DiogeneX

The latest version of Mac OS X (Lion or 10.7) was released today. If you’re looking for a review, please read John Siracusa’s always excellent one written for Ars Technica. Instead, I’ll offer just a few loose thoughts on what I believe we may see over the next several years.

• Larger iPads. Cheaper iPhones (I know… I know…).
• A fork of iOS to support different user interface idioms made possible by larger screen sizes. As an example, Mission Control’s UI strikes me as the application switching interface that the iPad should have.
• Macs and Mac OS continuing as products for higher-end applications and use cases.

iPhones may very well go the route of the iPod, with a model for every purse and purpose. But the iPad’s route, I believe, is quite different. The more I use one, the more I believe that its iPhone-fueled jumpstart was just that. Perhaps it’s better to think of the iPad as the ultimate do-over: all of the Mac’s early promise with 30 years of hard-won wisdom.

Some customers chose to purchase an iPad instead of a Mac, but even more decided to buy an iPad over a Windows PC. There are a lot more Windows PCs to cannibalize than Macs. - Apple COO Tim Cook

At a glance, the iPad is the simplest product to duplicate. After all, it’s just a sheet of touch-sensitive glass with a logic board and giant battery attached.

So why is it proving so difficult for competitors to capture its magic?

Simply put, the iPad challenges the technology industry to build a cooperative product. A cooperative product being one in which you cannot immediately discern the conflicts between all of the teams responsible for the end-product.

In a post-iPad world, a product isn’t going to be good enough if its hardware is outstanding but the software calls in sick. Or where the software is intriguing but the hardware is slow. Or worse, where the marketing team comes up with something so outlandish that it defies comprehension.

In management theory, there’s a well known construct called the Project Triangle. The idea is that a product has three potential properties (Good, Fast and Cheap) but can only optimize two of the three. I’d argue that the iPad is responsible for a new paradigm: Expressive, Understandable and Cheap.

Expressive (which I’d also call macro-functional) means a user is able to accomplish their tasks, however specific, with minimal compromise. Software quality and, to some degree, quantity make this possible.

Understandable means a design (both software and hardware) that emphasizes simplicity without compromising power. Users aren’t forced to fight through a morass of options to accomplish simple things. This requires an opinionated, rigorous editorial process carried through both the product design and its supporting ecosystems.

Cheap means price, value and the cost of a user’s time. If a product requires a mod-kit right out of the box to feel useful, it has already failed. Yes, even if it costs $249.

The essence of the points above are little more than a distillation of Rams’ 10 Principles for Good Design.

Yet instead of optimizing two of the three properties, Apple has managed to optimize all three. So I’ll leave you with a riddle: how can you balance a triangle on all three sides?

Aaron Holesgrove, in a contributor piece for Silicon Alley Insider, titled “Why Windows 8 is not Fundamentally Flawed as a Response to the iPad,” takes the typical path of defending Microsoft’s latest innovation against a mob of Apple fans. In short, he lambasts the critics’ logical inconsistencies, the simplicity of Apple’s toy-like products, and deftly suggests the entire operation is part of an agenda.

I won’t do a point by point shred of Aaron’s post. That’s not necessary. But I do think the most important point for proponents and critics alike is to understand that the jig is up.

The iPad is indeed a toy. But not in the Thomas the Tank Engine sense of being fit for small children alone. Rather, we’ve arrived at an era of computing where computers need no longer be intimidating or inscrutable.

You pick them up and start using them. They welcome casual exploration (“What happens if I tap this, or this?”). There are no frightening blue screens of death or frantic calls to tech savvy relatives.

Perhaps these tablets do lack the complexity masquerading as power that the Technical Tories like to wield as a death blow critique of the iPad and its ilk. But the dirty, undeniable secret, is that the iPad just works (now, straight out of the box). Some might even call that magical.

Windows 8 does look good. But I’d be lying if I said that the sight of legacy Windows wasn’t as jarring as being approached by someone hot, only to be asked if you might be interested in their hideous, fat friend.

The fact is that I want many platforms to succeed, because ultimately that yields more choice and a better overall experience for customers. But without a re-think of the fundamental assumption behind years of Windows software (complexity = power > simplicity), I believe Windows 8 will suffer the same fate as its cousin, Windows Mobile 6.