I’m writing this from my iPad Pro with the Smart Keyboard. It’s a beautiful experience. It’s also a natural evolution of where technology has been going.

This past week Microsoft has displayed that it understands this. Apple has not.

Writing here is not a perfect experience: I still think multitasking on iOS could benefit by some improvements. But I enjoy being able to reach up, touch the screen and do things. When I switch back to my MacBook Pro, I’ll invariably find myself reaching up to the screen to manipulate something.

There have been several innovations along the path of technological evolution that have sparked exponential adoption and further innovation.

“Evolutionary processes creates a capability and uses that capability to bring on the next stage.”

– Ray Kurzweil, TED (Minute 5:21)

There is a rabbinical tradition that on the sixth day, before sundown, God created the first pair of tongs–giving the world’s first blacksmith the necessary tool with which to make more. But it’s more likely that man iterated on his tools, building up to some sort of tong. This is how technology develops.

Similarly, with interfaces, we build off previous iterations of interfaces towards more efficient tools. Punch cards led to keyboards; command line interfaces led to GUIs; mice led to touchscreen.

“Progress of technical science is characterized by the fact: first, that more and more energy is utilized for human purposes, and secondly, that the transformation of the raw energies into useful forms of energy is attended by ever-increasing efficiency.”

– William Ostwald, Efficiency

Our tools progress towards being more efficient. That is what defines technological progress. Whatever issues that are lacking in touch interface are not because of it being less ideal an interface than command line (no, VIM is not better)–it is because of the implementation of the tool. Newtons were horrific, but iPhones are a beautiful experience.

Another concept Kurzweil talks about is exponential growth. Not only did RNA lead to the Cambrian period, it led to the Cambrian explosion. Not only that, but as far as we know, all cellular life has DNA, an evolutionary step past RNA. When a biological process is surpassed, it tends to be left behind. This is also true of technology. Our trains are not steam-powered anymore, nor do we use vacuum tubes in our computers.

iOS was originally forked off of OSX. It was done so because OSX was a solid platform, but somewhat over-bloated for the limited resources of the original iPhones. There were speculations about if/when they would be re-merged.

Microsoft has already done so with Windows. While I’m not a big Windows fan, I will admit that that was the right play and the proof of that is this past week’s tech announcements from both companies.

I’ve been an Apple fanboy for a very long time, it pains me to say this.

It is doubtful whether a contextual touchscreen on a keyboard provides added efficiency in your workflow–if it does, it is linear. This past year Apple has not demonstrated exponential growth, their iterations have been little more than linear, or catching up to parallel technologies. Waterproofing a watch, putting an accelerometer into a TV remote, adding zoom to a camera. These all add to the experience, but other tech is surpassing these technologies.

Microsoft, on the other hand, has been developing entirely new interfaces. Kinect tracks your movement, creating a whole new way to interact with games. Hololense will bring AR to a place where it can be useful.

The Surface Studio looks beautiful. They are embracing touch interface as the next step in the evolution of interfaces. It’s more than a linear step along the way–I don’t know if it’s exponential, but it shames a slightly augmented keyboard. It combines the power of a desktop with the interactive interface of a tablet. The result looks like a better experience than the sum of its parts. This is technological progress.