Jalkut’s article expresses a view I have heard from several Mac developers over the past 6 months or so, that the platform is healthy, and will be viable for app developers for a long time to come. My own view, which was expressed in this post, is less optimistic: I think the Mac will stay with us for some time, but will not be viable for developers of consumer software.

The ‘Underpowered’ iPad

Jalkut makes several arguments in favor of the Mac. One of the main points is that apps on the iPad are not yet as powerful as those on the Mac, and will not be for some time to come:

1. But the flip side of simplicity is limitation. Every constraint in the iPad’s design prompts a chorus of “if only I could” from crestfallen users. Customizable hardware, integration among apps, processing power, and—yes— complexity are among the Mac’s strengths. Will the iPad ever catch up? Perhaps. Given many years and countless product iterations, it could happen. But in the meantime, there’s a Mac for all of that.
   

I don’t agree with the premise that the iPad must match the Mac feature-for-feature in order to compete. Most users only access a small portion of the functionality that Mac apps offer anyway. They are content with the core features, which are usually readily ported to the iPad.

A good example of this is Apple’s own iWork suite. The iPad apps are limited when compared to their Mac counterparts, but they are adequate for 90% of users. When faced with the choice of lugging a powerful but ungainly laptop, or a lightweight but less powerful iPad, many will happily sacrifice more obscure features for ease-of-use.

The current state of affairs parallels to a certain extent the transition from the command-line interface (CLI) to the graphical user interface (GUI) when the Mac was first introduced. You could argue that in some ways the CLI was more powerful — there are many power users and system administrators who still use it — but it was the ease-of-use of the GUI that won the day. In the same way, mobile touch devices will probably come out on top, with the mouse-based GUI relegated to the realm of professional users and developers.

(The CLI–GUI migration also provides some insight into the time scale over which this could occur. It took about ten years for the mainstream to move from the CLI to GUI, the time between the introduction of the first Mac [1984] and the introduction of Windows 95 [1995]. I think the transition to touch could move faster, perhaps on the scale of 5 to 10 years.)

Healthy Mac Sales

Another common argument, also expressed in Jalkut’s piece, is that Mac sales are as healthy as they have ever been, and are still increasing at a rapid rate. While this is certainly true, I don’t think you can read too much into this when making predictions for the longer term.

To begin with, the iPad is still in its infancy, and there are holes to plug before it will be a viable replacement for a laptop computer. Probably the biggest limitation is that the iPad is still firmly coupled via iTunes to a Mac or PC. As Jalkut correctly points out, the digital hub strategy, which Apple introduced around 10 years ago, is still very much in effect. Your digital assets are stored centrally on a Mac, and transferred to touch devices over USB as needed.

As long as the Mac plays this role, the iPad is a dependent and cannot seriously compete, but how long will the digital hub remain with us? Cloud computing has become the order of the day, and it is hard to imagine that Apple doesn’t have a strategy which will eventually move all of our data to the cloud. If that happens, the need for your average person to own a Mac or PC will be greatly diminished.

It is also worth pointing out that you don’t need a Mac per se in order to use an iPad — you can run iTunes on a PC too, and more than half of iPhone/iPad users do exactly that. In other words, the Mac/PC is just a convenient storage device, and not much more than that. Move iTunes to the cloud, and most could do without the desktop hardware.

The Missing File System

The iPad currently has other limitations too. It is missing essential apps, there is no multitasking, and so on. But these issues are easily remedied, and should become irrelevant in just a few months time.

One of the more serious limitations is that the iPad has no file system visible to the user, and thus no means of organizing the vast quantities of data most of us now have on our hard drives. Until Apple remedies this, the iPad will not supplant your Mac or PC.

I suspect Apple’s solution for the iPad will not be a traditional local file system, but will be cloud based. If and when Apple reveals its strategy for cloud computing, it will likely also add features for organizing cloud storage on touch devices. If that happens, the era of the Mac as a central storage hub will come to an end.

MarsEdit

One reason why Daniel Jalkut’s post is particularly relevant is that he is arguably on the frontline of the battlefield. Red Sweater’s flagship product, MarsEdit, is the dominant blog editor on the Mac, and it is an app that would fit well on the iPad. There is no iPad version yet, but Jalkut has hinted one is in the works.

If I were Daniel Jalkut, I would make that iPad version an absolute priority. There is no decent blog editor on the iPad yet, but it won’t take long for some to appear. If Red Sweater is too slow with a port, they may lose the advantage that their existing code base affords.

A similar set of circumstances has arisen in relation to RSS readers. The dominant player on the Mac, NetNewsWire, was not given the attention it deserved on the iPhone and iPad (IMHO). The end result is that the touch platforms are now dominated by newcomers like Reeder. The risk for the longer term is that if the Mac does see a decline, apps like MarsEdit and NetNewsWire may no longer sustain a business.

Our approach at The Mental Faculty has been to embrace the new touch platforms, prioritizing them in the short term to ensure that we have a serious foothold going forward. When the iPad was released, we put development of Mental Case 2.0 for Mac on hold in order to concentrate on a version for the iPad. We are not giving up on the Mac at all — it still brings in most of our income — but we do think that ultimately the Mac will wane as a consumer device, and having a beachfront on iPad is a top priority.