Feb 22
Apple Tick Tock
Listening to @siracusa’s podcast, he prescribes an interesting solution to the problem he perceives with OS X moving to a yearly update schedule: Intel’s tick-tock model.
It certainly seems to fit with Apple’s behaviour in recent years.
Exhibit A: iPhone
The iPhone 3G, a big update to the original iPhone, was followed by the relatively modest 3GS. It had an identical external design, and even its name acknowledged that it was intended as a better iPhone 3G.
The next update, iPhone 4, was clearly a “tock” — radically new design, and big improvements across the board. And again we saw the “tick” as iPhone 4S, similar to iPhone 3GS in both the magnitude of changes and the naming. iPhone 4S is an iPhone 4, plus an S. It is the iPhone 4 that has become logistically practical to manufacture in 2011/12.
Exhibit B: iPad
Okay, we haven’t actually seen the third episode in the iPad saga yet, but I’m convinced it will be a “tick” — a refinement on the current iPad 2 design.
Certainly the iPad appears to be following the same pattern as iPhone for its first two designs. We shall see.
Exhibit C: Mac OS X
As Mr Siracusa points out, Snow Leopard was a functionally minor increment over Leopard, as Apple focussed most of its resources on stability, performance, and architectural improvements.
What he didn’t mention, unless I missed it, was that its name was an increment of its predecessor. Just like the iPhone 3GS, just like the iPhone 4GS.
And here we are again, with Mountain Lion. If I’m right, its name intentionally signals a “tick”, meaning it is intended to be a better Lion. If I’m right, we can think of 10.8 as “Lion S”.
From what I’ve seen of it so far, it does appear to be functionally minor. The headline features touted on Apple’s teaser page are almost all existing features of iOS, so really, there isn’t much new design work there. Think back to Snow Leopard — it wasn’t completely devoid of new functionality; there was actually quite a lot. I think Mountain Lion is approximately on par with Snow Leopard in terms of the visible stuff.
All of this is meant to support the case for 10.8 as a big stability and performance release in disguise. Is this wishful thinking?
