It’s hard to expect too much from a TechCrunch op-ed, but there’s no denying this headline grabbed my attention: The Post Post-PC Era: Will Apple, Google, Samsung, Amazon Or Microsoft Win? I wasn’t expecting answers—I’m not crazy—but I was expecting at least a slice of BWUH? from former something or other for Oracle, Peter Relan.

To be fair to Relan, he doesn’t spend his entire time frothing at the mouth over Android marketshare, nor suggesting that Tim Cook should set fire to his eyebrows and let Jony Ive run the Cupertino show. However, he does smack into a wall when trying to predict the ‘winner’ in tablet device distribution channels:

Though Apple owns the market now, Samsung will likely push ahead since the brand seems to be out-innovating Cupertino and may continue to do so on tablets.

That’s a pretty vague statement. Out-innovating Apple how, exactly? Is this a general claim, in which case it’s pretty difficult for Samsung to out-innovate Apple without some kind of time machine, where its designers can scoot back into the past and come out with its iOS device clones before Apple even releases its own products. (Hint to Samsung: Apple’s Time Machine is merely back-up software, not an actual time machine. You’ll have to look elsewhere or, heaven forbid, actually invent one of your own.)

If we’re talking strict distribution channels, I also fail to see where Samsung is out-innovating Apple. It’s certainly out-spending Apple, and it’s also out-flinging-stuff-at-walls-and-seeing-what-sticks-ing Apple, through selling approximately eight billion different devices. This potentially gives Samsung more widespread distribution in certain markets simply through being (in some cases) cheaper—a race-to-the-bottom that’s worked so well in the PC industry. By contrast, the iPad’s available in Apple’s growing number of genuinely innovative stores, along with being possible to buy from countless other stores worldwide. There’s also now the iPad mini, grabbing a chunk of the lower end of the market.

Still, perhaps Relan is right and Samsung will soon truly out-innovate Apple—once Apple releases something new and innovative that Samsung can innovate from in an innovative fashion.

Rob Griffiths recently penned a piece for Macworld, grumbling about Mountain Lion. He tore into two aspects of the OS: Apple’s tendency towards removing colour, and its decision to mess about with scrolling. On colour, I absolutely agree with Griffiths: colour is regularly used by people to rapidly differentiate objects. Cognitive load is lowered, enabling you to get to something far more quickly and efficiently. This is a trend in Apple’s interface design I’d like to see reversed, and perhaps it will be if the no-longer monochrome prefs icons in iTunes 11 are anything to go by.

The other points in the piece centre on scrolling. First up, hidden scrollbars:

Of these changes the invisible scroll is the worst: an invisible scroll bar is a useless scroll bar. Without a visible scroll bar, a user is required to take action to reveal the fact that a dialog or window contains additional information.

This is something that used to annoy me about iOS, and I thought it would drive me nuts on OS X. In reality, it’s bothered me little. Perhaps it’s because I’ve often attached the idea of scrolling to pages, and pages are rarely relevant any more. Perhaps it’s because in the majority of cases, it’s obvious if there’s more content outside of your view (due to the way in which it’s cropped). Maybe OS X’s little ‘scroll preview’ that pops up on opening an item that’s bigger than the viewport is enough for me. Who knows?

Where I very much disagree with Griffiths is on the subject of scroll direction.

The backwards scrolling also drives me crazy; Apple calls this “natural” scrolling, while I call it “insanely stupid scrolling.” The change was made to match the way people scroll iOS devices. However, interaction on an iOS device is directly with the screen, and it makes logical sense that the content moves the direction your finger moves.

I don’t see the opposite as being any more logical on OS X. It’s certainly what people have been used to for a long time, but I’d say Apple’s ‘natural’ scrolling makes at least as much sense. The old system evolved from you manually dragging a scrollbar. This was further abstracted on laptops that made it possible to scroll a viewport without you having to bother with clicking on the actual scroll bar. Therefore, your cursor could be over some content, and you’d be two-finger scrolling, updating the position of the scrollbar, which updated what you saw in the viewport.

The current system is simpler: you’re manipulating content. This is how things always worked on iOS, but with multitouch trackpads being extremely commonplace on Macs (since laptops are by far the most common type of Mac sold, and trackpads are also a built-to-order option for laptops), it makes perfect sense to me. You push up and the content moves up. You pull down and the content moves down. This isn’t backwards at all—and you can still, if you want, grab the scrollbar and move content that way. (Additionally, you can go into System Preferences and click [x] I HATE CHANGE—possibly actually labelled ‘scroll direction’—if you like.) As a sanity check, I asked my parents about this, whose Macs were recently ‘forcibly’ upgraded to OS X Mountain Lion when I got sick of doing Snow Leopard support. “Oh, it makes much more sense,” said my dad, dismissing any notion in my mind that scroll direction was a big deal for the most part.

On Twitter, David Marsden asked me for some thoughts on his piece on upcoming Apple kit. As is almost law these days, the Apple TV got a mention, with Marsden quoting The Loop’s Jim Dalrymple on a formal launch of an Apple television product.

Nope.

Marsden subsequently mulled over the possibility of an Apple TV SDK, and suggests that could start a progression towards a fully-fledged TV unit:

Let it sink in what the platform is about, then release the SDK at WWDC with big players on day one [… and] start the ground work for a fully fledged TV system late this year, or early next.

I’ve on occasion been very wrong about Apple in the past. I don’t still have a link, but one ex-MacUser wag once dug up my scathing dismissal of the original iPod, and I also once wrote about iPhone gaming, arguing it would end up floundering in the shadow of the DS and PSP. (Months later, I at least took my lumps and said “hey, what a total idiot I was” and set about yelling from the rooftops about iOS gaming at  every opportunity.)

The idea of an Apple TV still makes no sense to me though. Apple makes money on regular hardware refreshes. It would have to convince people to refresh televisions every two or three years. This is a very big ask. Marsden on Twitter suggested Apple would “need to have it as a screen with a swappable Apple TV brain”, but that runs counter to the Apple of today, which won’t even let consumers upgrade RAM in their laptops. The idea of enabling consumers to increase the longevity of an expensive unit by offering an inexpensive upgrade sounds more Windows PC than Apple TV.

Also—and importantly—the more interviews I do with media folk, gamers and the like, the more people talk about the ‘second screen’ taking over from the first. I don’t imagine televisions will vanish from sitting rooms any time soon, but people are now increasingly likely to watch video on mobile devices, and so concentrating effort on better iPads, iPods and iPhones seems savvier than working on a standalone television unit.

However, the existing Apple TV remains an interesting component—a relatively cheap ‘link’ to get what’s on your iOS device on to the television the Apple TV is connected to. The box itself isn’t that impressive (its innards being roughly the same as a cheap iPod touch), but what it does is modularise the ‘smart’ bits of ‘smart TV’, while remaining cheap enough to upgrade on a semi-regular basis. Furthermore, the software itself can be updated whenever Apple wishes, adding new services and content. Now that sounds very Apple, hence, I guess, why Apple’s actually released the thing!

To that end, I still don’t see an actual television in Apple’s future. Perhaps on this subject I’m lacking in imagination, but it seems no better a market to enter into than making a games console—Apple’s existing products already overlap with traditional media, and there seem few—if any—advantages in spending many millions of dollars going up against existing players.

On the current Apple TV, I expect to see more services—primarily US-centric ones—being drip-fed out over the coming months and years. I do hope Apple improves that particular situation. Although AirPlay is very handy, too many companies stupidly block video feeds, meaning the obvious tactic of starting a show on your iOS device and firing it at your TV via the Apple TV is too often scuppered. Beyond that, there’s perhaps some scope for bettering gaming on the Apple TV (most notably, reducing lag), but with the majority of iOS titles designed for touch interaction on the screen you’re holding, anything created specifically for the Apple TV will almost need to be thought of as being aimed at a different system entirely.

Microsoft’s got a new Surface Pro ad out—The Vibe:

http://youtu.be/tr3dFSzh1yU

So in case you’re keeping count:

Apple’s iPad is some kind of toy, only good for consumption, which is why Apple spends lots of its marketing dollars showing how you can do real work on the device, quickly, easily and in a fun way.

Microsoft’s Surface Pro is a professional tablet/laptop hybrid, for professionals, which is why Microsoft has spent money showing how it’s the perfect accessory to some kind of Glee/The Office mash-up, not least if your CEO has a rapper as an assistant.

Got it.

I remember when I bought my first Mac. Lucky enough in having won a scholarship (through the hugely generous family of Helen Gregory), and with parents that offered to match whatever else I put in myself, I worked extra hours like crazy to amass a suitably decent sum of cash.

The problem was then how to spend it. Back then, Mac clones were commonplace and Apple itself looked shaky. Friends desperately tried to talk me down from buying a Mac, seemingly recommending every PC in existence as an alternative.

They had plenty of time to do so. Armed with a half-dozen Mac magazines, I pored over adverts and reviews, trying to figure out the best system for me, then a budding digital-oriented artist, blissfully unaware I’d later have to figure out some kind of career in order to earn money.

In the end, I plumped for the then new and cutting-edge PowerMac 8600/250AV. It was powerful and had video input, enabling me to store 320-by-160-pixel footage at a staggering 12 frames per second. Usefully, it also had a 1 GB Jaz drive, which I’d discover on the run-in to my degree show was possibly the least reliable storage system in creation.

The thing is, I could at the time have bought any one of a dozen machines that would have sufficed. Some would argue the level of choice was great; but I’d say the ‘choice’ was in reality confusion, with so much overlap between products that there was never any clear-cut system that made far more sense than any other. There was no need for so many options. Subsequently, I got more into technology and Apple, but also elegance within design, and was thrilled on hearing Steve Jobs talk about the four-quadrant product grid: one desktop and portable each for pros and consumers.

In today’s smartphone market, most companies are the Apple of old. They issue dozens of products, arguing that choice is great. But choice impacts focus, efficiency and support for companies. For consumers, it gives rise to the confusion I mentioned earlier, and the potential for buyer’s doubt. Tell someone about a great product and they’ll want it. Tell them about ten great products, all very similar, and they might buy nothing, in fear of making the wrong decision.

This is my concern when it comes to rumours regarding a huge iPhone. Reportedly, large phones are still relatively low sellers, and Apple’s taller screen for the iPhone 5 seemed an elegant way to increase screen area without making the device itself huge. Now the suggestion is Apple could make a huge version anyway.

I don’t see how this fits with a modern Apple, and it worryingly reminds me of the Apple of old. Perhaps it thinks it needs for commercial reasons to cast a wider net, but rather than someone wanting the latest iPhone and having to choose merely which capacity is best for them (a tough enough decision), adding another new model to the line-up forces another difficult decision. Placing it somewhat between the iPhone and iPad mini (the iPad mini sitting between the iPad and iPhone) seems borderline ludicrous.

Naturally, some people will nonetheless be find making such a decision, but others won’t; and many will during ownership of their device constantly wonder if they got it right, or whether they’d have been better off with an alternative—not a very Apple scenario, but one that perhaps we will all need to deal with over the coming years.