Interview with executives reveals Apple has no plans to merge iOS and OS X

Jan 24, 2014 10:26 GMT  ·  By
A still from Apple's celebratory video "Mac 30 - Thirty years of innovation"
   A still from Apple's celebratory video "Mac 30 - Thirty years of innovation"

Apple has published an inspiring video to celebrate 30 years of Mac, and an interview with two Apple executives reveals the company’s ongoing plans with OS X, the Mac’s underlying operating system.

Apple says in the video description, “Thirty years ago, the Mac put the power of technology in everyone's hands, launching a generation of innovators who continue to change the world. This video celebrates some of those pioneers and the incredible impact they've made.”

In an interview with Macworld, Apple executives Phil Schiller and Craig Federighi tell the story of Macintosh from an insider perspective.

One key takeaway from the interview is that Apple doesn’t believe OS X and iOS should merge just for the sake of having a unified interface.

Schiller and Federighi explain that OS X and iOS exist separately for a reason, but that Apple tries to make them similar enough that they can work well seamlessly.

“We don’t waste time thinking, ‘But it should be one [interface!]’, ‘How do you make these [operating systems] merge together?’ What a waste of energy that would be,” Schiller said.

“To say [OS X and iOS] should be the same, independent of their purpose? Let’s just converge, for the sake of convergence? [It’s] absolutely a non-goal,” Federighi chimed in to say.

“You don’t want to say the Mac became less good at being a Mac because someone tried to turn it into iOS. At the same time, you don’t want to feel like iOS was designed by [one] company and Mac was designed by [a different] company, and they’re different for reasons of lack of common vision.”

Federighi explained that Apple builds products to serve unique purposes, adding, “So you’ll see them be the same where that makes sense, and you’ll see them be different in those things that are critical to their essence.”