Charlie Stross recently wrote up a much-mentioned article which is nominally about why Steve Jobs hates Flash, but actually about what he believes to be Apple’s overall long-term strategy. In it he predicts the death of the Mac and OS X as we know it.

When I read the article, I tweeted:

Indie Mac devs, I recommend you read this: http://bit.ly/9ZJ8Fq I have this thrilling-slash-terrifying feeling it might be true.

My friend Chad Sellers, the indie developer behind the fabulous application Pear Note, responded:

@Chris_Ashworth While bits of that post may be true, most of it sounds like dumb predictions from 10 years ago (e.g. SaaS kills the desktop)

And this morning Chad followed up with a blog post that expands on this position, arguing that “premium computers are not dying off”, and that Stross’s arguments are tired old lines we’ve heard before, and make as much sense now as they did then, which is to say: not much sense at all.

Chad’s a smart guy, and his argument made me take a second look at Stross’s article, trying to figure out why I had felt such a visceral reaction when I read it the first time.

I think I’ve figured it out.

But first, a summary of the story so far.

I believe Stross’s argument may be fairly boiled down to the following:

1. “PCs are becoming commodity items” with very little profit. Even premium hardware is vulnerable to this trend.
2. Simultaneously, software and data is moving out onto the Internet. The more we see ubiquitous wireless broadband, the less digital stuff will be stored inside the physical computers we personally own.
3. To survive the hardware profitability apocalypse, Apple must transform from a company that primarily makes money on the hardware to a company that primarily makes money on the software.
4. Conclusion: Apple is trying to build the software of the future (the AppStore ecosystem) and buying up cloud computing companies (Lala.com) which will define what software means in the next era of computing and over which they have total control. That way they don’t have to make money on the hardware, ’cause they’ll own the channel for the software.

Chad’s response is, essentially:

1. Don’t be silly. Premium hardware doesn’t die. And everything Apple does is to sell premium hardware.

(Note I say that’s his response, rather than his argument. If you want the argument, read the original.)

My take. FWIW.

You know what? Chad is correct. Stross’s argument doesn’t make a lick of sense. In addition to all the reasons Chad cites, I’ll add one more:

If we’re entering the age of “software as a service”, what the heck is Apple doing building a software channel that is tied to their specific hardware? “Software as a service” does not mean “software compiled for iPhone/iPad/iWhateverTheHellAppleIntroducesNextMonth.” “Software as a service” is hosted on the web. Using the open web standards that Apple supports. In fact, using the web standards that Apple supports so well, that they use them as an argument for why they’re willing to kill Flash. If Apple is trying to own the software sales channel, they’ve left a hole in their plans the size of the Internet. Which I hear is big.

So why did I feel so nervous when I originally read Stross?

Well, mostly I was just being stupid. I didn’t think about his argument carefully.

But another part of it was that I was focusing on small nuggets inside the larger piece. Nuggets that are keeping me up at night. Nuggets like:

• “The PC industry as we have known it for a third of a century is beginning to die.”
• “My take on the iPhone OS, and the iPad, [is] that they’re the start of a whole new range of Apple computers that have a user interface as radically different from their predecessors as the original Macintosh was from previous command-line PCs.”
• “This year, for the first time, the Apple Design Awards at WWDC’10 are only open to iPhone and iPad apps.”
• “I’ve got a theory, and it’s this: Steve Jobs believes he’s gambling Apple’s future — the future of a corporation with a market cap well over US $200Bn — on an all-or-nothing push into a new market.”

Why would I focus on these? They’re mostly just conclusions that, as I mentioned, he fails to back up with good arguments.

But they’re conclusions I have been stumbling toward before reading Stross’s piece. Which painted them in big red blinking letters between the pale gray glow of the arguments around them.

My bad.

FWIW part 2.

So here’s the thing. I actually do think that the cloud computing revolution is happening right now. Yes, people have been predicting it for a long time, but, you know, “the information superhighway” got that silly name way before it actually deserved it. Sometimes the end game takes a lot less time to see than it does to implement.

Back when Jesse Kriss and I were first building QLab, we had the wondrous experience of discovering what a truly beautiful programming ecosystem felt like. We’d need to solve tricky—but boring—problems, and Apple had already solved them. Just a quick search through the documentation and we’d find the Cocoa framework we needed. It felt like magic.

Well, Jesse and I just started building a new product, except this time, yes, the product is on the web. And that magic feeling? It’s happening again. “Gosh, it would be really handy to use HTML 5 web sockets to push update notifications.” “Have you seen PusherApp?” “Gosh, in this spot all we need to do is send a lot of email, and be sure it all just works.” “Golly, those MailChimp guys already do this really, really well.” “What about multi-state load balanced servers that abstract away nearly all the system administration tasks for getting our application up and running and robust?” “Helloooooo, Heroku.”

Jesse likes to say (and I like to agree with him), that we are entering the Golden Age of Internet Development.

And none of this matters.

None of this has anything to do with whether Apple might be planning the demise of Macs as we know them.

After all, Macs are as good a way as any to reach out into that magic cloud of computers in the sky, right?

Actually, that might be the problem.

Computers suck. And it has nothing to do with cloud computing. And Apple knows it.

Here was my response, in three parts to the announcement of the iPad:

Starting to see the critiques roll by: lack of feature X, high price tag Y. First off: folks, remember the iPod & iPhone? Yeah, same deal.

Second: Interaction design. Third: Interaction design. Fourth: Interaction design.

You cannot separate an application from the way you interact with it. It’s just that this part was never a differentiator before. Now it is.

There is a revolution happening here that is relevant to the argument at hand, but it’s not cloud computing or “software as a service”. Those things are good. Those things will happen. Those things don’t matter.

What matters is that computers suck. They just suck. They’ve sucked for a long, long time, and they’re not really getting any better. It’s hard for us to remember how bad they suck, because almost all of us have gotten used to it.

It’s hard to remember how complicated and non-obvious a computer really is. It’s hard to remember how many layers upon layers of mental models and abstractions we have built up in order to let us manipulate the electrons inside this box. And I mean all of us. Not just your grandpa who has no mental model, but has memorized the precise series of button presses that allow him to write and send an email. Not just the mildly geeky computer user who is generally savvy but doesn’t really understand directory structures very well. I’m talking about those of us who program the damn things. Yes, I know some basics of what is happening to the electrons down inside that chip, but to really follow the story of one electron up and down every layer of abstraction until it comes out my printer as my airplane boarding pass? That shit is real, bro.

I am telling you I have watched my mother-in-law, who has chosen not to use computers, try to use a mouse. And I am telling you that she watched her hand move the mouse, and then she looked up to try to find where the arrow had gone. And I am telling you that this makes a lot of sense if you think about it.

I am telling you that COMPUTERS SUCK.

And not only does Apple know it, but

Apple is doing something about it.

This, friends, is what thrills and terrifies me.

If you’ve used an iPad, you know that this is a different way of connecting your brain to a computer. It’s a better way. And if you haven’t used an iPad, you just have to watch a 2-year-old doing it, and you can take the hint.

“Better way? Don’t be an idiot! Have you tried typing on those things?!”

Stay with me buddy, staaaaay with me.

Yes, I know. The iPad is not the pinnacle of human/computer interaction. Typing on them without a physical keyboard stinks. And, well, it turns out it’s actually pretty handy to be able to type words into your computer easily.

I’m not saying the iPad is perfect. I’m not saying that everything the tech industry made up until now was garbage. Yes, computers basically suck, but there’s a reason we use them. Once you get over the suck hump they’re actually pretty handy. And some of the ways we interact with them today are not completely terrible.

But a new day is dawning. And Apple is basically doing it single-handedly. They are redefining what it means for a human to manipulate the electrons in the box, and they are making it better. Significantly better. Paradigm-shiftingly better.

And here, speaking as an independent developer who runs a small software company based on Mac OS X, is where things get… interesting.

When the paradigm shifts, something will be left behind.

In his rebuttal, Chad rightly points to Apple’s most recent earnings report.

Check out that last graph. Down there at the bottom. The one of total revenue. iPhone and iPod? Whupping. Mac’s. Ass.

Simple computers with the world’s best interaction design have, almost overnight, become Apple’s single biggest moneymaker.

[Interjection: DEAR PRODUCT TEAMS THAT STILL THINK INTERACTION DESIGN IS NOT THE MOST IMPORTANT FEATURE ON YOUR FEATURE LIST—HOW ARE YOU MISSING THIS?]

Apple is not just creating a new kind of computer. Apple is not just creating a new market. Apple is creating a new era of computing — the era of friendly machines. And for those of us who work in this field, this is awesome — in the original sense of that word, where admiration and apprehension mix in equal measure.

But you’ll always need a Mac to run Photoshop

Photoshop? You think Photoshop, or a whole line-up of high-powered desktop apps, can stop this?

Maybe. It’s possible. But as far as I can tell, your Photoshop may not save you.

Look at that graph again. Think about the complexity of the desktop environment. Think about how much it costs to earn that Mac-based revenue. Look at that iPhone and iPod revenue. Think about the comparative simplicity of that ecosystem. Think about how much more money they’re going to make on those devices in the future. It’s not like the iPhone/iPad revenue is flatlining.

Apple is not shy about killing off a successful product to replace it with a new, more successful product. (Hello, iPod Nano.)

Would Apple kill the Mac and OS X ecosystem to focus on the 80 percent of computing activity that works great on the new devices?

No? How much would you be willing to bet? Would you bet the company?

I’ll say this. I definitely don’t know the answer. But I also definitely will not bet the company that the answer is “no”.

Edited May 9 to add: On reflection, and on the observations made in the comments, I’m inclined to refine my outlook on this to the following: Apple may be able to throw out a bunch of desktop software that requires the old style of computer, but the one thing they can’t afford to throw out are the developers, who (currently) still need Macs to write software. So if Photoshop doesn’t save you, XCode may.

Tommy Howells once said:

Truth wanting to lead a quiet life often settles between the extremes.

And that’s probably not a bad bet on this one either. In the mental roadmap I’m trying to form for my company, I’m settling most comfortably near the prediction that Macs will become more of a niche, rather than disappear completely.

But it sure is interesting to imagine what a Mac-less future might look like. And if Apple eventually moves the development environment for iPads on to the iPad? Watch out.