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Torsten Curdt’s weblog

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The Great iPad

So there it was the great event on January 27th in 2010. Since them many articles have been written about the new child in the Apple family of devices. I hear the praise and I hear the #fails. Yet I’ve got the feeling that many people are missing the point.

ipad

THE HARDWARE

With the iPad Apple has again shown it knows how to do hardware. What about the front side camera? What about USB or whatever else people are complaining about? Sure! They could have included them. They didn’t – maybe they will some day. This is no big deal IMO. Get over it.

WILL PEOPLE BUY IT?

Is there are market? Well, it is a sexy little thing. And we all know people love to buy Apple products just for that. So for some people it’s just yet another luxury gadget they need to have.

The big and unanswered question I have: Is it to complete or to replace what we have right now? As excited as I am about seeing the Star Trek touch tablets becoming a reality… Will a student write his thesis on this device? Will a manager do his presentation on it? Will a designer do an illustration on this? Will a developer write code on this? I guess the answer will most likely be “no”. It looks like it is great for consuming content. But are we supposed to have a MacBook an iPad and an iPhone for the other tasks?

And how practical will it really be? I cannot yet see myself reading a book on a normal computer screen (that’s why e-ink was invented). But we will see – time will tell. The iPad certainly is something you can more easily hand out to the average Joe without getting support calls. As we have many of those Joe’s around this could actually make the iPad a hit.

THE BIG CHANGE

The iPad is quite a change in how you interact with your computer. But nether the less – after the iPhone this step is just evolutionary. What is so much more surprising to me is how many (smart) people scream “Hurray!” when Apple is taking yet another step towards the trusted computing age.

I applaud the changes for making multi-touch technologies more prominent in areas beyond the phones. I applaud Apple for the hardware. But I am certainly not a fan of the App Store concept as it is of today.

Not being able to install what I want on my own phone was already a little big of a stretch. Not being able install what I consider appropriate on my own computer is not a vision I am looking forward to. Neither were many people when Microsoft was pushing for such a thing in …was it in 2000? Maybe times are just different. Maybe more people are OK to just give up freedom for control and security these days. (Sad times!) But certainly this also has a strong business impact.

How can some people chose to ignore this? Just because this is accepted practice for Playstation and friends this does not make it a future worth looking forward to. I agree computers should become more intuitive – more easy to use. In my book this does not necessarily need to go hand in hand with having one gatekeeper to rule us all.

1. February 2010 | , ,

  • That's not really my point. It may or may not be a great success with the less tech-savie people. We will see. (I think discussing that before it's even released is really quite pointless). What I find almost disturbing though (and that is my point) is how the "techno-geeks" (as you call them) are cheering and looking forward to finally entering the world of trusted computing. We somewhat (barely) accepted this for the iPhone because it's a phone - now it's spreading. And I am not looking forward to see this take over.
  • Gopher
    I think the thing that we techno-geeks forget is just how large the non-technical community is out there. In lots of ways the iPad is not a device for you and for me but for those people who do just want something that will work (as you point out). Just look around you at how many people are using iPhones now and the ease of adding new applications (even though it is controlled through the app store) does mean that people can do just that.

    This thing might take until the 2nd gen model to really take off (like the iPhone) but once it does we'll see all those doomsayers crawling back into their caves.

    After all - who really needs a portable device that plays MP3's? :-)
  • arthurguru
    uV ajeD notweN - back to the future.

    I wish it better success than my indestructable (so far), much abused and cheap $300 netbook.
  • Yeah... that's pretty much what annoys me about the iPad, just phrased differently. When you say you can't install what you consider appropriate, I say it's useless. By which I mean I can't do with it what I want, and part of that is installing software that enables me to do stuff.

    That's not my only problem with the iPad, granted. But when it comes down to it, that's the worst issue.
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