Andrew Nimick - Technology consultant Andrew is an independent technology consultant whose focus is what technology can do for business and finding the best tools for the job.

With Apple selling its two millionth iPad recently, it was noted that the company now sells more devices in the IP range (iPod, iPhone, iPad) than its Macintosh computer range.
Steve Jobs has been heard to comment that Apple is a mobile company now.

None of this is a surprise. The tight correlation and control between the OS and the hardware is a fundamental premise of Apple since Jobs returned to the head of his company.
One of the first things he did was stop all third party production of hardware to run the OS. No Windows running on IBM clones.

This meant that the same integration we see in mobile phones and their software was always present in the Apple approach. It was a great part of the marketing. The idea that you could take a Mac out of the box give it power, plug it into your phone line and be connected to the web and doing what you wanted within a mere few minutes.
The connected part is important too. Apple was pushing the web very early and concentrating on making it easy to be connected and assuming you would be doing things which required you to be connected. Mac's were never supposed to be isolated from the world.

So the groundwork for the iPhone and the iPad was laid many years ago. Apple as a mobile device vendor was a natural progression of its philosophy of tight control and connection. Jobs just needed the rest of the technology to catch up.

Pundits are saying that the new iPhone (version 4) has opened the gap again between what Apple produces and what others are doing. By others they often mean Google and not Microsoft which seems to have missed the boat.

It all comes back to the natural transition Apple have made and the philosophy of user experience. While Apple talk of experience and ease of use (out of the box and using) and what you can do with it, others are still talking about what it does and how it does it.

In this the pundits are wrong. It is not that Apple has opened the gap with the technology of the iPhone or the iPad. The technology can be copied. It is that Apple has always understood the purpose of the technology and is why they have kept tight control.

Good technology should be invisible. It should let us do our tasks without creating tasks of its own. We should be able to take it out of the box and get on with using it.

That is why Apple will lead. They talk about what you can do with their products. Not what the product does. There is a difference.