Just the other day in Cupertino, Calif., Steve

Jobs was giving a keynote to a packed room of journalists, bloggers

and other media personnel. Things started off as usual, with Jobs

sharing several statistics with the audience and then starting the

parade of developers to help show off the new software they were

releasing. Apple iLife ’11 was talked about the most with its new

features and how it makes editing movies and music all that much

easier. 

It was after this iLife ’11 announcement that

Jobs got into the nitty gritty. It was at that point he revealed

the identity of Apple’s next OS, the Mac OSX Lion.

He revealed the name and then started to talk

about some of its amazing features with his “We really think you’re

going to love it” attitude. He started talking about how the

company is trying to combine the iPad and its Mac computers as much

as possible.

At first, I remembered a rumor about how there

was going to be a touch-screen iMac coming out, but as he got

further into it, I dismissed that idea. This was something more,

this was something earth-shattering. This was the Mac App

Store.

It’s as plain as it sounds, an App Store for

your Mac. This sounds like a logical step in the right direction;

however, this is just a signal of what’s to come. Apple is famous

for making both consumption devices such as the iPod, iPhone and

the iPad, as well as content-creation devices with its MacBooks and

iMacs. But by giving its computers the App Store, too, I’m sure you

can see where this is going.

Apple makes way too much money by selling you

music, movies and apps to not put those three things for sale on

your computer system, too. Give it maybe one more generation of

products, and pretty soon you’ll start up your laptop and it’ll

look like an iPhone or iPad homescreen. The overall functionality

of your computer will be limited to what you can buy from the App

Store, and although this will make it easier to use, it will

severely limit the use of the machine.

Now, of course people who create the content

Apple will sell you will still need to able to create such things

on some sort of special-edition Mac, or you can still use your PC.

But this just points out the direction Apple would like to take the

industry — with a walled garden, total control, limited

functionality computers, phones and other electronic devices.

This keynote will be forever known as the day

the modern operating system as we know it came to an end. Now of

course, Apple only has 20 percent market share, with Microsoft

Windows and others claiming the other 80 percent. However, at which

point does Microsoft see the truckloads of cash that Apple is

generating and think to themselves, “We’d like that, too”?

Consumers get a say in this as well: If you

don’t want a locked-down machine, don’t buy a Mac. With bad numbers

from quarter to quarter, Apple could have no choice but to change

its model. Only time can tell.

Oh, and did I mention Jobs released a new

Macbook Air?