Come gather 'round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You'll be drenched to the bone
If your time to you is worth savin'
Then you better start swimmin' or you'll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin'
- The Times They Are a-Changin', Bob Dylan
I've read Charles Moore's recent column about hisiPad, and I noticed quite a bit of hubbub in Charles' recent Mailbag column. I'd like to add mytwo bits to the discussion. I don't intend to make more noise, justtake a look at where Apple users are going - and whether we want to gothere.
Apple hit a home run with theiPod, creating a whole new digital music market. Apple hit anotherhome run with the iPhone, not creating the smartphone market, butsetting the gold standard and soon dominating the market. iPad,whatever your opinion, is another home run, reinventing the tabletmarket and making other manufacturers pay catch-up. Driving this hasbeen the development of a mobile interface known as iOS.
Now the other shoe has dropped. OS X 10.7 Lion is bringing features ofiOS to OS X, and Apple appears to be embarking on a plannedobsolescence business plan.
I can kind of see the logic of using elements of Apple's verysuccessful mobile operating system in OS X. It makes for easiercross-platform training and makes it easier for Apple newbies to movefrom an Apple mobile device to an Apple computer.
I don't know if this is a great leap forward or not; I'm really nothappy about OS X Lion requiring an Intel Core 2 Duo, Core i3, Core i5,Core i7, or Xeon processor. There goes my plan of picking up afirst-generation Intel Mac and moving on past OS X 10.5.8 Leopard.
And, of course, Lion won't run PowerPC software. I suppose that Icould put a Leopard partition on a Lion machine, but it still might notwork. I don't want to have abandon my PPC software, but the times arechanging.
Anyway, I think that Apple is not serving us old curmudgeons verywell. Do they have to change so quickly? This is changing my futurecomputer purchase plans. Things are getting just a littlemuddy.
Do I buy a brandy newMacBook Air and lose PPC software or buying the previous generation MacBookAir and retain my old software?
I'd have to get used to that gesture stuff in Lion, too.
Bob Dylan didn't know what he was talking about. 
