If someone at Apple said…"Let's design a newer more revolutionary version of the Mac OS that requires the computing horsepower of computers from 2011 and newer." If this were done…I bet that we would see some REALLY COOL stuff!!!
For me as a long time Mac User. These sort-of annual OS releases…and lackluster improvements...have taken a lot of the excitement out of upgrading to a new OS version. The last OS version release that I found even "semi-exciting"…was going from OS 10.5 to 10.6. Most of the excitement of this OS release was that it would took up about half the HD space as 10.5…and it was the first OS version to get rid of all the PPC code…thus it would run better & faster on Intel based Mac's. Probably other features too.
For me. OS releases 10.7, 10.8, 10.9, and 10.10 have all been "lackluster". To be honest…OS 10.7 & 10.8 could have been updates to Snow Leopard. And had OS version numbers of 10.6.9 and 10.6.10. Mavericks & Yosemite have made some forward progress..and these could have been versions of 10.7. And thus the upcoming OS release (El Capitan)…could be OS 10.8.
Apple is just trying to make the backward compatibility of new OS versions go too far back.
Sure…free is nice.
But at some point we need to move forward…take more advantage of abilities/horsepower of newer computer models…and give us something to REALLY get excited about!
- Nick