But I see something in the Lion developer preview that just makes my heart weep: It includes both the client and server versions in a single install, and the server code is actually installed as if it were a feature or add-on for client.
Just Mac OS X.Ĭurrently, Apple really makes two versions of Mac OS X, one for Mac desktops and laptops (Mac OS X) and one for servers (Mac OS X Server). Not Mac OS X Media Center Edition or Mac OS X Arbitrarily Limited Edition. Just ask Apple: It offers just one version of Mac OS X.
And while we can try to dumb down the conversation by explaining how, in any given market, customers only have two or three or four choices, or whatever, the fact remains: One version is not just enough, it's optimal from the customer point of view. I've harped on this a lot in the past, but in a bid to maximize profits, Microsoft has littered the market with far too many Windows product versions, or what the company calls SKUs (for "stock keeping unit," retailing term). Some of these are specific to Lion, but a few are general to Mac OS X as well. In this case, specifically, I'm looking at the Lion developer preview and trying to imagine how Windows would most benefit from some of the designs Apple is now pursuing. And given the legendary OS competitions between Apple and Microsoft, I think it makes sense now, as always, to examine both sides of the coin and see where each could benefit from the innovations first offered by the other. But you don't have to share common technical underpinnings in order to share ideas in a common sense way between products. Microsoft, of course, will soon follow Apple-as it often seems to-by melding its own desktop and server OSes (Windows) with its mobile OS (Windows Phone OS) in Windows 8. In fact, I think history will show that Apple, through luck or intuition, did the right thing by basing its mobile OS (iOS) on the same technical underpinnings as its desktop and server OSes (OS X), and this is the next logical step. As Apple notes, Lion takes many design cues from the company's iOS system-used in the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad products-which I think makes plenty of sense.
This week, Apple released a developer preview of Mac OS X 10.7 ("Lion"), the next evolutionary update to the company's aging desktop OS.