thoughts on the ipad

Posted on Fri., January 29th, 2010, 2:24 AM

For people’s digital needs, I think the iPad, as is, will do most of what everybody needs, and everything most people need. The specifics of how it does these things is why it’s going to become the default “at-home” digital device for many people.

Apple sells the iPad as a device for web browsing, email, photos, and video. Out of the box, it also provides good calendar and contact management. For most people, at home, that’s what they use a computer for. If you need to do something else, 1 of 140,000 available apps might fit the bill.

The iPhone does all those same things, and when I first got it, I remember thinking it could replace a computer for many people. Pre-iPhone, I used to tote my laptop around the house just so I chould check email and browse the web. I use the iPhone for most of that now; however, while it’s easier than carrying my laptop, the small screen size is limiting. For example, if I ever need to do serious web browsing, I use my laptop.

Netbooks and tablets (iPads will be one of many soon to be release tablet devices) will compete in this middle-ground form factor arena between traditional laptops/desktops and smart phones. The biggest differences between these competing devices is form factor and OS.

Regarding netbook vs tablet form factor, I think it’s similar to flip-phones vs touch-screen phones. It’s pretty obvious who’s winning that battle.

I think the OS is the biggest advantage for the iPad. For most people, dealing with computer file systems are hard. This applies equally to Macs and PCs. For my parents, if it ain’t on the desktop, they don’t know what to do. And good luck managing individual files like downloads. If someone emails Gemma’s mom an attachment, even if she’s previously downloaded it, anytime she wants to view it, she fires up the browser and downloads it again. There will be four copies of the same attachment saved to her desktop. She’s totally unaware that it’s ever been saved to her computer. To her, those files are in her email. You don’t want to see her try to transfer photos from her digital camera to the ‘My Documents’ > ‘My Photos’ folder; even if she gets them there, there’s no chance she’s ever going back to review them. Same goes for word docs, spreadsheets, and music. Forget about installing/uninstalling programs. To her, there’s no difference between applications and individual files, and navigating a file system is a nightmare.

The iPhone/iPad OS hides all of that. As far as the user is concerned, there is no file system. Need to view an email attachment? Open the Email app. Want to save a photo? It’s automatically saved to the one place where you also view photos, the photos app. Literally, any iPhone/iPad does EVERYTHING my parents do on their computer, and they never have to search for a file, navigate “Start” > “Programs”, or figure out whether to “Open” or “Save As”. The significance of that can’t be over-estimated. The iPhone/iPad OS makes computing more natural than it’s ever been.

Sure there’s no Flash, no camera, no standard USB, and no multitasking, but overall, to me, those aren’t real deal breakers. When people say “no Flash”, they almost certainly mean no video (Hulu, etc), but this should resolve itself soon with the pending explosion of HTML5 video. As for USB, if you really need it, you’ll be able to buy a USB dongle. Irritating for sure, but technically you can do it.

Plus, Apple’s done so much right that I have to give them credit and assume they have good reasons for not including those things. Remember how long it took copy-and-paste to get to the iPhone? It wasn’t that they didn’t want to; they just hadn’t gotten it exactly right, and it wasn’t worth waiting for. Now that it’s here, copy-and-paste on the iPhone is probably the best touch-based solution I’ve seen.

I guess it all comes down to this: the iPad won’t do everything your laptop does. It’s not supposed to. However, for most people, it will do everything you do on your laptop, and it will do it better.

– justin

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