24th Feb 10
The iPad: Will it be a Bargain?
by David Davies
Just a little warning before we begin. I’m about to quote a lot of people, often at length. I have done my best to avoid those focussing on whether the iPad will sell or not. The more interesting question is whether it’s any good or not.
One thing the iPad hasn’t generated much of is ambivalence. There is a definite fence and hardly anyone’s sitting on it. Truth is (and stay with me on this one people) I reckon there was a discrepancy between the magnitude of the vision Apple set out at this week’s keynote event and the device they presented to represent that vision.
Fake Steve said before the keynote:
This device isn’t as obvious as iPhone. It’s kind of subtle. Which means that those of you who have done the spiritual work to prepare for it will be fine, but those who haven’t done the work, well, they’re probably going to miss a lot of this at first. So you’ll see some noise about who needs this thing, it’s just a fancy desk ornament, and so on.
This is spot on. No one really knows what to make of the iPad because the majority of people are missing what is represents and concentrating on what it is. This is a first-generation product. Think back to the first iMac, the first iPod or the first iPhone. They were all avatars of visionary products that would go on to mature. They were chicks let loose from the nest and yeah, they could fly, but could they soar? No, it took time for them to get to used to the world and the world get used to them. To paraphrase Leo Laporte, Apple has created the first computer-as-appliance. What everyone thought was Apple’s ambition – the revolution of the tablet format, is actually a much, much bigger goal.
Fraser Speirs says:
What you’re seeing in the industry’s reaction to the iPad is nothing less than future shock.
For years we’ve all held to the belief that computing had to be made simpler for the ‘average person’. I find it difficult to come to any conclusion other than that we have totally failed in this effort.
It was always implied. It began with the iPhone. This was the revolutionary step and everyone knew it, even the millions of customers who have no everyday interest in the progress of technology. The iPhone redefined what a computer could be. Now the iPad will redefine what our attitude is to what a computer should be. I haven’t been lucky to try one myself, but it’s clear from the keynote and the subsequent ‘you have to try one to get it’ reactions that the iPad is designed to be a transparent device. No longer is the computer something that sits in the corner of the house, used when required. Suddenly, it’s a device that sits wherever you need it, a see-through portal to the internet. It’s Kevin Kelly’s vision of the internet becoming something as ubiquitous and unconscious as language. The iPad might initially be seen as a fetish object – it’s new, it’s clearly a gadget – but as we become evermore reliant on the internet to live our daily lives it will also become invisible. Sure, new features will reawaken its appeal and excite us, but that’s only to make us buy a newer version. Joe Hewitt says:
Anyone who feels underwhelmed by [the iPad] doesn’t understand how much of the iPhone OS’s potential is still untapped.
…what it comes down to is that iPad offers new metaphors that will let users engage with their computers with dramatically less friction. That gives me, as a developer, a sense of power and potency and creativity like no other. It makes the software market feel wide open again, like no one’s hegemony is safe. How anyone can feel underwhelmed by that is beyond me.
‘Dramatically less friction’. If Apple was a company with the same branding philosophy as VW or IKEA, that could well be its slogan. Everything that Apple does is designed to get the technology out of the way. There is no longer any trumpeting of technology as technology, no fetishization of chip speed. Whenever Apple does communicate a technical breakthrough, it’s to illustrate the benefit to the user. Why make a big deal out of the unibody construction of its laptop line? Because it makes the Mac stronger. Why spend so much time explaining new battery technology? Because it makes the Mac last longer. How many iPhone 3GS owners know how fast the processor is in their iPhone? Close to zero – but almost all of them will know its faster than the old iPhone. Apple transforms the erudite, esoteric advancement of technology into tangible real-world concepts – stronger, lasts longer, faster. The iPhone and now the iPad take this further than that. The entire design of both devices is intended to transform the intangible benefits of the technology into something tangibly useful. To paraphrase Jonathan Ive, they are ‘a screen – and that’s it’. They are windows into real-world usefulness. The technology itself no longer matters, it’s what you can do with it that does. This is what it means to become an indispensible appliance. The key to this? Touch.
Michael Pusateri says:
Remember way back to January 2007, when the iPhone was announced? Oh Internets, you wailed and gnashed your teeth endlessly. No 3G network? No MMS? No apps on the iPhone? No replaceable battery? Oh, your complaints were endless. You were sure that the iPhone was doomed because it didn’t meet all your requirements.
And what happened? Well, Apple has sold 40 million iPhones. FORTY MILLION. They have become the largest mobile device company in the world.
So today, you moan on and on about all the features you expected and demand in the iPad. What no Verizon? No two-way camera? It’s not weightless? A full half inch thick? Only 10 hours of battery life? You make tons of predictions on the success and failure with scant details and without ever actually trying one.
As I have mentioned before, the consensus is almost unaninimous, at least among the voices loud enough to be heard: you have to touch the iPad to understand it as a product. I have to tread carefully here because I’m still a long way off getting to try an iPad for myself, but everyone who has is saying that same thing.
Jason Kottke posted a link to a YouTube video showing the variety of multitouch gestures on the iPad. Notice how the vast majority of the keynote was taken up by demoing the device, in exactly the same way that the iPhone keynote was all demo. Contrast this with, say, the MacBook Air keynote, an announcement sandwiched between these two devices on the Apple product timeline but dominated by a long spiel before the unveiling of the product, with no demo to speak. Why? Because of touch. Touch is a unique synergy of hardware and software. The iPad is only half an inch thick. This is a massive technological achievement, and yet Steve Jobs spent maybe less than a minute talking about it and close to five minutes dicking about on the New York Times website. Touch is the key to transforming our perception of computing. The iPad is the first full-size computer designed to feel like it’s not there. The iPhone is designed this way too, and because it was the first of its breed it occupies the spot reserved for ‘revolutionary devices only’. And it was, but only in the sense that it laid the groundwork for the iPad to revolutionise our thinking about computers. The App Store is a natural extension of this philosophy – you no longer open up a .dmg or .exe file to install something on your computer, you simply buy a tool that does what you need it to do and the iPhone / iPad does the rest for you. For many, this has perceived downsides.
Dan Visel understands when he says:
Apple has created a computer that’s entirely locked down. The only applications that will run on the iPad are those that have been approved by Apple. And this is one of the first computers where the user will be entirely unable to access the file system. I understand why this is possible from a design standpoint: file systems are arcane things, and most people don’t understand them or want to understand them. But this means that Apple has a complete lock on how media gets into your iPad: you’re tied into an Apple-approved mechanism.
Alex Payne understands too, and doesn’t like it either:
One of the foremost complaints about the iPhone has been Apple’s iron fist when it comes to applications and the development direction of the platform. The iPad demonstrates that if Apple is listening to these complaints, they simply don’t care. This is why I say that the iPad is a cynical thing: Apple can’t – or won’t – conceive of a future for personal computing that is both elegant and open, usable and free.
Matthew Ingram sails a different tack:
But is all of this heavy breathing over openness and creativity and the end of the hacker culture really something we need to be worried about? Hardly.
The reality is that hackers will continue to break open and get root access to things, installing workarounds and reconfiguring whatever they wish — just as they have with the iPhone. If anything, it will make them smarter because they’ll have to try harder.
There will always be hackers. The iPad will get jailbroken just like the iPhone, and people will do incredible and wonderful things with it. But you know what? My mum doesn’t give a damn whether her computer operates in an open environment or not. One day, maybe, the music she bought on iTunes before it was stripped of its DRM will stop working. She’ll just buy it again, just like my dad is busily snatching up Blu-Ray versions of his already sizeable DVD collection. You could argue that its up to those who care to protect the interests of those who don’t, but you could also argue that the only reason closed systems seem so troubling is because there are so few of them around that are any good. In its quest for transparency, for computer-as-appliance, Apple has found that the simplest, easiest, but maybe not rightest way to do this is to have total control over the experience. Its unique vertical hardware-software-support model, to use Joe Hewitt’s phrase again, dramatically reduces friction. For those who feel closed systems are inherently wrong, there is no Apple police force preventing the jailbreaking of a device. Sure, you might void your warranty, but if you’re going to change the brakes on your car that’s only fair, right?
Another thing everyone else seems to be hung up on, despite Apple’s contrary announcement, is the iPad as a device for consumption, rather than creation.
Stan Schroeder at Mashable says:
The way I see it, the iPad is not about creating; it’s all about consuming content. It shouldn’t be sold in Apple stores, it should be sold on newsstands (together with a 24-month subscription to some newspaper), in video clubs, in libraries. I honestly expected a lot of subsidized options for the device if you agree to buy some content with it, but Apple hasn’t really delivered that — yet. If I’m right, and if Apple starts doing that, most of iPad’s shortcomings won’t matter.
If this is the case, why bother investing in the creation of iWork? Why price it so aggressively at $9.99 per App, an over 50% reduction in price from the fully-fledged Mac versions? Truth is, creating is difficult, and not everyone does it. Everyone consumes, and so consumption takes priority. There’s only so much Apple can do at once. I have no doubt that three or four years down the line the iPad will have a faster processor, a hefty GPU and a hard drive more than capable of running versions of the iLife applications far superior to their desktop / laptop counterparts. Ever used multitouch on a MacBook Pro trackpad to manipulate movie clips in iMovie? Things just start making more and more sense. Once Apple has people consuming on these devices, it will have them creating. iWork was simply the most obviously missing piece of the puzzle, and most likely the easiest to transition. As soon as iLife finds its way on to the iPad – I would estimate as early as the next generation – expect to see a built-in camera and a couple of inputs too.
There was one mistake Apple made, and perhaps it can be attributed to Steve Jobs. Maybe for the first time there was a touch of humility in his vision.
As The Macalope says:
Apple didn’t set out to kill netbooks, though it may view that as a side benefit. The Macalope would argue that the single biggest mistake Steve Jobs made in the keynote was implying that the iPad was just something in between an iPhone and a MacBook. He’d argue it’s more than that.
I’d agree. No one knows whether the iPad will be a success or not. Apple has done everything it can to give the iPad the best chance possible, and there’s no doubt the keynote was only the beginning of an incredibly invasive and aggressive mindshare battle. I would, however, like to hazard a guess at what is going to determine its success, and that is the people who don’t care. The same people who rocketed the iPhone to the top of the charts need to do the same thing with the iPad, and quickly. Expect the Apple Store in your area to be entirely dominated by touch-based devices from now on.
One final thought from Jemima Kiss at The Observer, who says:
There is opportunity there but, as always with Apple devices, it will take several incarnations before the full potential is realised. We are all quick to dismiss the new, when we would learn far more by making the effort to explore and understand it.
More than this, it will take several generations of product for our thinking to catch up with those inside Apple who have worked on this device and understand its implications. People like Steve Jobs and Jonathan Ive do not use words like ‘magic’ simply to sell things. Jobs’ final words at the keynote about Apple always trying to be at the intersection of technology and the liberal arts was telling. It suggested that the iPad as a product was less about its achievement as a piece of physical technology and more about its realisation being the culmination of a philosophy and the beginning of the computer as a mature product. In some ways it doesn’t matter whether the iPad is a success or not. It’s more important that it was built in the first place.
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