Is Steve Jobs the New Lord of the Rings?
The ability to run multiple operating systems simultaneously on the same machine under one supra-operating system or “hypervisor”– all with touch-of-a-key flexibility — has long been the Holy Grail of the computer industry. Or, to put it in J.R.R. Tolkien’s terminology, “The Ring.” The next release of Mac OS X (Leopard) is that long-sought “Ring” and Steve Jobs is about to become “Lord of the Rings.”
The amount of time and attention lavished by Steve Jobs at last month’s WWDC on the “Spaces” feature of the forthcoming Lepoard version of OS X begs the question: what’s up? It is deceptively simple, and yet intriguing. Spaces allows users to have separate windows in which a full desktop of related open applications can be displayed.
At WWDC, Jobs demoed four simultaneous “spaces” opened and displayed as tiles on the screen, from which you can select and then drag-and-drop applications between them as required. At first blush, this new feature (thought not so new for hardcore Mac users) struck me as not very practical and rather unimportant. Why would Apple make such a big deal about it? After reflection, however, it occurred to me that Apple just might be up to something pretty revolutionary.
Here’s my guess. Apple recently announced “Boot Camp,” a utility that allows you to boot up either Apple’s OS/X or MS Windows. This is a great feature, but it forces you to choose between OS/X and Windows because booting is slow. A third party vendor also offers a virtualization product called “Parallels” that allows you to run MS Windows on Macintosh hardware running under Mac OS/X. But Leopard’s “spaces” feature could allow you to seamlessly switch between Mac OS/X and MS Windows with a single keystroke. Therefore, you could quite easily run both MS Windows applications and Apple OS/X applications on the same hardware at the same time – and just as easily switch back and forth.
Better still, Apple’s dual processor architecture featuring Intel’s Core 2 Duo architecture, provides four separate processor cores on which to run applications. Therefore, switching between operating systems should be instantaneous because each OS maintains its separate context. By the time Mac OS/X “Leopard” is released in 1Q07, Apple could market machines with dual Intel quad-core processors. That means Apple’s Mac Pro could possibly have a total of eight processors, each capable of running a different task and/or a different OS and application.
So, my suspicion is that Steve Jobs’ surprise in January will be to run Windows Vista seamlessly in a window (or “space”) under Mac OS/X, accessible at the touch of a key. Better still, it should run just as well (or better) as on a traditional PC because nothing is emulated: all code is native and MS Windows will run on its own dedicated processor core.There is no reason why Linux can’t be run at the same time in another space and on another core.
This ability to run multiple operating systems simultaneously on the same machine under one supra-operating system or “hypervisor”– all with touch-of-a-key flexibility — has long been the Holy Grail of the computer industry. Or, to put it in J.R.R. Tolkien’s terminology, “The Ring.” If my speculation is right, Mac OS/X is about to become that long-sought “Ring” and Steve Jobs is about to become “Lord of the Rings”:
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the Darkness bind them
One OS to rule them all, One OS to find them,
One OS to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.
Of course, this could prove to be idle speculation but, if correct, it could be game-changing for both Apple Computer and the entire PC industry. With the ability to shift seamlessly and at no additional cost between the operating systems of Apple, Windows, Linux and who knows what else, Apple and its many innovative applications could start to look awfully attractive to corporate purchasers. With one stroke, Apple could end its long exile from mainstream business computing. It may be that much of the enterprise action has shifted to the Web, but the rumors of the desktop’s death have been greatly exaggerated.
Gary Morgenthaler is a general partner with Morgenthaler Ventures, a Menlo Park, California-based venture capital firm.
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Om,
The problem is this; Which operating system is the “base” operating system? Do you run Mac within Windows – or Windows within Mac?
One thing I have found while looking at web-based applications is that they are popular for one big reason – your data is wherever you want it. Sure “cross-platform” is nice, but most people stick to one operating system, making the “cross-platform” a moot point.
The whole cross-platform thing, IMO, isn’t really worth the fight. Instead, why not focus on creating RICH applications that can be streamed over standard broadband – why not make data available everywhere?
With that said, a “hyper operating system” would be perfect – you could still run Windows, Mac, and Linux based applications, you have an environment that could interpret streaming code, and you could integrate “data everywhere”.
The only problem would be Microsoft. They most likely wouldn’t approve of their applications or O/S running within another environment… And any hardware manufacturer that puts Windows on such a platform would risk losing their Microsoft contract.
Oh, and let it be known that when I mean “streaming code”, I’m not referring to browser-based applications – I’m talking about the real-deal. Sure it may not be possible now, but who knows what the future holds.
I love articles that start with a sentence that is written in a way to make it sound like it’s gospel.
Please tell me in whose IT world this is the ‘holy grail’. I can’t think of a single instance where this was important in our organization (30K+ computers) or other places I’ve run the IT group (down to 40 boxes). I also can’t think of a great support/security nightmare. Maybe a few consumers want it but enterprises certainly don’t.
nit: it’s Mac[space]OS[space]X, not OS/X
Windows Vista will not run in “Hypervisor” mode under ANY third party OS. So toss that pipe dream out the window. Note: hypervisor will work with Linux on a Mac.
This might actually be a “holy grail” if Apple ever got it’s enterprise support together. The author has obviously never depended or called on Apple’s enterprise support, because it is horrible (and that’s being polite)!
While virtualization in Leopard has been much speculated about, building in such a feature would likely annoy Parallels and VMware (not that Apple is shy about cutting out developers).
It’s also a bit of a myth that everything runs full-speed under virtualization; all I/O (including graphics) is usually emulated. This means that Windows games and Vista’s fancy Aero Glass interface will either be disabled or run quite slowly (maybe Apple would like that, though).
This article is totaly out of context. Switching between virtual desktops has nothing to do with virtualization and running virtual machines.
“Spaces” looks like Job’s version of what many users of most OSes are familliar with: virtual desktops. Most X Windows (Linux, Unix) window managers support this and there are tools to do the same today (actually yesterday) for Windows and OS X too. I’m pretty sure Apple will make a nice implementation by adding some intuitive features, but… it’s no big deal.
I really do not understand how this article made its way here.
Oh my, VC’s.
Ever seen somebody work with/in “spaces”? Normally what this translates to is … context.
Now imagine an application changing it’s UI if you put it into a different context. Tailored to this specific context. Creating a work flow on your very own Desktop with intuitive easy to find UI elements for a given context. No more searching or digging through endless menu trees. Or switching security if you put the application into a different context. Any thoughts what that can do to your productivity and security of your enterprise?
Oh, and try that with your WebX.0 application. We are not done yet with fat clients, ok in the future we will call them smart clients.
I’ve been noting something funny here. Headlines on Gigaom remind me so much of headlines of an Indian tabloid-times of india.
This one for example…who gives a cr** about this mulitple operating systems. either someone is grossly out of touch with the enterprise world or they have run out of new stories.
trying to make an issue out of nothing (like the good old strawman) and then seeking some page views on the basis of that. May be GigaOm is the tabloid of Web 2.0 reporting!