What it means to have no new features in OS X

Apple plans to update Mac users to a new version of OS X Leopard. The upcoming ‘Snow Leopard’ will be Intel only, putting pressure on PowerPC Mac users to upgrade, yet not providing much incentive other than being left in the past forever. What does it mean to have a new Mac with no new features?

Past & Present

From as long as I can remember every new Mac and every new version of Mac OS, either Classic or OS X, also meant a laundry list of new and exciting features.

Those days are gone. For now.

Rather than focusing primarily on new features, Snow Leopard will enhance the performance of OS X, set a new standard for quality and lay the foundation for future OS X innovation.

Apple intends to improve OS X under the hood, primarily through interconnectivity capability. Can you say MobileMe?

X

The future is all about connecting various hardware products and online services through

OS X.

It was just a few years ago that all of Apple’s 20-million or so customers were Mac users. Along came the iPod and Apple’s customers numbered into the hundred million range within a few years.

The iPhone, which runs a mobile version of OS X, may change even than landscape and Apple is changing with it. Emphasis is no longer on Mac OS X, but X, OS X, even QuickTime X.

The Once & Future Leopard

It appears that Leopard will be with us for a few years. Along with new ways to communicate with and between other devices, Leopard literally puts a pause on the feature bloat we have come to expect.

Snow Leopard delivers unrivaled support for multi-core processors with a new technology code-named “Grand Central,” making it easy for developers to create programs that take full advantage of the power of multi-core Macs.

Native support for Microsoft Exchange will show up in Snow Leopard.

For the first time, OS X includes native support for Microsoft Exchange 2007 in OS X applications Mail, iCal® and Address Book, making it even easier to integrate Macs into organizations of any size.

The NDA in Apple’s DNA

Apple released more details to Apple developers following Steve Jobs WWDC keynote presentation—under their typically restrictive non-disclosure agreement. It’s the NDA in their DNA.

What we do know is that Apple has decided that, like megahertz and gigahertz of days gone by, new consumer-oriented features no longer matter. What matters, what is highly important for the future is connectivity, interconnectivity, between devices, between users.

However you wish to term it, Apple is gluing together platforms into a unified ecosystem wrapped up in OS X. The Mac. The iPhone. The iPod. All will work seamlessly together in perfect harmony.

Harmony

It isn’t just Apple’s homegrown devices that will benefit from the company’s newfound direction to harmonize our digital tools and hub.

Microsoft Exchange is what the business world speaks, and OS X will speak that language, too. Contacts, email, to-do lists, and calendar events will all synchronize in harmony through OS X and MobileMe, whether Mac or Windows.

The iPhone and iPod, and future handheld devices, will all become tethered to on another and work in perfect harmony.

I’d like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony. I’d like to buy the world a home and furnish it with love, grow apple trees and honey bees, and snow white turtle doves.

The once and future OS X will harmonize our digital lives in ways we never dreamed of or fully appreciated just a few years ago.

Gone are the megahertz and gigahertz wars. Gone are the feature wars between applications and operating systems. It’s all about what works together and Apple makes it work together better than anyone in the technogadget world.

Iceberg Tip

Apple is a disciplined company and does not spill many beans in public. Indeed, the simple news release did not reveal fully what is about to take place over the next few years.

Rather than focusing primarily on new features, Snow Leopard will enhance the performance of OS X, set a new standard for quality and lay the foundation for future OS X innovation. Snow Leopard is optimized for multi-core processors, taps into the vast computing power of graphic processing units (GPUs), enables breakthrough amounts of RAM and features a new, modern media platform with QuickTime X.

Apple’s future is tied up, not wholly in the Mac, but in how OS X runs on Macs, iPhones, iPods, and other devices, including AppleTV, and how they work together in a perfect harmony, perfectly acceptable and required by hundreds of millions of customers.

What other company has such seamless, easy-to-user platform that unites digital devices to a digital hub?