Apple could merge iOS and OSX next year, says analyst

By Ricardo Bilton | August 3, 2011, 10:45am PDT

www.zdnet.com/blog

If you have spent any time at all with Lion, the latest upgrade to OSX, you may have noticed how much like iOS the whole deal feel as times. It’s not bad, exactly - just strange. It’s also evidence that Apple could one day merge to two platforms.

But would Apple really go that far? That’s the theory supported by Jefferies & Co analystPeter Misek, who says that the move,whichcould happen as soon as next year, would both improve Apple’smargins and make it easier to share content across devices.

Only problem with that theory, of course, is that Apple already has a way to make it easy to share content across devices: It’s called iCloud. Apple wouldn’t need to merge two distinct operating systemssolelyfor that reason.

More likely is that the move would make it as easy to use as Mac as it is to use an iPad - a major boon for the less tech-savvy consumers out there. Merging iOS and OSX would make the process of moving from and iPad to a Mac seamless. And that’s the very sort of thing customers have come to expect from Apple.

So Misek is both right and wrong. Apple very well could merge iOS and OSX, though the move wouldn’t have anything to do with iCloud. Nor is it likely to happen as soon as 2012.