OS X and iOS - Awaiting Change

In recent months, Apple has seen serious shifts in leadership, the absence of leaks (as it has been throughout 2012; the decision to use Retina in the iPad mini seems too obvious to be considered a rumor), OS X 10.9 is increasingly appearing in the logs , and carefully those who followed the company's website noticed new promising vacancies on it. Based on all this, let's try to suggest what can await us in the new generation of operating systems from Apple.

Over the past month, several vacancies have appeared on the Apple website that allow us to make certain assumptions about the future of its operating systems right now.

In early January, the company began looking for a developer who will deal with new APIs and frameworks for iOS 7. He is responsible for creating and testing them, as well as an interesting point - creating web services related to new features. Not so long ago, another vacancy appeared on the Apple website: the company was looking for a specialist who could “refresh” Siri - this person has to deal with adding new dialogs and updating existing ones. In addition to creating funny answers to questions about the meaning of life, most likely new scenarios of interaction with Siri should appear in solving popular everyday problems.

The appointment of Craig Federigi as the head of divisions of iOS and OS X will no less seriously affect the development of platforms, howeverdevelopers react differently to such innovations - many consider the transfer of functions and design principles that started from iOS to OS X not the best solution (the move to this started back in Lion, and Gate Keeper, Notification and Reminder Center appeared in Mountain Lion, and such principles as a “sandbox for applications”). The app store made even more analogies between the platforms. At the same time, in an interview Tim Cook has already noticed that Apple does not aim to create a single platform (as you know, Mircosoft adheres to the opposite decision). Regarding the transfer of useful features from the mobile platform to the desktop, this idea was actively supported by Steve Jobs, he devoted enough time to it to “Back to the Mac” in 2010.

It is worth saying a few words about another vacancy - the company is looking for a person who will be engaged in updating iLife. Moreover, the job description is not about cosmetic changes, but about the full-scale processing of Photo, iMovie and GarageBand, which have long become familiar.



At the end of October last year, Scott Forstall resigned as senior president of iOS development. Judging by the press reports , this was due to his refusal to subscribe to a letter of the company with an apology for the operation of the Maps application in iOS 6.

For fifteen years, he was the inspirer of a huge number of important ideas at Apple, he worked with Jobs since the Next project, he was responsible for the Aqua interface in Mac OS, and Mac OS was taken as the basis for iOS on his initiative. In his interfaces, Forstall often liked to use skeuomorphism (the use in the application interface of elements characteristic of real physical objects - like chrome, leather, etc.). The main defender of skeuomorphism was Steve Jobs.



Not everyone liked this approach, and in particular, Jonathan Quince. He regularly advocated eliminating the use of skeuomorphism in the application interface. The main criticism is that the direct transfer of the accepted principles of using familiar devices like calendars brings some inconvenience along with the habit - for example, calendar applications are criticized for displaying the past weeks (by analogy with their three-dimensional counterparts), but past weeks are rarely in most cases interest you when you open the calendar. The vacated space could be used for something else.

Now application design will be left to Quince. Quince is a supporter of elegant minimalism and an opponent of skeuomorphism. In his work, he gives great attention to the smallest details, and in conjunction with the appearance of the device as a whole. Most likely, it is worth waiting for the application interface to change towards such harmony, and in future generations of Apple's operating systems, skeuomorphism will disappear into oblivion .

And, of course, we all look forward to WWDC, where we will probably see something unexpected - this time the changes are not just inevitable, they are necessary.