Chris Hamady

Apple recently provided us with some information on their upcoming Mac OS X version, Mountain Lion. One of the capabilities listed will be integrated Air Play mirroring. In a previous blog post, this feature was part of my Mac OS X wish-list. I'm excited to think about the possibilities that we now have in our homes and classrooms as a result of this new capability.

Air Play mirroring will allow a teacher to take her/his laptop anywhere in their classroom and push the audio/video contents of that laptop onto an LCD projector/speakers by way of an Apple TV, all without any wires. Awesome!

The other listed features found in Mountain Lion are:

iCloud

Messages

Reminders

Notes

Notification Center

Share Sheets

Twitter

Game Center

The last feature that was listed in the Mountain Lion release was something called Gatekeeper. Gatekeeper is a registration service for applications with security as its main goal. Gatekeeper provides three optional levels of security when attempting to install apps:

1. Anything goes. Any apps found anywhere can be downloaded and installed on the Mac. Freedom lives! (...but so do security concerns)

2. Mac App store and Apple developer ID'd. Apps downloaded from the Mac App store and apps found elsewhere that have been registered with Apple can be installed. Limited rights/slippery slope. (More secure)

3. Mac App store only. ONLY Apps sold by Apple can be downloaded and installed on your legally purchased and owned computer. Dictatorship model! (Highly secure)

While Gatekeeper sounds well intentioned, it could very well be another step toward a Mac OS X where the only apps available for the computer will be proprietary ones found in the Mac App store. This could be disastrous to many developers, more specifically, open source developers and their applications.

We've already seen a fantastic open source app, VLC, pulled from the iOS App store because its open source license forbid digital rights management from being included in any derivitave works based on VLCs codebase.

I hope that both sides of this conflict, Apple and the open source community, can find a reasonable solution. It would be very upsetting to us if we were not able to include the many incredible and free open source apps found here on the Macbook Airs used in our school's 1 to 1 initiative.

Lastly, there was no mention of iBooks for Mac OS X. I simply cannot understand why interactive digital books that must be created on Mac OS X, still do not have a native application designed for the same platform with which they can be read.

CH