For the first time in several years, Apple is changing up its annual iOS and OS X upgrade cycle by limiting new feature additions in favor of a “big focus on quality,” according to multiple sources familiar with the company’s operating system development plans. We first reported in February that iOS 9, codenamed “Monarch,” would heavily feature under-the-hood optimizations, and we’ve now learned that Apple is taking the same approach with OS X 10.11, codenamed “Gala.” Sources have revealed additional new details on how Apple will optimize the new operating systems for improved stability and performance, add several new security features, and make important changes to its Swift programming tools for developers.
This is the day computing died.
They’ll probably add a way of disabling or at least limiting it. Otherwise they’ll lose a good chunk of market share.
You’ll find they’ll charge you £79 and require shipping it back to them in order to do it though. After all, that’s the most “secure” way…
Yeah, malware my ass. Most malware these days wants your data, not your computer and somehow I don’t think even Apple are dumb enough that they’d prevent a program from reading your home directory where your data is stored. Safety? More like control. I just hope to hell we have a way to turn it off.
I’ll withhold final judgement until I see exactly what this entails… It sure sounds bad though.
Doesn’t seem much different from current iOS, from a user perspective at least. Probably additional pain for developers and jailbreakers.
Does sound quite nasty for OS X though.
Edited 2015-05-23 17:52 UTC
They’ve decided to name iOS versions after butterflies.
How nice.
And they’ve decided to name OS X versions after actual apples. 🙂
Yeah. I want OS X Granny Smith. Somehow I bet that’s unlikely though.
Well, Monarch Beach is a beach in California (Just like Mavericks)
Not sure what Gala refers to, though.
Gala and Monarchs are both apples, actually.
This kinda works.
Awesome, Yosemite does everything I need, but a few optimization sounds fine by me.
When I read the headline I thought it said MacOS 9, not iOS 9. I thought this was going to be a comparison of Apple’s recent focus on quality compared with a similar focus all those years ago when OS9 came out.
Or maybe it means that next step in iOS’s evolution is that it will start incorporating some of the iconic features of Apple’s “classic” operating systems. Finally, today’s generation will be feel the excitement of Errors of an Unknown Type occurring. Or manually managing virtual memory, for each individual app. Or experience the classic game known as “Rebooting with extensions disabled” AKA “Whack-a-Extension” (hey, that would probably be more exciting than most actual mobile games).
Or the heart-pounding excitement of having your eardrums nearly blown-out, because you were unlucky enough to have headphones connected when the device crashed – and some brain donor at Apple thought it would be “cute” to use a loud car crash sound effect as an error alert. Or maybe iOS 9 will introduce a largely-modal UI that’s incapable of all but the most basic, kinda-sorta-but-not-really multitasking… oh wait, iOS already has that feature. Nevermind.
MS with windows 10, is doing thing like this. trying to have core stuff more locked down so the OS can protect it self more.
I will hold judgement until i see how it actually works. but even Linux with SElinux enabled locks down root account.
whats happening is Windows, Linux, and OSX/BSDs are doing some of the stuff from EAL 5 and other high secure models.
After basing its OS on open source software with OSX, Apple is slowly but steadily banning open source software from the Mac (eg. yosemite: no unsigned kernel extensions, “allow any software” choice auto-resetting itself, etc…).
I am a very long time mac and osx user, and I really hate to see the day coming where I’ll have to leave for good (and choose the Linux/BSD flavor suiting most of my needs). I love(d) this platform as a sysadmin and as a developer, and really felt home so far on osx. It will be a painful and uneasy transition for me to leave it, as a longtime user I have my toolbox here. But with these news on the horizon, at the very least I’ll wait until after WWDC before I buy a new Mac Book Pro (I almost clicked on “buy” after the 15″ were updated lately).
And wait a second, how do You expect this rootless “feature” to be “disableable”? I mean, a way to disable it would defeat its purpose, wouldn’t it…
Maybe it’s time to realize that Apple does not care at all for professional users – unless they’re coding for them…
But as always, as biased and Apple-brainwashed as I am, I’ll wait and see. But even for me, there’s a limit. And when I leave, I promise, I’ll take at least as many people with me over time, as those that I have brought to the platform. And that’s many, many users.
All of the modern OS’s are taking things from the higher security models. this, is just one of them… we should see how it plays out.