14 DAY TRIAL // When Mac OS X 10.7 Lion debuts this summer, it will be missing a few in-house developed applications, like Front Row, and according to more recent digging through the software’s code, iSync.
Privileged Lion testers are signaling that a fresh installation of OS X Lion comes without iSync, the utility that lets you synchronize the information on your computer with your bluetooth-capable devices.
If you upgrade from Snow Leopard to Lion, you’ll be getting to keep the tool, plus Front Row, Rosetta, and Java runtime. If you install Lion from scratch, they’ll be gone forever, but you could theoretically obtain them from a Snow Leopard machine and install them manually.
But why is this important, you ask. After all, anyone was hardly using iSync.
I for one have never completed a single transfer between my iPhone and Mac using it. It’s simply not very reliable. So maybe that’s the reason Apple dropped it, right?
Well, it’s likely that’s no the case at all. Apple could have easily rewritten its code to make it a reliable piece of utility software, but instead decided to scrub it altogether in Lion.
It may well have to do with the company’s plans to introduce a revamped MobileMe this year.
MobileMe currently offers storage and synchronization services, and while everything is done in the cloud right now, who’s to say Apple won’t offer these capabilities locally too?
Or perhaps the next version of MobileMe - or iCloud as some believe it will be called - will come with its own specialized sync utility. A fairly possible scenario if you ask us.
It is becoming clear that Apple is doing away with software that customers aren’t using all that much.
We’d say Front Row still deserved to be a part of Lion, but who are we to tell Apple how to run the show?
Plus, whoever wants to use Front Row can fork out $99 for a brand new Apple TV. (wink)