iOS and OS X coming together? Have they come together as much as they ever will? How will the hardware continue to merge, if at all?

[psmith2.0]

Yeah, I think there was already on thread like this a while back. It was either in this section or General Discussion. For the record, I think the two will remain separate. Similar in some ways, with some overlap where it makes sense. I believe the two won't - can't - meet and fuse into a single thing.

No matter what, it's going to be an interesting five years. Come 2016, there's no telling what will become commonplace/expected on these handheld mobile devices (and how much nicer the Macs will be). Just look what all has happened in the past 4-5 years, and then project that sort of change out into our future.



I think with that whole PC Free part of iOS 5, we will definitely see iPads and the other iOS devices being chosen over Macs by many, many users. We've talked about this 9,000 times before already, but for those doing very basic, specific things with their current computers (Mac or Windows), why have the overhead and expense of all that if all you're doing is getting online, playing some games, doing the Facebook/Twitter thing, listening to/buying music and dabbling with some photos of the grandkids and vacations?

Honestly, if I didn't do what I did (if I was just a writer and didn't need any sort of processing or graphics muscle), I'd almost chuck this iMac and just get a mid-range iPad every other year. Enough to hold my music and photos, a few documents and I'd almost give up a full Mac if I was in the position to do so (which I'm not).

Hell, I'd almost skip the iPad and just have this silly phone be the end-all/be-all of my digital/Internet life. It's getting to where it just about does everything anyway!

[Dave]

Originally Posted by pscates2.0 Yeah, I think there was already on thread like this a while back. It was either in this section or General Discussion. For the record, I think the two will remain separate. Similar in some ways, with some overlap where it makes sense. I believe the two won't - can't - meet and fuse into a single thing.

Let's see... touchscreen vs mouse and keyboard (and joystick and whatever else you've got), one little screen vs up to eight 30" monitors, ARM vs i7 and Xeon, 512MB-1GB of RAM vs up 64GB... if nothing else, the differences in user interactions and the amount of resources available would make it quite difficult to write one app that could run equally well on both platforms.

[psmith2.0]

Exactly. I think it's crazy to think it'll happen. This is that, that is that. They borrow/share some things, of course, but that's probably it. Hard to see 10 years into the future, but I'm pretty confident they won't "merge".

[Doxxic]

In the beginning, iOS was presented as Mac OS X, but stripped down and with a different user interface, running different software on different devices.

Since you can still describe the differences between iOS on respectively the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad in just those terms, I can imagine that Apple has enough reason to rename "Mac OS X" to "iOS for Mac" from the moment iOS becomes a stronger brand than Mac OS X and the user experience has become similar enough.

[joveblue]

John Gruber has written a bit recently on effectively this topic; I'm not suer if you've seen his articles:

Why Windows 8 Is Fundamentally Flawed as a Response to the iPad (June 1)
Ice Water Enthusiast (June 3)

I pretty much agree. Ultimately it comes down for designing the best OS for each device, and while they may end up sharing more and more code, ultimately we want different things from different devices. A hand-held touch-screen device and a computer with keyboard and mouse are used in different ways and should have different operating systems that make different trade-offs and are optimised to different tasks/inputs etc. While the benefits from applying lessons learnt from creating one operating system to the other are clear I don't think the benefit of completely eliminating the differences between the two operating systems is clear at all. What is the case for doing so?

Originally Posted by John Gruber Apple’s radical notion is that touchscreen personal computers should make severely different tradeoffs than traditional computers — and that you can’t design one system that does it all. Windows 8 is trying to have it all, and I don’t think that can be done.

[nikstar101]

To be honest i think we will see a singular Apple OS and that will be iOS. I think in 10 years time the Mac as we know it will probably be for the server/ IT admin type person and most people will be using an iOS based system. I my own opinion i would hate that but it just seems the way things are going.

I mean Finder and all that (while i love it) is just something that gets in the way of using your programmes. iOS is more direct cutting out that clutter and i see that in the future we will be using either Home Cloud systems (with local storage in the home, running a network of Slim PCs, iPad and generally running the home) or an internet based version of that. It has been already been discussed years ago by Steve, showing iMacs running without hard drives (the old CRT types). If you think about it, get a Mac Mini, loose the hard rive and bung iOS on it and it will run any programme (once they convert them over).

Look at what most people use Macs for today, Internet, photos, music and videos. All of which can already be carried out by iOS. So if you move things forward and take the Pro element, photo editing and video editing, that is starting to get moving on iOS too. Add 10 years to the mix and i think there would be no reason to be working at a Slim Mac running an iOS video app and then picking up your iPad and continuing.

Boy does that sound depressing!

Come to think about it maybe 10 years is too long......