Mac OS X 10.7 delayed by iPhone 4.0 work?
updated 01:05 pm EDT, Mon April 12, 2010
Google Android may be in crosshairs
Work on Mac OS X 10.7 has been delayed, says Daring Fireball's John Gruber. The tech writer notes that some months ago, he received word that Apple had "tentative plans" to ship a developer beta of the OS at this year's WWDC, likely to be scheduled for early June. Coding of v10.7 is indeed still in progress, claims Gruber, but now with a smaller team and an "unknown" timetable.
There may be no v10.7 news at WWDC this year, the writer argues, and perhaps none until WWDC 2011. The reason is said to be an emphasis on iPhone 4.0, one of Apple's main weapons in the fight against Google's Android platform. Apple is intensely focused on growing iPhone marketshare faster than Android, Gruber suggests, to the extent that it is now making everything not in competition with Android a secondary priority. iAd and multitasking may be examples of this, since Android has always supported multitasking, and the platform is closely linked with Google's main revenue source, search-based advertising. iAd detours search to situate itself in apps.
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That's what I figured
This close to WWDC, there should be rumors about the next Mac OS X release, if there is going to be one this year. There haven't been any rumors, so I figured iPhone OS and iPhone/iPad development would be the main focus of WWDC 2010.
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That's fine, but despite Apple dominance in portable entertainment and increasing success in smart phones (and potentially breaking open the entire handheld computing market with iPad) there is still one glaring omission in Apple's strategy. The cloud.
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Cloud computing is just the new name for "client-server heterogeneous interoperability over the internet." It's not new technology. It's just new mindshare. But Apple needs to make MobileMe free, to increase its use by Mac, iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad users. By asking $100 per year, they are losing a huge number of potential users. So yes, MobileMe is probably profitable for Apple.
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But that's not the point. MobileMe doesn't need to be a profit center for Apple. They make most of their money selling hardware. Making MobileMe free will increase its use by Apple hardware owners and will help to "lock them in." Once they've uploaded all their iPod nano videos, all their iPhone backups, all their email and documents to MobileMe, it'll be hard to move to another service.
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Mac OS X 10.7 and iPhone 4.0 can't count on MobileMe being there right now. The only way to ensure that MobileMe is available to all of Apple's hardware and software platforms is to make it free. Apple can't afford to fall behind the cloud computing curve.
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So maybe Apple was just testing the waters, limiting MobileMe usage by charging for it, and experimenting with server technology initially. Maybe Apple is just waiting for the time to be right (as they have done so expertly in other markets) before opening the floodgates to a free MobileMe. I wonder how that $1 billion North Carolina data center is shaping up...