

Let’s say we accept that this is not the end of history and that OS X will continue to evolve. Jony Ive's iOS 7 strikes off in a bold new direction based on a philosophy that Apple is eager to generalize to the company as a whole-leaving OS X holding the stitched-leather bag. By all accounts, Forstall was one of the driving forces behind the iOS aesthetic that Lion and Mountain Lion so enthusiastically embraced.

Accordingly, OS X’s last two releases included several naked attempts to ape the look and feel of its more successful sibling, iOS.īut that was all before last year’s ouster of Scott Forstall, senior vice president of iOS Software. With Lion, the Mac entered an awkward adolescence, acquiring a newfound concern about what the other kids were doing.

Perhaps the first seven big-cat releases were OS X’s early childhood: birth, potty training, learning to walk and talk, and so on, culminating in some form of self-actualization. When it comes to OS X, many people are suffering from the end-of-history illusion: the belief that while the Mac platform has consistently experienced significant enhancements in the past, it will somehow not continue to grow and mature in the future. Non-subscribers can buy the e-book from the iBookstore or the Amazon Kindle store. Read it your wayDon't want to read an article this long on the Web?Īrs Technica premier subscribers can download a (free) Kindle, iBooks-compatible EPUB, or PDF version of the complete review from the links in the upper right of each article page.
