iPad, first thoughts
- Image by Getty Images via Daylife
My first thought about the iPad, triggered by Tim Bray: Nothing Creative.
At the first glance I could not agree more with Tim. There’s nothing revolutionary about this whole iPad thing, it just let’s you “consume the web”.
At the other hand, this looks like the perfect execution of the whole “web tablet” idea which surfaced ten years ago (2000, 2001) and then almost vanished. I think the iPad is the culmination of evolutionary innovation, helped by Moore’s law.
For geeks there’s not much fun, no way to tinker and extend. Then, as soon as you see it as a nice consumer device and have it lying around your coffee table this might be a very nice gadget (at a pretty hefty price).
For me there are also a lot of unanswered questions, like why would I want to have this lying on the coffee table, operating under my identity? Security and privacy anyone? Or is it not meant to share after all?
Finally, why do we (yes, including me) always have such a strong opinion about Apple products? They must be doing something right in marketing (remember: HP launched a very neat tablet, the Slate, only a week ago). Some introspection: why are we disappointed when we get the perfect version of something wished for 10 years ago? Is it because it’s too late and we’re already way beyond with our thoughts?
Update: Mark Pilgrim describes his disappointment about the closed nature of the iPad as Tinkerer’s Sunset – be sure to read this excellent writeup!
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Jens de Smit are discussing.
Jens de Smit 09:35 on January 28, 2010 Permalink
I think we’re disappointed because there’s nothing revolutionary new here. We’ve seen many a tablet computer fail and the iPad does not seem to have that “something extra” the iPhone had when it was released. Back then, iPods were hot, mobile phones had become a necessity and Apps were something we wanted even when we didn’t know they existed. The iPhone combined them all into a package too small and handsome for most people to imagine. The iPad on the other hand just looks like an overgrown iPhone with the ambition to take over your laptop’s function but without the technical specs to do so.
Still, we should not forget that the device that delivered Apple its current status, the iPod, was just as unrevolutionary. MP3 players in all sorts and sizes were a hot item in the eraly 2000’s, but manufacturers were struggling with the price of flash memory, the problem of user interfaces on tiny displays and the then still geeky image of downloading music of the internet. At the right time, when music downloading was becoming much more mainstream, Apple introduced an MP3 player with massive storage, a very good user interface and the right marketing. It wasn’t anything particularly new, just executed so well that it set the standard for portable music players for years to come. When more and more people get their hands on the iPad, we’ll see if Apple pulled off the same quality with the iPad.
Joe 10:11 on January 28, 2010 Permalink
@Jens thanks for your comment! I do agree that the iPod was not a (technical) innovation at all, but the interface was revolutionary and caused me to expect that as a minimum. So when my iPod died and I was left with only my Sony Ericsson “walkman” phone, I just stopped listening to music and podcasts, just because the bad interface became prohibitive to use the device.
Now on Android the music player is just decent and even usable.
Maybe we’re already used to the whole concept of (multi-)touch interface on a small portable device to see the iPad as something revolutionary. Let’s see how this will fly and if Apple indeed keeps the lead here (I’m expecting big things from the Android powered netbooks, not in the least because of the more open ecosystem where third parties like Layar have much more possibilities to innovate).