Mac OSX is now ten years old. Its mobile-optimized offspring, iOS, is only four years old, yet Apple now sells 29 million iOS-powered devices for every 4 million Macs. The iPad alone outsells the Mac by a 9 to 4 margin.
The primacy of iOS is evident in Lion, the latest iteration of Mac OS X. Many of the new features in Lion are designed to bring OS X in line with the more rapidly-evolving iOS. The expanded array of multitouch trackpad gestures in particular look like an attempt to mimimic in an indirect interface what comes more naturally in a direct one.
For many uses multitouch on a touchscreen is more intuitive and powerful than anything that can be found in OS X or any other desktop operating system. Image editing apps like Photogene and Snapseed provide a deft, hands-on quality that desktop applications costing 100 times as much can't match. The iOS versions of iMovie make editing video even easier than before. OmniFocus on the iPad is superior to its OS X progenitor. All kinds of iOS apps are showing that multitouch on a touchscreen can provide a better user experience than the WIMP (Window, Icon, Menu, Pointing Device) approach.
None of this means that design studios are going to drop Photoshop in favor of Snapseed next month. But the raw computing power of iOS devices is increasing, and it doesn't take a crystal ball to imagine a day when, for example, professional video editors will ply their craft using an iOS version of Aperture on an iMac-sized touchscreen. A generation weaned on mobile devices will see WIMP interfaces as relics of the past.
Mac OS X has already been superseded in importance by iOS. The real question is how long OS X will be included in Apple devices. In January, 2010 I opined that "Apple has shown a willingness to set fire to its ships in order to conquer new territories." That desire to avoid stagnation certainly hasn't gone away. I'm guessing Apple won't kill off OS X as long as Mac sales continue to grow, but the moment those figures start to flag, don't be surprised if the product release cycle for Mac hardware and software slows radically. That'll be the giveaway that the Mac is being eased into the sunset.
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