TightWind is written by Kyle Baxter. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Apple has a new ad out for the iPad called “We Believe,” and it’s quite well done.

It reminds me of something I wrote last August:

This is because PC applications work through abstraction; that is, rather than manipulate content directly, we work through three intervening pieces: our physical input devices—the keyboard and mouse, the cursor, and the application’s user interface widgets.… You do not so much work on content as give the application instructions, which actually manipulates the content on your behalf.

As a result, PCs have never felt like the application they are running. They are a computer that runs applications. The iPhone and iPad’s magic, however, is the hardware is a frame for content. There is no intermediary between you and the application, and in many cases, the content itself. You interact with the application and the content directly. Whatever application it is running, it is no longer an iPhone or iPad—it is that content. If you are using Google Maps, it is a map; if you are using Star Walk, it is the stars; if you are using CalcBot, it is a calculator; if you are reading a book, it is a book; if you are watching a movie, you are holding that movie.

Apple isn’t merely trying to build “mobile PCs”—that is, adopt personal computer paradigms for mobile use, like Windows Mobile attempted to do. Rather, they are trying to build an entirely new type of device where, for the first time in the history of computers, technology is secondary to what it does.

With these new devices, a dual-core processor isn’t why people buy them. They buy them because it can be a fantastic book. Or game. Or browser. They buy it because of what it does. That’s interesting, because it means technology is evolving away from a focus on the technology itself. Before, we wanted to know precisely how it worked, and what processor and amount of RAM it had, but now that stuff is better locked up inside, a secondary detail. Like physical tools, we aren’t concerned with how technologically advanced it is, but rather how well it fulfills its task.