We need to talk, kupo

Apple did a funny thing this week. They announced a new desktop operating system with little fanfare and took the entire internet by surprise. For as secretive as Apple try to be, hiding new phones in plain sight where no one would think to look, the internet has enough rumors about them that we practically always know what they're going to announce before they do, even if some of those predictions are a year off (I’m looking at you iPhone 5). And yet, with the announcement of Mountain Lion, the internet knew nothing. I came home from work having not looked at the news all day and just discovered that it had been announced.

Perhaps the reason why the internet hadn’t even gotten around to making up features for Apple’s next OS release is because Lion only came out seven months ago. Since 2003 OS X has been on a two year release cycle (in stark contrast to Microsoft’s “when we get round to it” cycle), but Apple seems keen to break this with Mountain Lion, moving to a yearly release cycle that matches their mobile OS. This could be either good or bad really. Yearly updates mean we get more frequent feature updates, but they could just be trying to get you to pay for an upgrade more often and releases could become more iterative in nature.

Like Lion, Mountain Lion is all about bringing iOS features to the desktop, but hopefully this time with more success. When Lion brought yet another method of launching apps to OS X that looked like iOS’s springboard we all rolled our eyes just a little. Despite already having the dock, stacks, spotlight and the finder, obviously the feature the Mac was missing was iOS’s worst part.

Mountain Lion brings some great features of iOS to the desktop, such as AirPlay mirroring to an Apple TV and a unified notification center. Having a centralised place to see a list of alerts and messages you received while you were away from the computer seems like an obvious omission from OS X, and anyone who has ever tried to explain to their parents how to connect a laptop to a big screen will appreciate the simplicity of AirPlay. 

With this release Apple is also trying to make the OS make more sense. Currently notes you have syncing in iCloud end up (for no apparent reason) in your e-mail inbox and reminders appear in iCal as to dos. In Mountain Lion these have been split out into separate apps which make much more sense. Speaking of iCloud, it’s being integrated more deeply at the OS level, allowing you to save and open iCloud documents in Pages or TextEdit for example. 

I wish they had gone much further with this however. While notes in Mail and reminders in iCal were minor grumbles, everyone has complained about the monstrosity of iTunes for years. It’s understandable how it happened, but iTunes as an app no longer makes sense. iTunes should go back to being a media player and anything not related to that should be its own thing, such as iOS app purchasing/management and iBooks. In fact, splitting iBooks into its own app would be the perfect opportunity to introduce a Mac reader for iBooks, which is bizarrely absent.

The most obvious feature that should be torn out of iTunes is iPad and iPhone syncing. It’s there because that’s where you put music on an iPod, but now that iDevices are grown up and WiFi syncing means you need to leave iTunes open all the time, device syncing should become a system level feature.

Finally one of Mountain Lion’s curious new additions is Gatekeeper, a security control that by default blocks the installation of apps from the internet that aren’t signed by an Apple certificate. Getting a certificate doesn’t require you to get into the app store, but it does require you to pay the developer licensee fee. The feature can be turned off (or made more vigilant) and I don’t have anything fundamentally against it as it protects against malware and still allows un-approved apps, but the direction we are going in concerns me. In a couple more versions of OS X I could easily see the “anywhere” option quietly disappear. 

But maybe that’s just my tinfoil hat talking.

Overall I look forward to this upgrade, but I certainly hope that next years upgrade isn’t just another iOS catch up and they invest time in genuinely developing new features for the Mac.

The first commercial airline flight took to the air in 1914. Everyone involved screamed the entire way.

On Monday and Tuesday I had two exams, both three hours in length, involving questions about .NET architecture (three tiers, web services and AJAX) and database theory (transaction processing, object-relational databases, business intelligence and data warehousing). The best part of the whole thing was having to hand write the answers (on this antiquated technology called paper) which has the delightful result of making the exams much more difficult to do for someone (like the kind of person that would take a computing course…) who types all day. It also makes life much more difficult for the examiner, as my hand writing is teeeeerrible. I felt the .NET exam went pretty well, but I left the database one feeling my attempt at answering questions about business intelligence and data warehousing didn't go down so well, so we will have to wait and see what sort of final grade I get.

These exams mark the completion of my university degree. After twelve years in compulsory education, two years at college and four years at university I'm officially out of the education system. A real boy you might say. It's kinda scary to think I won't have to do pointless coursework, listen to lectures about subjects I really don't give a shit about or take exams ever again. At the same time its very awesome the freedom that provides. I'm now completely free to work on the projects I want, as long as I have some sort of income at the same time. I do have to pay of that student loan at some point…

Happening at the same time as my exams was WWDC and E3. Apples announcements at WWDC were interesting, with the improvements in Lion and iOS 5 being very much desired, even if most of the later were lifted from Android, Windows Phone 7, third party apps and jailbreaks. Whatever the source of these ideas, as an iOS user I don't really have any complaints. Companies should always be matching features at the same time as innovating, and much of the feature set of iOS 5 seems designed to remove a lot of the arguments (beyond the whole open debate) Android fan boys have. For me personally, wireless sync, better notifications and tabbed browsing are the primary features I'm excited for. Its also nice to see them finally allow you to set the thing up on the device, as requiring a computer to activate an iPad kinda destroys the whole "post pc" spiel they are trying to sell you. 

The iCloud stuff is also interesting, as if nothing else it makes MobileMe free. It also adds universal syncing between your devices, so if I download a song, app or book on one device, it syncs to the others. The same is true for documents made in iWork and photos taken with an iPhone camera, which will automatically sync with iPhoto on my mac. The iTunes portion of it is what everyone is making the biggest deal out of, and they certainly have an interesting offering (for $25 any song in your library will be upgraded to a high quality iTunes version and they will upload anything they don't have), particularly because they are basically providing an amnesty for any pirated music as long as you pay the yearly fee. What sucks is no streaming option, and the fact it wont be coming to the UK any time soon. That makes all three cloud music solutions (Google, Amazon and Apple) US only for now…

Of the E3 presentations, Nintendo was certainly the most interesting. They have Kid Icarus, Luigi's Mansion 2, Star Fox 64, Mario Kart and Super Mario coming to 3DS, which alongside the soon to be released Zelda remake almost makes me want to get a 3DS. Unfortunately the machine is kinda bulky and the battery lasts four hours, so I think I will hold out for a revision, as I was pretty badly burnt by the DS Lite (which came out a couple months after I purchased a DS Phat).

The Wii U announcement obviously gained the most attention and aside from its horrific name the concept is interesting. I played Zelda Four Swords and Crystal Chronicles on GameCube using GBA's and the experience was actually pretty fun, so I can see how the new controller could be used. Its just a shame Nintendo once again opted for a cheap single touch capacitive screen. I think the Wii U will have a pretty successful launch, and will use the fact its in line with current hardware specs to its advantage to get 3rd party support, but I can see problems one or two years in when Sony and Microsoft's next machines are released and leave the Wii U behind. You have to give Nintendo credit though, for once again trying to innovate while Microsoft and Sony are still demoing their wiimote ripoffs. Motion control is so last year dude.

Speaking of Sony, aside from some impressive looking PS3 games (Uncharted 3, Resistance 3, inFamous 2, Dust 514 and Starhawk), multi platform titles (BioShock Infinite) and some terrible move games (NBA on the Move and Medieval Moves: Deadmund's Quest), their big announcement was the PlayStation Vita, another God awful product name. The Vita looked nice and all and the price point was right for once, but I feel Sony is really making a mistake here. Everything they showed for the PSV was a big, epic, cinematic, console experience on a handheld platform. They sold this exact concept when the PSP was released six years ago and guess what, no one (outside of the Japanese who love monster hunter) play their PSP. Why? Because you can't play epic console experiences on the bus. The end result of this is you play these portable games at home, on a tiny screen, with shitty controls, when your TV and console is sitting right next to you. Some of these games even let you transfer the experience between the console and handheld, which kinda proves my entire point.

Speaking of transferring, perhaps my favourite part of E3 was this video from Konami (starts 35 minutes 10 seconds in)…

The PSP was released before the iPhone and Android devices took over the handheld market. These days if you want a quick, portable game you buy one for a very low price on your smart phone. Nintendo may still have some chance because they make unique games that will never come to smart phones and because they actually make games suited for portable play. Sony however, is trying to sell you a portable PS3, and no one wants that…

As for Microsoft, their presentation was probably the most disappointing. Beyond another dashboard update, Gears of War 3, Halos and some multi platform franchise like Call of Duty and Tomb Raider, all they showed was Kinect bullshit. This demo of Ubisoft playing a Tom Clancy game where you shoot by doing jazz hands describes how I feel about the whole thing (starts 1 minutes 30 seconds in).

And while we're on the subject of Ubisoft, their press conference is probably the winner of the most bizarre award. The guys at Giant Bomb probably explain it best (starts 8 minutes 35 seconds in).

So yeah, a week of highs and lows to say the least.