I’m still quite happy with my iPhone, although I’ll pay attention when the next annual hardware refresh is released. I don’t quite “get” the attraction of the iPad, but perhaps it’s because I’m not typically swayed by glamour. Eric Raymond is amazed, but not at the device itself. He’s amazed at how closesly it approaches the Platonic ideal of a Steve Jobs device:
The iPad is the ultimate Steve Jobs device — so hypnotic that not only do people buy one without knowing what it’s good for, they keep feeling like they ought to use it even when they have better alternatives for everything it does. It’s a triumph of style over substance, cool over utility, form over actual function. The viral YouTube videos of cats and two-years-olds playing with it speak truth in their unsurpassable combination of draw-you-in cuteness with utter pointlessness. It’s the perfect lust object of postmodern consumerism, irresistibly attractive but empty — you know you’ve been played by the marketing and design but you don’t care because your complicity in the game is part of the point.
This has to be Steve Jobs’s last hurrah. I predict this not because he is aging and deathly ill, but because he can’t possibly top this. It is the ne plus ultra of where he has been going ever since the Mac in 1984, with his ever-more obsessive focus on the signifiers of product-design attractiveness. And it’s going to make Apple a huge crapload of money, no question.
Sorta related, from BoingBoing:
Althouse wants to write on the iPad, and that’s probably its weakest area. Taken alone it is fine for quick notes, but not for a couple hours of typing every day. If you’re going to do that you need a resting platform that will give the device the proper “keyboard” angle, but I think the better solution is a smallish Bluetooth keyboard.
I’ve messed around with the device, imported a few, and so on. I am a bona fide Jobs hater who would be happy if he got kicked in the nuts repeatedly, but I think his firm has it right with that device. There are a lot of great potential applications for the iPad. It has about 90% of the functionality of (and better battery life than any) laptop, at a fraction of the weight. The only thing it truly lacks is removable media ports, but you can get files onto or off of it very easily via a service like Dropbox.
An iPad plus a Bluetooth keyboard is still several pounds lighter than a small notebook and accessories, easier to lug around, has no booting/sleep mode waiting time, and more functional. It will be a huge hit for consumers and road warriors, and could be a big hit in certain industries where paper copies still reign because laptops just aren’t the right vector (whether because of form factor, size, weight or toughness) to provide an electronic replacement. I’m thinking of things like approach plates for pilots, large architectural drawings you’d use on a construction site, medical charts for health care professionals, and so on. The iPad would be great in all of those roles.
I don’t expect it to make huge inroads into ordinary businesses because most business still fits comfortably into the “clump of people tied to desk for 8 hours” model and there’s little economic rationale for most industries to evolve beyond that. But for those businesses where a significant segment of its employees have to be in the field or otherwise not tied to an office, it will be a godsend.
It’s tablet computing done right. It does have form with function, but Apple’s not going to be the company to provide (for example) aviation charts, an application to access CAD drawings, or an app for accessing and and sharing patient medical information across a whole health centre. That’s all the domain of third party developers, as it should be. If anything I would say that the iPad is Apple’s first device whose marketing undersells its potential across a whole spectrum of roles.
And when it comes down to it, reading or watching things (blogs, traditional media, whatever) is much easier and more comfortable sitting on a couch somewhere, holding a lightweight book-like device, rather than having to break out a laptop or sit at a desk in front of a computer. Using a laptop anywhere other than a sitting configuration (table, desk) sucks. That alone gives these types of tablet devices plenty of room for growth.
I am not a guy whose has any love for the company or its egomaniac CEO, but to say the iPad has “form without function” tells me more about the creative horizons of the writer than the inherent limitations of the hardware.
Comment by Chris Taylor — April 22, 2010 @ 21:12
Thanks for the long and thoughtful response. I think you’ve taken the award for most detailed comment on the new blog . . .
As you found recently with your iPhone purchase, it’s not perfect but it is very, very well-designed. My iPhone is the first Apple device I’ve ever owned (I used Apple II computers on a couple of jobs back in the 80’s, and Macs on another). I’m considering the trade-offs involved in upgrading to the next version when it becomes available in Canada, as it means signing up for another 3-year contract with Rogers.
I don’t think I have a need for an iPad, so the huge media splash has been of only passing interest to me. The implications for other devices that provide the same kind of intelligent and effective user interface concepts is where I think the long-term positives reside.
Victor is going off to university in the fall, and Elizabeth promised to get him a tablet PC. Oddly, he’s not interested in the iPad, but instead has his eye on an HP device.
Comment by Nicholas — April 23, 2010 @ 08:58
As far as the new iPhone goes my criteria really boils down to one thing. Data plan cost. If they resurrect the old iPhone launch plan (6B data for $30 per month) then I would buy it for the data plan alone, not for the virtues of the new device. I can always unload the old iPhone for a couple hundred bucks, and being locked into a $30-per-6B monthly plan for 3 years is no biggie considering they are charging $40 for 500MB of data right now. But without any plan incentive, it doesn`t cost-justify (for me specifically).
I don`t have a need for an iPad either, and haven`t bought one for my own use, but I do think they will have tremendous market impact. And if we are really lucky, they will help us to leave behind the `windows` GUI model that everyone—Mac and Win platforms alike—have been wedded to for the past 30 years.
Comment by Chris Taylor — April 24, 2010 @ 14:34
I don’t know how that came about, but “6B” in the comment above should read “6GB”…
Comment by Chris Taylor — April 24, 2010 @ 18:00