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10 Mac apps Apple just destroyed with OS X Mountain Lion

Friday, February 17, 2012 · 12:14 pm · 63 Comments

“Most of the new features in Apple’s OS X Mountain Lion have to do with a suite of new apps that take advantage of iCloud,” Steve Kovach writes for The Business Insider. “And a lot of those apps mimic features from popular third-party ones that we’ve been using on our Mac for some time now.”

10 Mac Apps Apple Just Destroyed With Mountain Lion
• Adium (killed by Messages)
• Trillian (killed by Messages)
• Growl (killed by notifications)
• Twitter extensions for sharing links (killed by built-in Twitter integration)
• Chrome browser (killed by Safari)
• Evernote (killed by Notes)
• Wunderlist (killed by Reminders)
• Remember the Milk (killed by Reminders)
• Anti-virus software for Mac (already on life support, killed by Gatekeeper)
• Dropbox, Google Docs, and other cloud document services (killed by iCloud)

Read more in the full article here.

Categories: News

Tags: Adium, Chrome, cloud services, Dropbox, Evernote, Google Docs, Growl, Mac apps, Mountain Lion, OS X Mountain Lion, Remember the Milk, Trillian, Wunderlist

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Comment Feed

63 Comments

1 2 Next »

acewingman

Friday, February 17, 2012 - 12:18 pm · Reply

We see your good idea and take it as our own…Do they get compensated? Doubt it.
- Finelinebob
  
  Friday, February 17, 2012 - 12:21 pm · Reply
  
  Never have … Apple has a long, long history of “integrating” third-party apps into the OS without a thought for the original authors.
  - Wrong Again
    
    Friday, February 17, 2012 - 12:59 pm · Reply
    
    They also have a history of hiring or buying out certain companies. Remember, they offered DropBox NINE FIGURES (at least 100,000,000, likely much more) for a glorified Internet sharing service that’s essentially a front end for Amazon’s cloud. So, if they are soon reduced to nothing, they can look back at that decision and wish…
    - danilko1
      
      Friday, February 17, 2012 - 3:48 pm · Reply
      
      Most of those apps I didn’t install or don’t use, because they were not convenient, cumbersome or untrustworthy. However I find the function pleasant when integrated into Mac OS X.
      
      I will still keep Chrome, Evernote, DropBox/Google Docs, and some kind of AV (Sophos for now), for several reasons. Collaboration, diversity, feature set, and protection of Windows, by proxy.
      - Jeff
        
        Friday, February 17, 2012 - 9:34 pm · Reply
        
        Actually it’s all those Google things (that are being turned into cruft) that I’ll be tossing. Imagine: I’ve been able to totally get rid of Microsoft and Adobe products. Now I’ve begun to rid my Apple devices of any trace of Google, based in part on today’s revelation that Google and Co can still access stuff from Safari despite privacy settings (see
        http://www.padgadget.com/2012/02/17/google-tracking-mobile-safari-users-despite-privacy-settings/? utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+padgadget+%28PadGadget%29 ). How can anyone who cares about their own privacy continue to allow Google on their computer is beyond comprehension.
        
        Jeff
        
        Friday, February 17, 2012 - 9:45 pm · Reply
        
        sorry about the hosed link (the ? mark forces a line break): http://bit.ly/wcWgy1
        
        stefanodastolfo
        
        Wednesday, March 28, 2012 - 7:21 pm · Reply
        
        Wow, you have to be completely ignorant to make statements like these without realizing how retarded they make you sound Do you honestly believe there is no link whatsoever between apple and your idevice? Wow… It bothers you that google has access to some stuff but it doesn’t bother you that your iPhone for example is tracked by apple? Haha… You are right when it comes to privacy and I do the same but at least I go all the way and have gotten rid of my iphone a long time ago. Technology is useless when it has the potential to be used for bad, sadly that goes for most technology these days.
    - WaterLily
      
      Friday, February 17, 2012 - 5:25 pm · Reply
      
      AGREED – apple has paid and offered to pay out fro what it likes. iTunes is one app I can think of off hand.
      
      ICHAT has been on Mac for years and is most likely one of the best applications for VIDEO and MESSAGING – it should have killed off AUDIUM and YAHOO from mac users long ago… but its connection to other services was the down fall.
      - Sucker
        
        Saturday, February 18, 2012 - 12:25 am · Reply
        
        My problem with iChat is that it doesn’t integrate with FaceTime.
Ottawa Mark

Friday, February 17, 2012 - 12:21 pm · Reply

Extremely specious list. The new Mountain Lion apps don’t necessarily match the feature set of each of the “doomed” applications. Then there’s the question of cross-platform compatibility. I really don’t see DropBox and Evernote disappearing from Mac desktops anytime soon.

Seriously, what’s with MDN’s “there can be only one” Highlanderism BS?
- Brian
  
  Friday, February 17, 2012 - 12:26 pm · Reply
  
  Agree.
  
  I won’t stop using Dropbox unless iCloud can match the features it offers – easy file sharing with other people and the amount of storage.
  - scott
    
    Friday, February 17, 2012 - 12:59 pm · Reply
    
    I guess their shifting declarations about their security isn’t enough to get you to stop using it? It was for me.
  - Agreed! This list is ...
    
    Friday, February 17, 2012 - 2:31 pm · Reply
    
    … wishful thinking – at BEST! Safari has been around for years. As has Notes. And iCloud for more than a few months. Safari didn’t kill Chrome before, why will that change? And what’s new with Notes that it will ding Evernote NOW? As for iCloud, I didn’t see anything about the return of those features we lost when MobileMe went away. It takes more than a little spit and polish to upgrade a decent product, with a number of short-comings, to a killer product.
  - Jean Brunet
    
    Friday, February 17, 2012 - 3:54 pm · Reply
    
    True, sometes Apple wants to play grand-father.
tbone

Friday, February 17, 2012 - 12:21 pm · Reply

• Chrome browser (killed by Safari) NOT. The latest Safari is terrible.
• Anti-virus software for Mac (already on life support, killed by Gatekeeper). NOT. Most viruses are passed as attachments to mail or documents.
• Dropbox, Google Docs, and other cloud document services (killed by iCloud)- NOT. Each of these has benefits that the others don’t provide.
- ericdano
  
  Friday, February 17, 2012 - 12:26 pm · Reply
  
  Viruses pass through attachments and docs. True enough, but they won’t be able to run at a system level with Gatekeeper installed.
  - varth dader
    
    Friday, February 17, 2012 - 1:18 pm · Reply
    
    Not true. This wont stop viruses whatsoever.
    - webmasters apprentice
      
      Friday, February 17, 2012 - 1:33 pm · Reply
      
      Viruses? What viruses?
  - lmack
    
    Friday, February 17, 2012 - 2:35 pm · Reply
    
    I use AV on all my Macs; that said, the AV is installed simply for scanning emails/files I send to those who use Windows. If I recall this was the reason SJ said Mac users should have AV installed to help prevent the further distibution of virus’.
- strangermode
  
  Friday, February 17, 2012 - 1:32 pm · Reply
  
  In the entire 13 year history of OSX, there has not been a single virus. There have been a handful of Trojans (mostly written by anti-virus software companies), but not a single one of those has ever managed to gain a foothold.
  
  Your ignorance is showing.
  - 3l3c7ro
    
    Friday, February 17, 2012 - 2:00 pm · Reply
    
    Too true! I have run Macs since 1985 without virus protection and never got a virus.
    - Huseyin Icen
      
      Saturday, February 18, 2012 - 1:59 am · Reply
      
      Same here… No virus, not one.
- auramac
  
  Friday, February 17, 2012 - 3:11 pm · Reply
  
  I haven’t yet defected from Firefox to Chrome, but Firefox is running scripts and slowing to a crawl on Facebook, Google images, content-heavy pages. Chrome loads them in an intelligent, snappy manner. Safari doesn’t work for me- yet.
  - Zeph
    
    Friday, February 17, 2012 - 11:50 pm · Reply
    
    Try installing ClickToPlugin and Do Not Track Plus Safari extensions and give Safari another try. Since doing so, Safari has not slowed down once on both 10.6 and 10.7 machines with only 2GB of RAM.
    
    Obviously, there may be other features of Chrome you prefer over Safari, but according to the Mountain Lion page on Apple.com, it looks like Safari is getting the OmniBar treatment, as well. Hopefully, the speed improvements I’ve seen since installing those extensions will remain in Mountain Lion.
- Mikey Coliani
  
  Friday, February 17, 2012 - 7:52 pm · Reply
  
  There is a difference between malware and a virus.. BIG difference.. A true virus is unique to the language in windows. There has never been an actual “virus” in the mac world. Only malwares. And trojans are in fact malwares disguised..
  
  The actual true reality: you have always had to install a software to infect a mac, and youve always had to give your password.. So…. With gatekeeper, my guess is, rather than see 2 per year, it will nullify.. To zero.. Or maybe one every 3 years.. Regardless. You have to understand the actual process and how they actually operate before you can make an EDUCATED, INFORMED statement like that.. And its obvious. You have no actual factual idea what you are talking about.
- Jeff
  
  Friday, February 17, 2012 - 9:41 pm · Reply
  
  And your very privacy is compromised with every bit of Google code that resides as an app on your computer. There is absolutely nothing that justifies using Chrome or Docs or whatever from Google as long as they continue to harvest personal data about what sites I visit even after I supposedly enable privacy and private browsing. The only way to defeat this invasion is to rid your Mac of any Google app or extension or helper or whatever. I eagerly await the day when some bright developer markets a “de-google” app that will clean up the HIV of computing that Google has become.
  
  Sorry for the rant but I feel extremely offended and debased (as everyone should be) by Google’s predatory practices.
ajendus

Friday, February 17, 2012 - 12:23 pm · Reply

I don’t know if Evernote or Dropbox has been “killed.” Notes and iCloud aren’t exactly the same. Evernote gives a little more flexibility in formatting and organization. Dropbox is great with syncing any files (and with any device) you want vs. iCloud seems (at least at the moment) to only deal with specific applications like Pages, Numbers, etc. But I could be wrong. Perhaps the iCloud syncing will be an integrated function in the save/open dialogue as just a normal save as has always been. But I’m looking forward to all of this stuff either way.
ericdano

Friday, February 17, 2012 - 12:23 pm · Reply

Hardly kills them all. DropBox isn’t going away at all. If anything, if DropBox allows more storage than iCloud for free, then people will continue to use it. Messenger doesn’t kill other chat clients just because it put in iMessenger support.

ONLY thing it pretty much kills is virus software. There was never really a need for it before, and now there is NO NEED for it with Gatekeeper.
Shock Me

Friday, February 17, 2012 - 12:25 pm · Reply

It has always been crazy to develop utilities for the Mac.
Kristian

Friday, February 17, 2012 - 12:25 pm · Reply

This won’t kill Evernote nor the others. We have Foodie FM here in Finland and it won’t be killed by these changes. If Remember the Milk dies then they haven’t done very good job like Foodie FM has.
Eric

Friday, February 17, 2012 - 12:25 pm · Reply

Hold on a second here. I wouldn’t say these are all killed by Mountain Lion. First of all, there will still be a space for multiple browsers, so Chrome isn’t going away anytime soon (I still use Chrome more often than Safari, although I use Firefox the most often), and as for iCloud, unless it’s Windows compatible, will not kill Google Docs or Dropbox because, as much as I love my MBP, I still have a day job, and I have to use the company computer, which is a Windows computer, and if I want to share documents, I have to be able to share with Windows users, so for the time being, cross-platform functionality is still necessary. Sorry, but we’re not quite there yet.
twilightmoon

Friday, February 17, 2012 - 12:28 pm · Reply

Yes, they sell it to everyone they can before Mountain Lion comes out!

No developer should expect to remain unchallenged by Apple for any app or service that exists on stock iOS.
Ken

Friday, February 17, 2012 - 12:30 pm · Reply

iCloud certainly does not kill SugarSync (which in my view is far superior to Dropbox) unless iCloud allows the user to designate folders for sync and also preserves the folder hierarchy.

SugarSync backs up my files in the cloud, and it also syncs all files on all devices, without requiring me to recreate the file structure by tediously dragging and dropping files on each other. It’s also not limited to folders that are one level deep. I don’t have time to rearrange and reclassify my 4,000 documents that way. The doctor says I only have 30 years to live, and I want to use some of that time for fun stuff.

The only way iCloud could be practical the way it works now is to limit the document sync to files the user designates for the iPad and iPhone.
- Romeodawg
  
  Friday, February 17, 2012 - 12:47 pm · Reply
  
  I agree Ken — no one seems to know about SugarSync but it’s actually better than DropBox. You can choose which folders to sync to the cloud to to another Mac — no drag and drop. Having my desktop and documents folder stay automatically synched between iMac and laptop AND iPhone is amazing.
  
  And Messages is a MESS right now — hope they fix it.
  
  Twitter integration is nice, but Hootsuite has many more features including the one glaring omission — Facebook integration.
  
  And Notes has always been a toy in both Mail and iOS — I doubt Evernote is at all nervous.
  
  Funny, if this were Micro$oft making all these “improvements” we’d all be freaking out about their lack of innovation…
JC

Friday, February 17, 2012 - 12:31 pm · Reply

Anti-virus software has never been necessary because there has never been an OS X virus. As for passing something on as a Mail attachment, that’s something for the knuckleheads down the line to worry about, not me. They’re the ones using an OS with swiss cheese security, so it’s up to them to run their own Anti-virus software to detect it.
THE RATIONALIST

Friday, February 17, 2012 - 12:40 pm · Reply

Um. Some of this is hyperbole.
- Jim
  
  Friday, February 17, 2012 - 12:51 pm · Reply
  
  Some? How about, ALL!
  
  Every one of these services will probably thrive after ML is released – with the exception of virus apps, which never had a hold on the Mac OS to begin with.
jackspratt

Friday, February 17, 2012 - 12:45 pm · Reply

Adium, Trillian, Growl – all far more customizable than the Apple equivalent. Chrome killed by Safari, seriously?

oh wait, Business Insider article. move along, nothing worthwhile to see here.
scott

Friday, February 17, 2012 - 1:02 pm · Reply

Apple typically provides basic functionality in their included with the OS apps and then third parties provide the richer, more featured apps. The developers will provide new features that Apple doesn’t and that’s how they’ll keep their customers.
sessiondrummer74

Friday, February 17, 2012 - 1:03 pm · Reply

More MDN “Fox News” posts. Seriously, you guys have really jumped the shark lately, but this one takes the cake.
Michael A. Robson

Friday, February 17, 2012 - 1:06 pm · Reply

“Chrome browser (killed by Safari)”

Are you F’n high?

“Adium Killed by Messages”

WHAT!? WHAT!??!? Hello!? MSN Support?!
Steve

Friday, February 17, 2012 - 1:11 pm · Reply

You also forgot about AirParrot that streams your Mac desktop to your AppleTV. I just spent $10 on that little plug in two days ago.
ted

Friday, February 17, 2012 - 1:29 pm · Reply

Anti Malware will always be needed on a Mac just like on any OS. All it is is code and all it takes is someone to do some fuzzzing and Flash or a PDF will auto load a payload without user name and password and you are Pwnd. Are you Macs are impenetrable freaks clueless about security?
- webmasters apprentice
  
  Friday, February 17, 2012 - 1:35 pm · Reply
  
  We just don’t bother with it…..
- Derek Currie
  
  Friday, February 17, 2012 - 3:41 pm · Reply
  
  At this point in time, unless you are an administrator dealing with ‘LUSERS’, I see no requirement for an anti-malware app for Macs. Apple’s XProtect, included in Snow Leopard and Lion, is very useful against Trojan horses. Meanwhile, people like me are making sure that the freeware ClamAV, the source of malware signatures for ClamXav, stays up-to-date.
  
  Where commercial anti-malware still come in handy is via their other features including:
  - Reverse firewalls (to stop botnets dead and potentially dangerous ‘phoning home’ by unscrupulous apps.
  - Heuristics – Watching for potentially dangerous behavior on your computer.
  - Fraudulent website blacklisting.
  - Anti-Phishing.
  - Banner ad filtering.
  - Cookie filtering.
  - Information hiding – Info about your computer and your web surfing.
  - Web Threat Protection – web bugs etc.
  - Personal web address blocking.
  - External media scanning for malware.
  - Scanning of your Windows Boot Camp partition or virtualized drive.
  - Scheduling.
  
  All of the above are offered in Intego’s VirusBarrier X6. I don’t work for them but I interact with them and find them to be the best of what’s available for Mac.
  
  There are lots of ways to cover many of the bases listed above via extensions for Safari, Firefox and Chrome (Or so I hear, as I dont use Chrome, just Chromium).
  
  Keep in mind that:
  • “JavaScript” is profoundly insecure.
  • Java has proven to be insecure.
  • Phishing is dirt easy to perform.
  • Social engineering scams are here to stay.
  • There will always be ‘LUSERS’, those whose talents and skills are not in technology. If you are supporting their computers, you want every tool you can fine to subvert their insecure behavior.
  
  I think you get the idea.
  - Derek Currie
    
    Friday, February 17, 2012 - 3:45 pm · Reply
    
    Oh, and of course there is the Courtesy Factor whereby we Mac users want to be nice to our Windows/Linux using friends and NOT pass along malware to them. Therefore, it is useful to scan occasionally for malware that affects THEIR platform. No one wants to pass along an email to a friend that contains dangerous links, or offer to them hacked and infected apps. That’s not nice.
John B

Friday, February 17, 2012 - 1:32 pm · Reply

Safari pretty much sucks these days (especially the Windows version). It has gone from being the best browser to the worst. No ways Safari’s going to kill anything, except maybe that really old OS X version of IE.
scottm4321

Friday, February 17, 2012 - 1:37 pm · Reply

I wouldn’t go so far as to say Notes kills Evernote. I use Evernote and I’ve used Notes. There’s a big, big difference when you’re juggling 19 credits in college. Evernote rocks! Notes is good for my grocery list.