So apparently Apple is hosting an event on Oct 20th called “Back to the Mac,” which is interesting and seems a bit out of left field right now.
Back in July I wrote about the next logical step for OSX and what we can expect over the next few years. My closing comments were:
WWDC in 2011 should be an interesting time to see what Apple has been cooking up for OSX 10.7.
How embarrassing. It seems strange to me that Apple would pick an event that’s pre-WWDC to showcase a beta of an upcoming OS, however, I guess they’ve been working on this for some time now. Apple is not the kind of company to pre-maturely show something that they think is half-baked or isn’t really usable for a demo, so I have high hopes for what they will have to show us.
I can’t begin to predict exactly what will be in the next release of OSX, however, I do have a laundry list of things that I’d like to see.
Finder
It goes without saying that Finder seriously needs an overhaul from a UI/UX perspective. While Snow Leopard was a great step forward in relieving Finder of it’s Carbon footprints, I think this next release really should include something new and noteworthy.
Would would I like to see? One thing in particular is something similar to what Windows 7 offers as far as a bread crumb trail when it comes to where you are in a given directory. I realize that while there is an option to show folder/file/ paths in Finder, it’s not quite as polished or as good IMHO as what’s in Windows 7. In all honesty, one of the great things I think Microsoft did with Windows 7 was introduce reasonably palatable shell. I think Apple could actually really learn something from the work the Windows 7 team pulled off on that release. I’m not ashamed to say that as an Apple fanboy. While I love Apple products, I’ll acknowledge good work where I see it.
I’m going to go out on a limb and say the next version of mail.app will look something like the iPad/MobileMe version. Apple’s been trending lately on revamping all of their core apps and the last ones to get updated are the ones that we have on OSX.
iCal
Same deal as mail.app. We’ll probably see a redesign similar to the iPad/MobileMe version.
Address Book
Same deal as mail.app and iCal. A redesigned version that will look something like the iPad/MobileMe version.
One other thing I see happening, which echoes Todd Ditchendorf’s statement on Twitter:
Introducing Mac OS X 10.7 – A new development environment for creating iOS Applications.
Yep. I thing they’ll do something special for developers. Considering that Snow Leopard was mostly a maintenance release, it’s entirely feasible that Steve Jobs will give everyone one of those famous “oh and one more thing…” lines during the presentation. Something super ambitious for “Lion” or whatever they’re going to call it