Jump Ball

By the end of the iPad 2 launch event this Wednesday, you could see a future without Windows. Not just Office dead, or in the cloud. An alternate universe, a path not taken, a recall of global proportions. As Doc Searls may have said or something like it, dead OS walking. Everything about Wednesday was about what wasn’t yet said. As Steve Jobs moved through the material — the relentless comedy of competitors not quite getting there, of ideas bubbling up from the glass formerly known as a toy, of what was thinner, faster, smarter — the more you could see of what is going to happen to OS X, aka the Mac. The Mac is the new Apple II, it is being revealed. AirPlay is the new surface, push notification the Matrix, the combination of signals the canvas on which magic really is being practiced.