With all the hubbub today about OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, Apple’s latest desktop operating system, Apple CEO Tim Cook and Senior VP of Marketing Phil Schiller sat down with The Wall Street Journal to offer some insights on the newly released developer preview.
Both Cook and Schiller made a point of emphasizing the Mountain Lion is intended to bring more of the features of iOS over to the Mac:
“We see that people are in love with a lot of apps and functionality here,” said Mr. Cook, 51 years old, pointing at his iPhone. “Anywhere where that makes sense, we are going to move that over to Mac.”
Besides bring the features that many have come to expect and appreciate from iOS, Cook took his comments a step further, stating that he already thinks of iOS and OS X as one. He also pointed out, however, that Macs aren’t going anywhere any time soon:
Mr. Cook said he already thinks of Apple’s iOS and OS X operating systems “as one with incremental functionality.” He said both laptops and tablets will continue to coexist, but he didn’t rule out that the technologies could converge further. When asked if Apples iPhones, iPads and Macs might run the same microprocessor chips, he said: “We think about everything. We don’t close things off.”
Tim Cook also comically took a punch at Microsoft and their upcoming Windows 8 platform, ruling them out as a serious competitor for Apple and OS X.
In regards to competition from Windows 8, Cook said , “I don’t really think anything Microsoft does puts pressure on Apple” rather, pressure on the company is “self-induced.”
Cook alsop noted (and almost certainly correctly) that “the industry at large is trying to copy it in some way, but they will find that it is not so easy.”
Cook didn’t make any comments about future Mac hardware; although, he noted that “the industry at large is trying to copy it in some way, but they will find that it is not so easy.” Probably true. Although most attempts to copy Apple end up failing anyway.
You can check out the full interview for yourself over at WSJ. I’d say it’s definitely worth a read.