Apple to usher in era of Mac OS X-based iPods
Apple Inc. will use a media event next month to unveil a new breed of iPod digital music players that have been injected with the company's most vital asset — the Mac OS. — The move will culminate a multi-year effort on the part …
Context & Ripple Effects
AppleInsider's report that the next iPods run Mac OS X lands in the middle of an unusually noisy pre-event leak cycle: Apple Legal's confirmed takedown demand against Gizmodo over 'iPod nano' spy shots effectively validated that the leaked 'phatty' nano photos were genuine Apple property, and the company has just shipped iPhone firmware 1.0.2 — meaning the iPhone's OS X build is already being patched like a mainstream platform rather than a one-off phone OS.
The move also extends an arc that the New York Times mapped back in February 2006 with its portrait of the iPod Ecosystem: the iPod was already functioning as a hub for accessories and services, and injecting the Mac OS into it turns a closed media player into something much closer to a general computing platform. If the September media event materializes as reported, it would be the culmination of what the report calls a multi-year internal effort.
First-order effects
- Apple's fall iPod lineup would share its core operating system with the iPhone, collapsing the distinction between its phone and its music players and letting one engineering effort serve both product lines.
- Buyers and reviewers get their first test of whether full OS X can run acceptably on player-class hardware, with battery life and price as the immediate pressure points.
Second-order effects
- Accessory makers who built docks, speakers, and car kits around the old iPod interface now face a moving software target, while developers eyeing the iPhone's OS X foundation see a second, cheaper entry point into Apple's handheld platform.
- Rival portable-player vendors would be pushed to justify staying on embedded firmware as Apple raises the baseline expectation for what a music device's operating system can do.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, Apple consolidates all of its pocketable hardware onto a single OS X lineage, making the question not whether iPods get third-party applications but when — and turning every future iPod refresh into a platform release rather than a spec bump.
The trend: Handheld consumer electronics is consolidating around full desktop-derived operating systems, with Apple using the iPhone to drag its entire iPod line onto OS X.