Apple comes out with something attempted by the Wintel cabal 4 to 5 years ago. (The Windows Tablet also had magazines and many other parallels with iPad.) However, Apple does it with a much better design, presentation, and end-to-end experience.
Techies who use tech so easily that they don't need the above so much proclaim that such things were already around, we can get better spec devices that do the same thing for cheaper, etc. (I call this the CmdrTaco syndrome.)
My prediction: this is only the first step. The functionality of the Newton/Microsoft Courier is the way forward. Integrate a camera with the thing, and we'll have augmented reality in a practical way. (One that doesn't make you look like a Cyberpunk RPG nerd in public.) I can imagine executives keeping their personal assistants on tap through iChat with this thing. I can imagine the same executives sitting in meetings with this propped up on its docking station/stand like a teleprompter, their staff listening in, and popping up relevant information for them. (And if someone develops a software bluetooth keyboard/touchpad App on the iPhone, they can do discrete chat under the table to ask their staff specific questions.)
Actually, integrate two cameras with the thing, so you can iChat and stream the video of the meeting/presentation.
Apple should do some Bonjour integration with Keynote, so that you can do a low-bandwidth sharing of someone else's currently playing Keynote presentation on a different through iChat by just pressing a button. The presenter could flip a setting and multicast the slides. Anyone on the same WiFi subnet could then share it with iChat partners automatically.
It's a lot of fun reading posts like this and mentally replacing any statement along the lines of "existing tablets do this already" with "existing MP3 players do this already".
yes. and to go after another one of matt's points, i doubt the people at nokia, motorola, et al were all that scared of the iphone in the beginning, either. ed colligan, then the ceo of palm, famously said "We've learned and struggled for a few years here figuring out how to make a decent phone. PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They're not going to just walk in." no matter how cool the iphone might have seemed, they just couldn't fathom it doing well in the tightly-controlled mobile space.
having said all that, i agree with matt's main point. i'm a little underwhelmed with the ipad as well. the scuttlebutt was that apple had tried making tablet computers for years, but jobs always torpedoed them with "what is this for, other than reading the web on the can?" since they were finally releasing a tablet, i figured they had thought up a compelling use case, other than reading the web on the can. personally, i'm not seeing it.
seems foolish to bet against jobs, though. if he thought it was a good product, i think it might catch on.
That quote from Colligan is from before the iPhone was announced. Matt's entire point was that after it shipped it was clear to everyone that this was the future of phones, and that other cell phone makers were scared. History has shown that that is precisely what they believed because 3 years out every mobile phone maker has an iPhone clone. On the other hand, Matt is saying that after the iPad was announced, most mobile PC makers did not think to themselves "how on earth are we going to go up against this" (whether they are right or wrong is of course another story). I agree that its not like every tablet/netbook owner now wants to throw their tablet away and get an iPad (the way a lot of phone owners wanted to throw their phones away and get an iPhone), however this may be because their simply aren't a lot of tablet/netbook owners or its a young market or whatever.
"...most mobile PC makers did not think to themselves "how on earth are we going to go up against this""
What I've been hoping ever since yesterday is that someone should release an "iPad" with a heavily customized open source OS on it. Add some Amazon integration (ala iTunes for books/music), customize the main apps to suite the form factor and a semi-open repository/app store for extra apps.
Several such machines were demo'ed (usually by chip-manufacturers) at CES earlier this month. The marketing blitz around the iPad makes it much more likely for someone to take these and build an actual end user product. Possibly your telecoms provider would want to sell you one with a contract and their branding.
There appears to be a distinct lack of touch based 'remixes' of Android or Ubuntu though.
To be fair, it's also fun listening to people predict how successful the iPad will be, and mentally replacing every mention of "iPod" or "iPhone" with "Macbook Air" or "Apple TV."
Isn't it ironic that everyone thought that the iPad was going to bury the CrunchPad, but the CrunchPad was vastly superior in every way -- and cheaper.
The iPad is still going to bury the CrunchPad. First of all, no one outside of geek circles has heard of the CrunchPad, TechCrunch, Fusion Garage, Juju or whatever the hell other name that thing is going by these days. Whether it's superior in every way or not couldn't be any less relevant when hardly anyone knows anything about it. Is that thing even going to see the light of day? If so, does anyone know what it's going to be called or where it can be bought?
I agree with your assessment of Apple's tablet, but I think you underestimate their position. The vast majority of consumers simply don't have the awareness of such issues to even care. To a degree, the same criticism applies to the iPhone and it's been an overwhelming success. Competing with Apple is no small task. Features aren't enough when they have market share, mind share, are able to set trends and have a marketing department that has convinced the world they are the only company able to do the things they do.
You're right, of course. Market share and mind share are important. But this is something new, and products like this have to go through the diffusion of innovation from early adopters to get to the early majority and I personally know of no early adopter who is happy with this thing (all of whom had an iPhone when it launched, etc). The word among early adopters is "bullshit". I don't care who Apple is, or who they think they are, they can't beat that.
You're confusing what I'm saying. The Crunchpad is a dead project. What I meant to say was that a year ago we thought they would be competing and that Apple's tablet would be the superior albeit pricier.
The irony I'm mentioning here is that if the Crunchpad had launched, the iPad would be inferior in every way: feature set, pricing, etc.
I understand, but if the Crunchpad had actually launched, perhaps something about the iPad would have also been different? Maybe Apple would have delayed it, or added some of the features/functions they are holding back for V2 to the initial release.
The Crunchpad has really never been more than vaporware (in essence). So any speculation about coulda/woulda/shoulda comparisons is kind of a pointless effort.
The history of the tech landscape is littered with visions and reality. I don't mean to be overly critical of your post, I'm just saying that I've long given up on comparing Vendor X's spec sheet or demo video to Vendor Y's actual shipped item.
How so? I'm looking at the JooJoo tech specs:
https://thejoojoo.com/sites/specification
compared to the iPad tech specs:
http://www.apple.com/ipad/specs/
...and I'm not seeing "vastly superior in every way", or "cheaper". Both are $499, JooJoo has an edge on screen size and resolution, USB port, plus a camera that the iPad lacks. But the iPad has a 16GB hard drive compared to the JooJoo's 4GB, a battery life that's twice as long and is nearly one pound lighter.
That's just going from the listed tech specs. I sincerely doubt the JooJoo is faster or easier to use than the iPad, nor do I think they will develop anything close to the App Store.
Same story as with the iPhone. When it first came out I laughed out loud: $600 for a locked in device with a crappy network? No thanks. Guess what my phone now is?
I think the conventional wisdom for Apple products can be applied here: don't buy the first gen device. Think about it this way, right now the iPad starts at $499. I mean that's almost two netbooks... On the other hand what if the next generation one is 2-3 times cheaper, with a better screen, etc. Where I wouldn't buy a $500 iPad, I might consider a $200 iPad.
Don't hold your breath for a $200 iPad. Apple will most likely add more features to the lineup, but keep the prices the same. That's why I still can't afford a single Apple product.
The iPad might be a lot more like the original iPod rather than like the iPhone. I don't think Creative or Nomad were cowering in fear after Apple's presentation in 2001.
The Apple of 2001 is certainly not the Apple of 2010, so it won't be all that similar, but relativly slow yet steadily accelerating uptake coinciding with constant evolutionary revisions seems plausible.
The only difference is that in 2001 not many cared whether the iPod would become a success or not. Apple was still the Mac company, that's no more the case today. If the iPad uptake is relativly slow we will most certainly see dozens of "iPad dead" articles within the first month the device starts selling.
"Anyone who has an iPhone, Android, or WebOS phone will tell you that web surfing on it is somewhat painful. Far less so than on the Treo 650 we had previously, but still no picnic. There’s all this pinching and swiping. It’s kludgey. Even the sites and apps designed for it entail fat-fingered misclicks and slow page loads."
I don't know if he owns an iPhone but he's wrong about web surfing. I often wish I could navigate on my desktop they way I do on the iPhone. Double tap to zoom is a killer app.
The problems mentioned there 1. small click targets, and 2. slow page loads are instantly and trivially fixed by a big screen and faster hardware.
I'll also note that despite the multi-touch hype I never use the pinch gesture while surfing the web on the iPhone, the auto-zoom double tap works in basically every situation.
From the post: It’s no more convenient than a laptop. You can use it pretty much only when and where you could use a laptop.
A bit hasty there. This is something that you can actually carry around like it was a Frommer's guidebook. Put a camera on this form factor, and you have the potential for some really kick-ass Augmented Reality. That's not something you can do with a Laptop. (Unless you're willing to look very dorky. http://amzn.com/B001G713NO )
With such a light form factor and a freaking month of standby, you can treat this thing like a journal or a sketchpad. At $15 a month, college and high school students can actually afford to connect this through 3G. (If Apple is smart, they'll student discount this thing like mad!) You can basically replace your phone use with Skype IMs for paging and do your heavy voice communications when you get to a cafe with WiFi. Not something that I would want to do. But my broke-ass violinist bandmate working at a technical bookstore? Yes, he'd do that in a heartbeat.
If Apple can take a cue from Facebook and co-opt the College crowd, the High School crowd will follow, then everyone else. We'll have angsty teens writing on Facebook walls from cafes, posting their Brushes sketches, Skype calling their girlfriends.
There was an HN discussion recently on what you understand and know and assume, and extending that expertise out into areas where You Have No Clue, and how that goes badly wrong for smart people.
iPad isn't aiming for us members of the nerd herds that are using laptops and netbooks and for whatever reason we're hauling them around; it's not a laptop replacement. Duh.
It's an eFrame for your desk that you can do stuff with.
It's a data entry device for the back of an ambulance or in an ER.
It's a device that can replace a rack-n-stack LCD console in a server room, or that can sit on an operator's or guard's desk or maître de's podium, showing status.
It's a device your mom can use for pictures of the kids, and for hosting cookbooks and recipes in the kitchen.
Add a cash drawer via that dock connector and...
Its an instant and portable Point-of-Sale device; the Apple folks will have these all over the Apple Stores just as soon as they can.
It's a dorm TV.
It's for a bunch of tasks we haven't even yet thought of.
Most of us nerds suck at this non-nerd UI stuff. And we can assume that what we want and what we understand and what we need is what everybody wants. And that isn't necessarily reality.
Whether Apple hit their target markets here remains to be seen. But I can see use.
Very much agree with your statement. I can see a ton of use for this device, I think it's another great step towards integrating the web and computers into daily activities and non-desk-work environments.
Specs alone just aren't the way to win people over or to judge a device like this. The experience matters and the iPad offers an experience custom-tailored to tables, unlike other slates where Windows 7 is slapped on without modifications.
30 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 73.1 ms ] threadAlso, it did sell more than 10 millions units by the end of 2008 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:IPhone_sales_per_quarter_s...
Apple comes out with something attempted by the Wintel cabal 4 to 5 years ago. (The Windows Tablet also had magazines and many other parallels with iPad.) However, Apple does it with a much better design, presentation, and end-to-end experience.
Techies who use tech so easily that they don't need the above so much proclaim that such things were already around, we can get better spec devices that do the same thing for cheaper, etc. (I call this the CmdrTaco syndrome.)
My prediction: this is only the first step. The functionality of the Newton/Microsoft Courier is the way forward. Integrate a camera with the thing, and we'll have augmented reality in a practical way. (One that doesn't make you look like a Cyberpunk RPG nerd in public.) I can imagine executives keeping their personal assistants on tap through iChat with this thing. I can imagine the same executives sitting in meetings with this propped up on its docking station/stand like a teleprompter, their staff listening in, and popping up relevant information for them. (And if someone develops a software bluetooth keyboard/touchpad App on the iPhone, they can do discrete chat under the table to ask their staff specific questions.)
Actually, integrate two cameras with the thing, so you can iChat and stream the video of the meeting/presentation.
Apple should do some Bonjour integration with Keynote, so that you can do a low-bandwidth sharing of someone else's currently playing Keynote presentation on a different through iChat by just pressing a button. The presenter could flip a setting and multicast the slides. Anyone on the same WiFi subnet could then share it with iChat partners automatically.
having said all that, i agree with matt's main point. i'm a little underwhelmed with the ipad as well. the scuttlebutt was that apple had tried making tablet computers for years, but jobs always torpedoed them with "what is this for, other than reading the web on the can?" since they were finally releasing a tablet, i figured they had thought up a compelling use case, other than reading the web on the can. personally, i'm not seeing it.
seems foolish to bet against jobs, though. if he thought it was a good product, i think it might catch on.
colligan quote here: http://www.palminfocenter.com/news/9110/colligan-laughs-off-...
What I've been hoping ever since yesterday is that someone should release an "iPad" with a heavily customized open source OS on it. Add some Amazon integration (ala iTunes for books/music), customize the main apps to suite the form factor and a semi-open repository/app store for extra apps.
I'd buy it in a heartbeat.
There appears to be a distinct lack of touch based 'remixes' of Android or Ubuntu though.
But no, the iPad is going to bury itself because it's locked-down and feature-anemic. Any competitor can beat this, and many are coming.
The Crunchpad/JooJoo seems like a dead project to me, so it doesn't take up any space in the forefront of my thoughts.
The irony I'm mentioning here is that if the Crunchpad had launched, the iPad would be inferior in every way: feature set, pricing, etc.
The Crunchpad has really never been more than vaporware (in essence). So any speculation about coulda/woulda/shoulda comparisons is kind of a pointless effort.
The history of the tech landscape is littered with visions and reality. I don't mean to be overly critical of your post, I'm just saying that I've long given up on comparing Vendor X's spec sheet or demo video to Vendor Y's actual shipped item.
That's just going from the listed tech specs. I sincerely doubt the JooJoo is faster or easier to use than the iPad, nor do I think they will develop anything close to the App Store.
I think the conventional wisdom for Apple products can be applied here: don't buy the first gen device. Think about it this way, right now the iPad starts at $499. I mean that's almost two netbooks... On the other hand what if the next generation one is 2-3 times cheaper, with a better screen, etc. Where I wouldn't buy a $500 iPad, I might consider a $200 iPad.
The Apple of 2001 is certainly not the Apple of 2010, so it won't be all that similar, but relativly slow yet steadily accelerating uptake coinciding with constant evolutionary revisions seems plausible.
The only difference is that in 2001 not many cared whether the iPod would become a success or not. Apple was still the Mac company, that's no more the case today. If the iPad uptake is relativly slow we will most certainly see dozens of "iPad dead" articles within the first month the device starts selling.
I don't know if he owns an iPhone but he's wrong about web surfing. I often wish I could navigate on my desktop they way I do on the iPhone. Double tap to zoom is a killer app.
I'll also note that despite the multi-touch hype I never use the pinch gesture while surfing the web on the iPhone, the auto-zoom double tap works in basically every situation.
A bit hasty there. This is something that you can actually carry around like it was a Frommer's guidebook. Put a camera on this form factor, and you have the potential for some really kick-ass Augmented Reality. That's not something you can do with a Laptop. (Unless you're willing to look very dorky. http://amzn.com/B001G713NO )
With such a light form factor and a freaking month of standby, you can treat this thing like a journal or a sketchpad. At $15 a month, college and high school students can actually afford to connect this through 3G. (If Apple is smart, they'll student discount this thing like mad!) You can basically replace your phone use with Skype IMs for paging and do your heavy voice communications when you get to a cafe with WiFi. Not something that I would want to do. But my broke-ass violinist bandmate working at a technical bookstore? Yes, he'd do that in a heartbeat.
If Apple can take a cue from Facebook and co-opt the College crowd, the High School crowd will follow, then everyone else. We'll have angsty teens writing on Facebook walls from cafes, posting their Brushes sketches, Skype calling their girlfriends.
iPad isn't aiming for us members of the nerd herds that are using laptops and netbooks and for whatever reason we're hauling them around; it's not a laptop replacement. Duh.
It's an eFrame for your desk that you can do stuff with.
It's a data entry device for the back of an ambulance or in an ER.
It's a device that can replace a rack-n-stack LCD console in a server room, or that can sit on an operator's or guard's desk or maître de's podium, showing status.
It's a device your mom can use for pictures of the kids, and for hosting cookbooks and recipes in the kitchen.
Add a cash drawer via that dock connector and...
Its an instant and portable Point-of-Sale device; the Apple folks will have these all over the Apple Stores just as soon as they can.
It's a dorm TV.
It's for a bunch of tasks we haven't even yet thought of.
Most of us nerds suck at this non-nerd UI stuff. And we can assume that what we want and what we understand and what we need is what everybody wants. And that isn't necessarily reality.
Whether Apple hit their target markets here remains to be seen. But I can see use.
Specs alone just aren't the way to win people over or to judge a device like this. The experience matters and the iPad offers an experience custom-tailored to tables, unlike other slates where Windows 7 is slapped on without modifications.
1) I didnt own an iPhone
2) I didnt own a MacBook Pro
3) It had at least 1 camera
4) It was hackable or could run any OS X app
5) I could use it for general purpose storage
Maybe iPad 2.0 will have some of these, as someone posted above... I think this is just a first step and future versions might have some of the above.