Apple. iOS. OS X. Steve Jobs. WWDC. App plus Screen equals Domination.

I understand. You wanted hardware. Bright, shiny hardware. Of course you do. We're men, a form of advanced gorilla. Hardware, shiny pretty hardware, makes us happy, brave, covetous. Guarded, fierce. Better.

And all Apple gave us today was software.

Worse. All the nasty bits of software. APIs and features and enhancements and bug fixes and modifications.

That's no fun.

I mean even the numbers, and there were lots of numbers, including lots of big numbers, were almost all, as numbers are want to be, only relevant by their relativeness:

• more apps
• more APIs
• more carriers
• more features
• more sales
• more money for songs we already have

But as Apple fans know better than anyone else, more is most definitely not better. More is not magical. Less is magical. Where was the less?

As usual, Jobs, the magician, kept our focus elsewhere, this time on the numbers, as he and Apple performed their magic. It's just that in this case, as is so often the case with Apple, the magic, even for those of us intently trying to not be fooled by the slight of hand, happens in slow motion. 

Yet there amidst all the numbers, all the presentations, all the adulation of today's 2 hour WWDC Apple event, and as the stock, already low, fell lower, Apple made its case for smartphone and Internet and media and technology primacy. 

Amongst the numbers and the features, Apple revealed that it's devices, its platform(s) is superior. Once again. That it's sales will continue to grow, along with its margins. That it will gain new customers, take customers away from existing competitors -- most notably RIM and probably Nokia -- and that it will grow in the enterprise. All the features and APIs and presentations confirmed this.

The magical part?

The magical part was not in creating a new platform. Nor, a la Microsoft, merging two distinct platforms to serve distinct devices, from mobile to desktop. iOS gets better. OS X gets better. Similarities, where they should exist, come into focus. But we can't even (now) expect OS X and iOS to ever become one. Because -- and here's the magic -- these platforms, iOS and OS X, are not the operating sytsem.

The operating system, that rare kind of software even us hairy men can (almost) grasp, has disappeared. Or very soon will. The cloud. The app. The screen. These, together, now comprise the operating system. And that is what Apple revealed today.For those paying attention. And that is where the magic can be found. In their initial analysis of today's WWDC presentation and Jobs' speech, it appears that few analysts have picked up on this. So far, only Jon Gruber, near as I can tell:

Apple’s [vision] is about native apps you run on devices. Apple is as committed to native apps — on the desktop, tablet, and handheld — as it has ever been. Google’s frame is the browser window. Apple’s frame is the screen.

Oh, and myself. As I have stated here repeatedly, the future for Apple, particularly, and the Internet generally, is the cloud + app + screen. Hocus pocus:

• "The future of Apple in three words: app plus screen" (May 2011)
• "Smartphone as a service" (April 2011)
• "Thank you Steve Jobs and Apple" (Feb 2011)
• "Counter Bitchslap" (Jan 2011)
• "Billions and billions served" (Jan 2011)
• "He who controls the screen controls the universe." (Dec 2010)
• "It's all about the screen" (July 2010)

As I wrote last year:

when Steve Jobs is laying in bed, wondering how to get under Steve Ballmer's skin, or how to out-innovate Android on some specific function, it's from a different starting point than the one you and I might have. And I'm beginning to wonder if his starting point is:

every screen and everything that could be placed on a screen.

That is what today's presentation was about. Controlling every screen. Via the laptop, tablet, smartphone and television (soon). 

Don't believe me? Fair enough. Perhaps I am merely convincing myself this is the case. It's not as if Jobs actually said this. iPhone, iPad, MacBook; these are products after all. Hardware. ANd, clearly I'm biased. Yes, I'm always looking for the magic. Yes, today's presentation was, contrary to what I've suggested above, rather platform-centric. Which is, I think, more Jobsian slight of hand.

As I wrote a few months ago:

In the long arc of Steve Jobs' career, it has always been thus. Which is why I think a final act, in a career filled with destroying the present to re-make the future, Jobs will seek to destroy the very notion of a platform. 

Thus, when I review Jobs' presentation today, and look at the clear path of enhancing and integrating all Apple devices, with app stores, cloud-based services, new developer tools, the continued clear focus on the app, which I have long said is the *primary* means of accessing the mobile web and that the mobile web is the *primary* means of accessing the web, well, it's hard not to find evidence that, for Jobs, the platform -- the operating system -- is the screen. Not the device.

And Apple hardware and Apple 'operating systems' and developer tools and iTunes and the App Store and all the many superior Apple tools, and now Cloud City, are designed to optimize this new reality; a platform-less platform.

All those features and numbers, like: $29 for a major OS upgrade. Apps, more apps and better app tools. Your Twitter and tweets, photos, To Do's, data, books, Android-like notifications, costly legal streaming music, synchronicity. Yes, yes, very nice.  

But for me, it was all apps, cloud, screens. Which is the future of Apple and, possibly, the future of the web. No HTML 5. No talk of standards, of open v closed. No concept of Internet v television, say. Or of download v cloud-based.

The desktop metaphor ruled our PC world. The app metaphor ruled the smartphone world. Today's presentation and the path Apple is on appear to be extending the Apple vision not merely over all Apple devices, but of the Internet in its entirety. 

The smartphone is the computer. The mobile web is the web. And now...

The screen is the operating system. 

Forget iOS. Forget OS X. Forget merging the two. Forget, for the moment, hardware.

What we saw today is the culmination of Steve Jobs' dream. Not only to build the world's best and largest computer company. But to destroy everything. Music. Movies. Reading. Games. Software. Work. Play. Magazines. Buying. The Internet.

And have them all collapse inside a sleek, thin, fast, powerful, covetous piece of hardware. That with each iteration becomes more and more solely, a screen.

Controlled by Apple.

The screen, and what is on the screen, and how it is presented, and how it responds, is all that matters. And, right now, Apple does this better than anyone else. Focus on smartphone sales numbers and the sizes of app stores and you fail to see that the smartphone wars are now the first shots in the Internet wars.

Who will win?

Really, it's much too soon to say. For all Apple's sales growth they continue to make getting still one more iOS or OS X device, a safer decision, not merely a cheaper one. For consumers, small businesses, large enterprises. Across all devices, all manner of content, instantly, securely. Which is great. They are not resting on their laurels. No one makes better devices than Apple. Only Amazon, ironically, is close.

And it was Apple, yes, Apple, that created the app metaphor. No matter how big Android Market gets, say, the app is not core to their business model. Nor to their understanding of the Internet.

Which is why, ultimately, my money is on Apple. 

The browser, the 'web app'; these, I expect, to be marginal in the next phase of the Internet's evolution. As I have said for two years now, the app is the *primary* means of accessing all the resources of the Internet, which is all the resources we use. I see no end to this in sight.

Until yesterday, we all assumed, myself included, that cloud + web was the future. Now, in the glow of a rather by-the-numbers WWDC presentation, I think cloud + app will rule our world. The cloud is the backend, the app is, for lack of a better term, the operating system (when you include app, app tools, App Store, iTunes, iCloud and payments/subscription and user management services), and the screen is the device.

In such a world, Apple, with superior app tools, an app-focused business model, superior screens and not one OS but two, optimized for the specific form factor, is ahead of the curve. Yes, they could be off-course. Though I suspect they just lapped the competition.

Apple is making the decision to buy any Apple product, for any type of user, as painless, cost-effective, powerful and joyful as possible. While re-configuring how we perceive and access and pay and interact with content and the Internet.

Perhaps none of this is magical. But there are now at least two fundamental revolutions taking place. Mobile is remaking our lives and re-configures the enterprise. The Internet, open or closed, real-time or static, hyperlocal or untethered by the cloud, social or personal, free vs paid, is busy re-recompiling itself.

In both these revolutions, Apple is at the forefront.