What was the most significant announcement during Steve Jobs’ keynote at WWDC? While the iPhone 4 is a sexy beast with lots of great new features, it will be out of date in a year’s time. No, the most important announcement was one tiny detail – a name change.
iPhone OS will now be known as iOS. It’s a subtle change but one that has huge implications.
By detaching the name of the OS from the hardware it powers, Apple is opening the doors for it to be used on many different devices in the future. It’s already on the iPod Touch and iPad of course, but this name change means iOS could step way beyond mobile handsets and tablets.
For a start, it adds more credence to the rumour that Apple is planning to bring out a cheap, streaming-only version of its Apple TV set-top box powered by the OS. As a simple, easy to use but powerful operating system, iOS would be perfect for navigating all those Netflix-type services and social TV apps that are on the horizon.
Why stop there? Apple could bring its iOS to a wider range of devices. Watches running cut-down versions, Microsoft Surface-style mega-tablets, hey, why not a full-blown desktop PC? It might sound crazy, but who would have predicted two years ago that the iPhone would never support Flash?
Think like Steve Jobs for a second and it makes perfect sense. With iOS, Apple has a lightweight, locked-down OS that they have full control over. Thanks to the App store, iTunes, iAd and iBooks, iOS is a money-making machine for Apple and it makes sense to have it in as many places as possible. It may one day be mature and powerful enough to replace OSX and change the way we use Apple computers forever.
I’m just holding out for the iOS-powered iToaster. Well, you never know…
Apps for toast designs. I can see it now…
It would be very unlike Apple to decouple their OS from the hardware, Jobs is too much of a control freak to think that any other hardware manufacturer would do anything other than produce a subpar user experience. Given the momentum of Android and the direction it’s taking with multiple devices it’s possible that Apple would want to move in that direction…but then again Apple isn’t really one of those companies that you see adopting other companies’ strategies.
Devin – I don’t mean they’ll open it up to other manufacturers, just that it’s now obvious they have grand ambitions far beyond it being a simple mobile OS.
Or indeed Devlin :)
100% Agree. Apple don’t change names on a whim.
Remember that they dropped the “Computer” part of the company name shortly after announcing the iPhone… and how prescient that was: Now less than half of their revenue comes from Macs.