Mac OS X Lite Speculation Growing
posted in Strategy, Software, Design, User Interface, Hardware, iPods, Macintosh |Ever since Mac OS X was first released to consumers as a beta in 2000 (is that right? I’m surprised Wikipedia’s history section of its Mac OS X entry doesn’t included such a date, but I distinctly remember running it while I was working at VarsityBooks.com in the Spring of 2000), there have been rumors of a so-called “lite” version of the operating system that could be used on a new-century version of the Newton and other devices. Speculation about a limited version of Mac OS X has been increasing of late, particularly with regard to iTV and the rumored Apple mobile phone (nee, iPhone).
The latest thoughts come from Dan Benjamin over at Hivelogic. Dan knows a lot more about programming than me, and he says it would be “a paltry task” for Apple to create a lite, embedded or otherwise limited version of Mac OS X. He also says that he doesn’t expect Apple to sell such an OS, but only to ship it as an embedded system with its products, such as the iTV. All of which I agree with.
But Dan posits that everyone believes the iTV will ship with a hard drive. I don’t. I believe it will ship with flash memory instead, for the same purposes as he describes (storing the embedded OS and caching of content streamed from iTunes or the Internet). Flash will be used instead of a hard drive even though it is more expensive because the iTV requires the greater reliability and responsiveness of flash over hard disk systems, particularly for the instant-on requirements of consumer electronics (although this hasn’t really been an issue with hard-drive iPods).
One of the more interesting extensions of such a design would be to incorporate the similar small Flash drives into the MacBook and MacBook Pro lines (and possibly desktops as well), along with larger hard drives. The laptops could then power-up immediately for certain limited functionality, such as using media in the optical drive or browsing a cached version of your iTunes library while the hard drive boots in the background. The possibilities here are pretty intriguing.
I also disagree with Dan that the “iPod phone” will use a souped-up version of the current iPod software. It will be significantly more complex to design hardware and software user interfaces for any phone Apple releases, and the iPod software is insufficient to the task. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Apple actually migrate the iPod to this new OS X Lite, allowing users to choose between iPod classic navigation and the new Front Row style exhibited by iTV. With future hardware announcements for the iPod family, such a move would more easily allow Apple to significantly extend the capabilities of the iPod and keep all of their devices in sync from an OS standpoint.
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