“Apple’s choice of name for the new OS X drew a few comments and one particularly interesting observation from Keith Blount developer of Scrivener at Literature & Latte,” Karen Haslam writes for Macworld UK. “He said: “One of the most significant announcements of the keynote was something that seems superficial: the change of OS X code names from cats to California place names. When Apple reached Lion, it seemed to imply that OS X was nearing its end: here was the ultimate version of OS X, the king of cats – how much further did they plan on taking the OS? The switch to a naming convention with plenty of life left in it is a welcome sign from Apple that they think there is likewise plenty of life left in OS X. As a Mac lover and developer, that makes me very happy.”
“What many developers picked up on is the fact that a significant number of changes in OS X are geared towards power users,” Haslam writes. “This new focus on power users comes after years of an apparent focus on the consumer and specifically iOS. CEO of Boinx Software Oliver Breindenbach suggested: ‘It looks like a solid release and to my relief it seems that it will keep catering to the power user and not being dumbed down to follow the consumer lead of iOS.’ Bare Bones Software CEO Rich Siegel echoed that sentiment: ‘It’s great to see that Apple’s commitment to power computing for professionals is stronger than ever.'”
“However, there were some concerns about one new feature in particular. Security concerns about iCloud Keychain,” Haslam writes. “Readdle’s Igor Zhadanov noted: ‘With iCloud keychain Apple made a strong move to managing your digital identity via iCloud. Once you have your passwords generated and saved for you by Apple, at some point you no longer know the credentials to the services you use. Instead, you will rely on iCloud ID to access your secure data. Apple takes a huge responsibility of managing users identity properly, and some users may be not comfortable with that news.’ SecureMac rang some warning bells, noting that: ‘There are some great new features in OS X Mavericks that are very exciting and should make a lot of developers happy, however with the recent revelations concerning the NSA and the PRISM data collection system, some features may give users pause – such as entrusting all of your passwords to the cloud.'”
Read more in the full article here.
