Prior to the invention of the Graphical User Interface (GUI), depicting a physical desktop complete with documents and folders as an analogy of computer’s file system, by the legendary Xerox research team at Paolo Alto and it’s widespread implementation by Apple and subsequently by Microsoft, computer users had to enter commands as text. This model of computing was well entrenched and necessitated by the hardware limitations of early computers. To use such as system required a great deal of knowledge and although popularised by the Apple II and the original IBM PCs was not something that most people were could easily just pick up and use. It certainly wasn’t intuitive.

The GUI changed this. People could far more easily understand visual paradigm and the use of a mouse, icons, folders, files and applications became the future of computing. The future success of this system was not something that was predicted at the time when Apple launched the Macintosh. Even the inventors at Xerox did not anticipate its widespread implementation. People criticised the fact that it did not require a deep understanding of how the computer worked. People criticised the mouse as a device. With hindsight the radical changes that the GUI wrought seem obvious and the refinements of the past 26 years have been just that, refinements but not radical changes.

Despite the move from a command line based operating system to a graphical system computers are still hard to use. Assuming that everything is working as planned many users struggle with file systems, finding documents, connecting to networks/the internet, installing software, managing security and the myriad needs of a complex desktop or laptop computer.

Sure for users like me and probably you this stuff is second nature. We take pride in our knowledge and are puzzled when other people lack an understanding of thing that we consider basic. From my observations of users of different ages and experience a great of confusion exists when it comes to hardware, how software works and interacts with the operating system and how a system may be customised and configured. To many users computers are something magical and exceptionally fragile. People who understand computers are instilled with mystical powers often considered to be inherent ability rather than something to be acquired.

It shouldn’t have to be like this and Apple have realised this.

The iPhone revolutionised the mobile operating system: by using touch to control the operating system Apple made the computing experience tactile and more natural; by forcing users to run only one third party application at a time Apple made it easy for users to manage their software experience; and by allowing users only to install approved software from one source Apple created a secure, easy way to get new software. Using this approach Apple hid the entire file system from users. While many expert users have railed against what they see as an operating system that is closed, allows little customisation and does not allow multitasking they have missed the point that these supposed limitations are the iPhones strengths. Many people have come round to Apple’s way of doing things and the sheer volume of sales are evidence that users of all ability levels love it.

Enter the iPad and many people see an entirely different proposition. The iPad is bigger and is aimed at a segment closer to computer that mobile phone. While there is a certain reluctant acceptance of Apple’s enforced limitations on the iPhone the same arguments that met the iPhone are raised louder and stronger against the iPad.

No multitasking! Closed ecosystem! No keyboard! No file system!

The iPad isn’t there to replace a laptop or desktop. It is there to bring easy computing to people like my mother. I have no doubt that she will easily be able to understand the interface, will feel comfortable with the controls and will not even question the single third party application at a time paradigm. She will be happy to download software from an app store that is easy navigate and automatically installs the software for her. She won’t miss a file system she doesn’t understand.

We can keep our desktops and laptops, we can hack and we can install what we like, but those people like my mum who have been scared of technology up to now are going to pick these things up and roll with them. Apple will have a hit on their hands with the iPad and while other devices will have a better on-paper spec, run full desktop OSes, allow multitasking and installation of apps from any source, they won’t touch the iPad.

Just prior to the launch of the iPad John Gruber presciently made a case that Apple would not include Flash support. In the piece he described Flash as the most common source of crashes in OS X. He also made a very good case for why Flash should never be included in the iPhone OS and, in fact, why Flash is bad for the web.

In the first place it runs terribly in OS X and is a real resource hog. Abode have argued that it is not their fault since OS X’s architecture prevents them from implementing it as they wish. The fact remains that watching Flash video will make processors labour while watching the same video in high quality via H.264 or another format will barely tax them.

Secondly, and I feel most importantly, Flash is a de facto web standard that is owned and controlled by one company. HTML, CSS and JazaScript are all standards. That is they are controlled by an independent body, the W3C, and are part of specifications for web browsers. Flash, and other content plug-ins, aren’t standards and putting them in the hands of one company is a bad idea.

Apple are not going to include Flash support. Adobe would like them to and some employees are trying to make a case by showing a range of web pages requiring Flash, including a porn site, as they might be rendered on the iPad. As Merlin Mann pointed out had the post included the pages rendering as Flash instead of a jpeg they might have looked quite different. However, it turns out that Adobe were being disingenuous when they made their mock-ups since of the 8 pages they target 6 are iPhone OS friendly or have equivalent apps in the app store.

This whole argument reminded me of the proprietary HTML tags employed by Microsoft that at one time were a de facto web standard. Remember when Safari was first released? There were pages such as Internet banking sites, shopping sites for some fairly big companies, online quoting systems and other similar sites that just wouldn’t work. Similarly these sites often wouldn’t work in Firebird (the ancestor of Firebox). I can’t remember the last time a site didn’t work in Safari or Firefox. Web designers and large companies want their content viewable by everybody. In the case of Safari companies were cutting off a frequently wealthy section of their clientele by not supporting Safari. Even Microsoft have embraced web standards with IE 8.

Although this came to me last night while arguing the point with a friend Robert Scoble seems to have been similarly inspired. He makes the point that web programmers are abandoning Flash in favour of standards they know will be displayed anywhere. As one of his commenters says Flash has been a fill-in while HTML caught up to supporting things like embeddable video. Well that time has come.

HTML 5 supports tags that allow the insertion of video. So far it is only supported in Safari and Chrome, but Google and Vimeo now have HTML 5 opt-in versions of their sites. What are iPhone/iPad users going to care if they can’t access Flash games? The App store is full of games that are far superior in their implementation and specifically designed to played by touch.

Flash is ready to become an irrelevancy. Flash was useful while it lasted and it won’t disappear overnight, but the bell is tolling and it tolls for Flash.

If you look at Apple in the 1990s the game was most definitely almost up. A series of poor choices and the milking of the ageing Macintosh line for all the profits that could be wrung out of it by creating a bewildering array of models had left the company that invented the personal computer battered and torn. By 1997 Windows was the dominant computer platform and Apple was bleeding money. While not yet ready to die (Apple still had big cash reserves – a fact not often remembered in most discussions of this type) Apple was mortally wounded. Steve Jobs could see that it was necessary to embrace the one-time enemy as a friend.

Few people could foresee what would happen over the next decade. Jobs took a broom to Apple’s complex product line-up. He killed the ill-judged introduction of Mac clones that had served only to weaken Apple further. He killed the Newton and the eMate. Under Jobs Apple released the iMac whose colourful exterior and quirky lack of a floppy-drive sent ripples through the beige PC industry. Apple began to become cool. The sharks still circled, but the blood was no longer in the water.

In the years that followed Apple released hit, after hit: the iBook; the Titanium PowerBook; OS X; the iPod; Intel Macs; and the iPhone. The company’s profitability grew and grew and its ability to enter market segments and reinvent them in its own image has become legendary in the tech world and beyond. While still widely criticised Apple has time and again silenced its naysayers with success.

The Apple of 2010 is very different to that of 1997. Apple has once again become master of its own fate, it is lean, it moves quickly and seems unstoppable. Mac sales are up, iPod sales are phenomenal and the iPhone is widely regarded as the benchmark for mobile devices. And it turns out that the capitulation wasn’t the end of the war. Steve Jobs wasn’t crazy. Apple rolled over, but it was playing possum. The war was just beginning.

The battle for the desktop has waged since Microsoft first released Windows. In the 1990s they completely dominated the desktop operating system market and sucked all of the air out of the room. Apple, although still the possessor of the superior platform, was in a dead end with proprietary software and an operating system that was on its last legs. With OS X Apple produced a desktop operating system that easily made Windows XP look old, ill designed and insecure. While Microsoft was releasing service packs Apple was refining OS X and making it better and better. While Microsoft stood still Apple innovated its way to the best desktop OS in the world. People began to take notice and the battle was once again joined. Microsoft rushed to released Windows Vista, but failed miserably both in the timing of its delivery and the quality of its product.

Apple was also taking on all-comers with the iPod. The combination of iTunes software, the iTunes store and the iPod was an ecosystem that gained immediate support from customers cut off from illegal downloads through Napster and, though replicated since, has found no real competition. Apple has sold 250 million iPods since 2001 and billions of songs. Apple not only created a knock-out music player they saved the music industry. Instead of resting on their laurels, however, Apple kept innovating and releasing new models. Microsoft, the clumsy giant, turned its attention to the iTunes/iPod threat too slowly and by the time it released the rebadged Toshiba player it called the Zune had lost that battle. Apple had delivered a hammer blow. Microsoft is a strong and resilient company with massive revenue and profits. It is able to take this sort of punishment.

With the iPhone Apple took on Microsoft once more and delivered a crushing blow to Microsoft’s Windows Mobile (a platform with little in common with its desktop name-sake). Apple brought new and powerful enemies into the fray with this move. Suddenly Apple turned to Nokia, Motorola, Sony-Ericson, RIM, LG, Samsung and Palm who had been standing around bemusedly watching the fight between Apple’s David and Microsoft’s Goliath, looked them into the eye and, like a scene from a martial arts film, beckoned them into the fight. The iPhone proved such a powerful threat that the mobile companies saw that they too needed a touch phone. Apple then brought its app store for the iPhone into play along with the iPod touch. A round-house kick that knocked the dazed handset makers flying into last year.

Not content with stirring up the hornets-nest of mobile hand set makers while still in mortal combat with its oldest foe Apple has recently decided to take on Amazon by releasing the iPad. The iPad is seeking to destroy Amazons lead on eBook readers. It could be argued that Amazon started it by creating a music store, but Apple have definitely poked them in the eye. The iPad has also brought one of Apple’s oldest frenemies into the ring – Adobe. Already sore that Apple hasn’t allowed Flash onto the iPhone or iPod touch the release of a Flash-free iPad has made Adobe mad and it has charged at Apple with claims that users won’t buy an iPad unless they can view Flash web pages.

It isn’t just Adobe and Amazon who Apple have brought into the fight either. Google and Apple had been joined in a fight against a common enemy in Microsoft, but the relationship has become quite strained recently as Google released the Android mobile phone platform and then their own Nexus One handset. With the iPad Apple are challenging Google’s Chrome OS to a fight to the death. Chome is intended for netbooks and Apple has them in its sights.

So we see a resurgent Apple at war with Microsoft, mobile handset makers, Google, Adobe and Amazon. Apple is Bruce Lee – I think we know how this is going to end.

Rumours about the new Apple tablet – iTablet? iSlate? iPad? – began to snowball and an iPad shaped device began to appear. Features for the rumoured device included a 10″ touch screen, a new OS (or perhaps desktop OS X or iPhone OS X), wireless HDMI, multitasking, complex gesture input and a myriad of others. Following an invitation to the tech media to attend an Apple event to be held at the Moscone Center in San Francisco the rumours reached the pitch of wailing banshees. Only the unveiling of the as yet unconfirmed device by Steve Jobs could silence them.

And silence them he did. At least for a while.

The iPad is intended to create a new category of mobile device between the iPhone and a laptop. With a 9.7″ capacitive touch screen in a 4:3 aspect ration, a newly developed Apple A4 processor (using an ARM architecture) and featuring 802.11n and 3G wireless networking the iPad has a great set of hardware features. The operating system is, essentially, a modified version of the existing iPhone software allowing the device to immediately use applications from the 126,00 available on the app store. The built-in applications are quite different from those on the iPhone. The bigger screen and different intent of the device mean that using contacts, viewing calendar events, browsing the Internet, sending and receiving email and accessing media are implemented in a new. The addition of Pages, Numbers and Keynote demonstrated that the iPad is intended for light content creation and not just consumption. Input is via an on screen keyboard, an optional keyboard dock or a Bluetooth keyboard.

Unfortunately Apple has become a victim of its own success. So great has the impact of the iPod and iPhone been that people were expecting to see a truly revolutionary device. The digital intelligentsia had eaten up the rumours and wanted all the features it was supposed to have there in front of them. Make no mistake, this is a revolutionary device, but a lot of people can’t see it.

Apple has scored some points with its extremely tough, critical audience. Firstly, nobody expected the low US$499 price tag. Rumours had it up around US$1000. Secondly, most people seem to agree that it looks great.

The main criticism seems to be along the lines that it is “a big iPod touch”. That was my initial reaction too, but what Apple actually seem to be doing is simplifying computing using a touch interface. Most of the features that seem to be lacking now, such as multitasking, file sharing and connectivity will be added in. What we have here, perhaps for the first time, is a device that truly is computer-as-appliance. The operating system and the complex interactions that surround it get out of the way and allow a user to interact directly with what they want to do in the most natural manner possible by touch.

The iPad isn’t for everybody and it doesn’t intend to replace laptops or desktops, what it does intend to do it does well. When developers start making applications that take advantage of the large screen with multitouch more people will “get” what Apple is about.

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