User Interface Design Spotlight: Mac OS X Lion on iPhone

One of the anticipated directions  with regard to the major operating systems is the unification  between desktop OSes and their mobile counterparts.  One does not need to be a soothsayer or have a crystal ball to make such a statement as there are already clear indications that this is currently underway. The developer previews of the upcoming Windows 8 borrows the ‘Metro’ user interface design introduced in Windows Phone 7 for a dual mode OS that is optimized for both desktops and tablets. As for the Macintosh platform the latest iteration ‘Lion’ has ported a number of ideas taken from iOS over to the desktop. The result of this is that some Mac apps that are optimized for Lion end up with a user interface design that is also tablet friendly. Arguably the best example of this is iPhoto ‘11, which when viewed in Lion’s full-screen mode features a user interface design that could be mistaken for an iPad app.

How can one put the Mac OS X user interface design on an iOS device?

The trend seems to mostly be one of desktops taking user interface design lessons from their mobile counterparts. However there appears to be some user interface design elements from the desktop that at least some users want on their mobile devices. Users of jailbroken iOS devices, for example, can now tweak their device to clone the user interface design of Mac OS X by way of a mod called Ultimatum. This goes beyond just the look of the user interface design as Ultimatum is more than just a theme. In terms of functionality Ultimatum gives users a fully usable Mac OS X menu bar, dock (scrollable in this case), Finder windows, widgets, login lockscreen and more. So far Ultimatum has only been shown running on an iPhone though the app might be more useful running on the larger screen of the  iPad.