I would like to make some clarifications, beyond the marketing gimmicks and the bad habits.
There are a lot of things said about the system that the “Tablet” is supposed to run.
The last one being that it’s running a variant of the iPhone OS. The people thinking that way are not thinking “different”, they are thinking “wrong”.
There is no “iPhone OS”!
But there is OS X for iPhone, OS X for iPod touch, OS X for Mac. There will soon be OS X for the “Tablet” (whatever it’s name will be – iBook would be OK for me).
I know that Apple marketers say “Mac OS X” for a good reason but it makes people think backwards!
And if they don’t say anything about the OS for the iPhone, it means that’s part of the plan: the OS must disappear for most people! Today, Steve Jobs will probably be reluctant to talk about the system of the Tablet.
A Mac is Mac as long as it runs OS X on it.
This is much emphasized by the fact that if you run Windows on a modern Mac with Bootcamp, aka an Intel Mac, your Mac becomes a PC! An Apple PC, but still a PC.
OS X IS STILL OPENSTEP, aka OpenStep, aka NeXTSTEP
You think I’m a fool! So please click in the Menu Bar under the Apple logo “About This Mac”. Click on “Version 10.6.2″ (I suppose you’re up-to-date). Then you have “Build 10C540″.
Ever wondered what that 10 meant? OPENSTEP 10! Could be NeXTSTEP 10 as well.
Yes! Since OS X 10.0, the OS X builds all refered to OPENSTEP.
Timeline
1989 NeXTSTEP 1.0
1990 NeXTSTEP 2.0
1992 NeXTSTEP 3.0
1996 OPENSTEP 4.0
2001 OPENSTEP 4.0 OS X 10.0 Cheetah Build 4K78
2001 OPENSTEP 5.0 OS X 10.1 Puma Build 5G64
2002 OPENSTEP 6.0 OS X 10.2 Jaguar Build 6C115
2001 OPENSTEP 7.0 OS X 10.3 Panther Build 7B85
2001 OPENSTEP 8.0 OS X 10.4 Tiger Build 8A428
2001 OPENSTEP 9.0 OS X 10.5 Leopard Build 9A581
2001 OPENSTEP 10.0 OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard Build 10A432
As you see it took a very long time for OPENSTEP 4.0 to become OS X… That was a rude task. Apple had to manage the susceptibilities of Mac users since it was the major goal at the time: retain them from switching to the wrong side. But we will come back someday to this.
OS X can run on any processor! Apple can do what they want, when they want… They also can put any interface on it!
