The OS Doesn’t Matter…

Jean-Louis Gassée, founder of Be. Inc, argues that the OS doesn't matter since most are a derivative of the same one anyway.

Gassee notes that Apple has actually rebooted their OS twice based on UNIX.

The Apple ][ OS (or lack thereof, purists will say) couldn’t be brought up to modern standards, so the Macintosh had to be built on a fresh foundation. The original Mac OS foundered on its own beachhead and was replaced by OS X. Based on the Mach kernel, OS X is another Unix derivative, co-authored at CMU by Avie Tevanian. Mr Tevanian improved the system during his tenure as head of software at NeXT and was instrumental in convincing Apple that their purchase of NeXT would breathe new life into the company.


He also suggests that the "App Store" has become a "killer OS component".

This new creature called an App Store (or Marketplace, depending upon the…OS). In my non-technical view, the App Store must be considered part of the OS totality, part of its gestalt. Applications have always been in a feedback loop with the OS. A program can only do as much as the OS allows it, so it played tricks to create multi-tasking, to allow smooth audio/video playback. These “tricks” were incorporated into the OS (and the hardware—think GPU), which then bred another generation of apps that wanted more, and so on.

The App Store genre, invented or not in Cupertino, is now part of that loop, a killer OS component, one that deserves a Monday Note of its own.

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