To many, that’s what it is, that’s all it is, that’s all it’s a-gunna-be. I see it as a testament to Steve Jobs’ showmanship that he can show something so obvious, an obvious detection device would be off the charts, it’s needle madly flitting back and forth with the speed and ferocity of one very irritated, ink laden, jet propelled, yet indecisive, ant, and the closest anyone can come to understanding it is, “Well, it’s just like before, just bigger iddnit?”

He’s a crafty one, that Jobs. But he learns from his mistakes and as he’s said before, if you’re playing hockey, make sure your stick hits the puck and the best way to do that is to think about where the puck is probably going to be, skate there, wait for it to come slipping by and smack the living berjeebus out of it... that’ll show that puck.. sliding ‘cross the ice like it OWNS it.

SO, what, you may ask in your head voice, is potentially, you may think, the, for lack of a better word, deal? Well, you can see this clearly in the iPod line, like the nano. You know how the nano was the number one selling iPod of all time and, by recent definition, the number one selling digital music player of all time. Out of nowhere, Apple updates it. They stopped making the number one product in a segment... STOPPED I say, and released something almost entirely different. Which, of course, also went on to sell a Jobillion. The lesson learned from that is not “come out with something every year and they’ll buy it” it’s more “when you’re the best, your only competition is yourself. If you’re keeping yourself on your toes, then everyone else is going to have to be jumping to keep up with you, and you stay the best longer. Until someone lucks up and finds, say, a pogo stick”.

Where does the iPad fit in? When Steve Jobs first entered the computer industry, the rules were that you created your own box with the materials available, create your software and start your own computer company. Interoperability was not a big word on a lot of home user’s minds. As technology got better, you had to leave old hardware behind and embrace new things. Maybe throw a bone at backwards compatibility, but, hey technology marches on!

As computers sold more and more and more, those same core OS’s that were built for older, crustier, and curmudgeonlier chips were being dumped onto new chips with all their legacy parts intact. The time eventually came when companies realized that their foundation, built for their little villa by the sea was no longer able to hold up the 12 story mansion they were building on it. Two of the big players of that day were Microsoft and Apple. How they handled that defines pretty much where we are now.

Microsoft, not wanting to lose an iota of marketshare, started shoring up the edges, dropping down more concrete pads, leaving in the old plumbing and just running newer bigger pipes around and through it, then covered the whole thing in a block of steel, and started building on the steel. They wanted to make their OS better, but not in a way that would break much of the old stuff. Oh, and there were parts of that steel enclosure they told tenants (developers) not to build on as they planned to just demolish those sections at some point. They were even able to get the architect (Intel) to redo large sections of the infrastructure for them so that the creaky bits would still work reasonably well.

Apple almost went down that “build on top of the old” path, too, but then thought better of it. Why drag all of that into the future? Just cut your losses, make an altogether better foundation that will last for years and years! Something that Microsoft could have clearly done. Smallish Apple didn’t have the clout to force this through the developers, though. So, they ended up creating a system with an eye towards backwards compatibility, but were really building the next big thing. It worked for them. Build a wall around the old stuff, build a new foundation that all their new stuff would be built on and, when the time came, they were able to shut down that old section altogether, leaving only the new foundation and structures!

And that brings us to today. The iPad is extended from the iPhoneOS which is a stripped down version of... OSX. From the same foundation, they’ve pulled out all the parts that made it Mac-like, geared it towards a touch device, honed that over three versions and are now extending it again. This isn’t some deskop-OS-behind-a-touchscreen, this is an OS that expects the potential of 10 fingers on it at once and is ready to quickly react. This is possible because they made the decision awhile back to irritate a LOT of people with breaking OS9 stuff in order to clean house and start fresh.

The way I see it, Apple have never taken their skates off and are constantly moving to beat themselves. The iPad is not just a big iPhone, it’s what future Mac systems will be built on. There are those that will decry it for as long as they can (there are still some OS9 people out there still thinking OSX was a big mistake), but, when it’s all over, Apple will be on their third generation, fully touch enabled OS (with a failback to mouse based operations) and Microsoft will be still fighting with themselves to continue to force Windows to shine.

Of course, now the truth is out. They shall be coming for me soon. Wait, actually, if I’m right, they won’t be coming for me, because they don’t want people to know that I was right. So, if you see more posts from me, well, that’s as good as handwriting on the walls... or at least touchtyped on an iPad!