Wednesday, February 24 12:00 AM ET

Apple Moving Macs and MacBooks to iPhone OS Soon

By Brian Briggs follow me on Twitter.

Cupertino, CA - Apple announced that concurrent with the arrival of the iPad, all Apple laptops and desktop computers would begin shipping with iPhone OS instead of OS X.

Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing Phil Schiller said, "Unifying the platform across all our devices from the lowly iPod Touch up to the most powerful Mac Pro will create a familiar user experience for all Apple customers. Removing the complexities that bother the most seasoned Mac users, will boost productivity to unparalleled levels."

Schiller thinks this move will broaden the appeal of Apple's Macs beyond their core demographic. "Once people see just how simple they are to use we'll have them hooked," he said. He also felt it was the company's only option. "We weren't going to get OS X to run on an iPhone or iPad, so this was the only logical choice."

Some Mac users were excited by the move. Zedrick Affenburg of the Mac Users Group in Fairfield, Virginia said, "I can't wait to see what I can do on iPhone OS with a mouse and keyboard on my 27-inch dual-core iMac. I bet it just screams. And I'm really excited that my iMac just became a gaming machine with all those iPhone games that'll be available!"

Others, like Paul Frankenmiller of West Bloomfield, Michigan, weren't so sanguine. "I like my iPhone, but I'm not so sure about this move," he said. "I'm going to upgrade, but only because I've been programmed to do that."

Many think this guarantees that multi-tasking will be available on the next iteration of iPhone OS, but Schiller made no indication of any such upgrade.

Schiller said that Apple would continue supporting OS X through the end of 2010, but at that point all Macs need to upgrade to iPhone OS, or "risk unrecoverable formatting of their hard drives."

Apple's stock was down on the news.