the ultimate online exercise system!

Quite without anybody really noticing, Apple has undergone something akin to a Damascene conversion. And what really disappoints me is that the company which could easily make the most out of this unprecedented shift doesn’t appear to have noticed either. Yes, that Other Company – you know: Microsoft. Which makes me think that those who have recently criticised Steve Ballmer for a lack of true technological awareness (or even market awareness) may be closer to the mark than I’d realised.

For decades, the Apple user interface has always been characterised by a standard approach: a file-centric approach. Ask an Apple user what application they used to produce a particular file and they often won’t be able to tell you – for them the application is subsumed beneath the UI’s focus on the actual data. Which is why the Finder has always enjoyed such pride of place – the Finder is where it all happens.

Actually, the difference from Windows is not that gigantic – many Windows users are just as confused about the difference between the operating system and the applications that run on the operating system. Ask a Word user what they used to produce a text document and more often than not they’ll say something like “oh yes, well, I use Microsoft Windows, you know”. Clearly the graphical user environment encourages a seamless merging of experiences – when it works well, applications become almost invisible. It’s only when it doesn’t work that the differences between applications become significant.

Apps, schmapps…

Now all that has changed – with the advent of the app. Suddenly the application is everything, and it’s the operating system that’s disappeared into the background. What’s even more amusing is that the concept of Finder has also more or less disappeared. I am talking, of course, about Apple’s mobile platform, the new iOS that runs under the bonnet (that’s hood to you, U.S. readers) of the iPhone and the iPad – and soon, if the rumours are to be believed, of the MacBook Air and other impending products.

In Windows, Microsoft had already made strenuous – if ultimately futile – efforts to discourage users from accessing Windows Explorer. In fact, they relegated Windows Explorer to the Accessories subfolder of the Programs folder in a real effort to bury it completely. Ironically, Explorer has made a major comeback in the latest version of Windows, Windows 7.

But in newly mobile AppleLand, the Finder is nowhere to be found – in fact the many different apps available for the iPhone platform are each more or less obliged to maintain their own little walled gardens wherein their own individual collection of files must reside. Recent system updates have allowed a modicum of sharing between different apps, but let’s be clear: it’s not exactly plain sailing.

Empowered developers?

This shift in philosophy is absolutely fascinating. It’s been hugely empowering for developers, of course – the most popular apps effectively create their own little worlds in which users will happily spend a lot of time, building up habits and a concomitant devotion to the app that can only benefit the developer in the long run.

But where’s Microsoft? Why isn’t the Great White Shark pointing out just how amusing it is that Apple – of all system developers – has suddenly “seen the light” and moved over to an app-centric approach? An approach, in short, that has hitherto been associated most closely with Microsoft and the legions of software developers who wrote and still write for Microsoft’s various Windows platforms. What an opportunity for an “I told you so” moment!

Instead, mesmerised and possibly terrified by the amazing – and long-lasting – effects of the Steve Jobs Reality Distortion Field, nobody at Microsoft appears to have noticed this fundamental, earth-shaking shift. Or if they have, they certainly haven’t made very much noise about it…