An entertaining read, and for once a strong opinion is combined with some thoughtful explanation as to why the author's circumstances may differ from the reader's.
With respect of iPads for moms and grandparents, I am also a bit doubtful. Since a lot of web sites probably don't work as expected (ie no Flash, among other things), wouldn't that be confusing to the noobs? I am waiting for the first review from an iPad-Mommy.
My wife is dubious. She doesn't like the lack of Flash. She doesn't like trying to type on the software keyboard.
Her parents, definite technophobes, were intimidated by it. The first thing they wanted to look at was a slideshow on smugmug.com, some pictures of their granddaughter. Also Flash. They looked at me incredulously as I explained to them that you couldn't view the slideshow on the iPad. They tried to use the navigation on the website, but the navigation links were small and adjacent to the shopping cart link. At the height of their frustration, I pulled out my MBP so they could watch the slideshow on it. The thought of explaining to them how to set up their iPad to sync photos gives me chills.
OTOH, my 3-year-old LOVES it. She can use a mouse and a trackpad, but she has to concentrate and make deliberate movements. On the iPad, she flies. She can get to her favorite apps and watch her videos in a flash. There are lots of downsides to having this device in a toddler's hands, and I'd never let her use it unsupervised, but that's an aside from the usability issue.
a slideshow on smugmug.com, some pictures of their granddaughter
I have a feeling that if the iPad sells well, the "why do it in HTML when we could do it in Flash" style of site will die out. It's no consolation right now, of course, but I wouldn't complain if that ends up happening (and, really? Flash just to show some pictures one after another?).
Ehh...I'd say that, if anything, web developers don't want apple dictating how they design their websites. The reality is that the overwhelming majority of people aren't HN readers and really don't care that adobe has changed their CS5 pre-order app to flash. They like going to smugmug and having it just work.
Assume adobe released a hardware platform and it didn't support javascript. If somebody were to suggest that the entire web development community was going to abandon javascript in order to allow adobe's platform to reach the saturation required to make it the "standard", then your argument might make sense.
As it stands, the iPad exists in a state that makes it almost unusable for the overwhelming majority of web users (at least as anything more than a novelty, much like web browsing on the iPhone)
I was responding to a claim that the iPad is "almost unusable for the overwhelming majority of web users (at least as anything more than a novelty [...])".
If mom's savvy enough to use a computer aside from her iPad then she can use that computer to get to the sites she wants to go to that her iPad doesn't support. If she's only savvy enough for an iPad, then she's still better off being able to get to the non-Flash parts of the web than nothing.
Graceful degradation. People would absolutely suggest that, and charge dearly for implementing it. Companies would pay for some of it, and in 5 years, it would either die out or there would be some sort of "cgi on rails"-framework that automates some minimal version of that, that looks horrendous and sorta-kinda works. Probably ASP.net. Then we'd have hobbyists and ux professionals hand-crafting everything on a lamp-like stack, and everyone else would get along with upgrading backends.
ECMAScript may be google's horse in the race, but it's still just an add-on.
Also people tend to forget that Adobe pretty much owns the whole creativity/content creation chain. Magazines, Books, Websites, Images, HTML, CSS, JS, Flash, whatnot. All those things are currently done pretty well with Adobes products alone. Granted, i'm no magazine editor and i don't do flash. I wouldn't use Dreamweaver for writing websites, but i can understand quite well when designers like to use Adobes tools as they provide them with pretty much everything they need.
And this is something that I cannot believe apple seems to have overlooked. They haven't just pissed on some little obscure software company, they've pissed on the software company that the people they need to win over (content creators, designers) use for everything.
Definitely true. We've all been barking up the "don't use Flash unless you need it" tree for years, but it hasn't really made a difference.
Bottom line seems to be that people love the way Flash sites look. If we can achieve that differently, bully for us, but most people probably won't notice.
Funny you mention your 3-year-old. I have been thinking exactly that, that there might be a way to create fun apps for babies and kids.
I am firmly against wooden toys and want to give my kid a computer asap (OK, nothing against wooden toys, but you get the idea).
So I wondered if the iPad is durable enough for a kid. Ultimately I expect cheaper variants to appear, with special kids durability (of course not from Apple, but maybe Android or sth like that).
Would be interested in hearing more stories about kids on pads.
You'd think so, but this is the 3rd review I've read where the adult was relatively disappointed in the iPad, but OH BOY does his child love it. It's starting to make me think its for kids.
That's not my personal review. It's a review from the perspective of my wife and in-laws. They don't use smartphones and are the kind of users that like to do things in familiar ways.
I think it's interesting that kids take to the device more easily than adults. Part of that is simpler usage, but part of it is not having preconceived notions about how to use the device. It also makes me think that a certain class of users is going to have to take some time with the iPad. My wife hated our netbook when I bought it; now I have to pry it from her hands.
I'm not disappointed at all in the iPad, but then again my expectations weren't extremely high. I knew typing would be a chore. I knew that there were going to be ergonomic challenges. I wasn't expecting the browser to be on par with the desktop. Also, I mostly bought it to develop for.
> Part of that is simpler usage, but part of it is not having preconceived notions about how to use the device.
I'm thinking that most of it is simpler usage. Unless you're qualifying "I can't access my favorite websites because they use flash" under 'preconceived notions.' At least for me, I would be disappointed where the functionality was lacking (i.e. "it can't be done" vs "it can only be done in a different way"), and that is something that a child wouldn't suffer from as much.
My kid has a leapfrog, but that doesn't curb her curiosity about other devices.
I don't know how it is with others, but my kid is fascinated with all my computers. My netbook, my MBP, my Droid, my Touch, and now my iPad. I don't discourage her curiosity. We had a VIC-20 when I was a kid and later a Commodore 64, and that's probably the reason I love programming to this day.
What she wants most of all is for her parents to sit with her as she discovers. The iPad is really good for that - the best computer I own for that use case, I think. I can't stand the Leapfrog for long, but watching her with the iPad is fun. It helps that I have the chops to build little apps to distribute on my own devices.
I don't have kids, but I'd feel exactly the same about letting her explore and try out things.
What I was saying was that if it was a disappointment for you, but your 3 year old loved it, it's probably not worth keeping. Child curiosity can be appeased for less than $500.
Now if you loved it as well, it's a different story.
> Child curiosity can be appeased for less than $50
Definitely. My daughter loves play-acting with her toys (most of which are just cheap plastic things from Toys R Us). Pencils and crayons with reams of paper last for quite some time. Blocks, balls, and mini versions of adult things (e.g., toy phones, kitchen appliances) that let them play pretend, are all great hits.
In my experience, the specific toys (i.e., the ones that have clearly defined "play" scenarios) are the ones that get great attention for an hour, and then are left at the back of the closet until we get rid of them.
Computer software is similar - my son loves any building/open world type game (simcity, bridge builder, the sims, harvest moon), but usually loses interest at games that have very specific goals (most platform type games, although mario and the lego games seem to be exceptions).
Maybe Apple should think about making a smaller version might work for kids? It would be kind of like an iPod Touch except... actually it would be an iPod Touch.
Seriously, my 2 year old kid enjoys my iPhone. I'm just annoyed that they don't support HTML5 audio to the degree that I (and others) could be building the type of simple interaction apps he enjoys with HTML.
It feels solid, but wouldn't call it durable. It definitely feels like the kind of thing you wouldn't want to drop. I'm constantly worried about the screen getting scratched, though I know it is inevitable.
I still don't understand why Apple ever decided to play up the iPad's web browsing experience. I've written on this at length before, but even apart from Flash, the desktop web is simply not compatible as-is with a tablet interface.
The iPad will make a fantastic browser for the tablet web, if and when that web is built, but today it's a poor substitute for a mouse and keyboard when websites expect those.
I don't think you've actually used the iPad to browse the web. Personally, I block flash on my desktop and rarely find reason to unblock it, so the lack of flash doesn't bother me. Meanwhile, surfing on the iPad is in general so nice that I've been doing it even when near my computer.
I have an iPad and I don't really miss Flash too much, but I do find other aspects of web browsing much less efficient.
Tabs are much more cumbersome. Instead of just clicking a tab, you've got to zoom out, pick your window and zoom back in. It's a lot more motion.
Scrolling, typing, copying and pasting are also not as simple. Touch scrolling is nice, but it's a lot more movement. Typing and copy/paste are just slower. I still type slower on the large iPad keyboard than on the much smaller iPhone keyboard.
Another problem I have with it is that if I'm filling out a form, for example a message on Facebook, and I need to switch to email to copy something and come back to Safari and paste it in, there is no guarantee that the Facebook message I started typing will still be there. It's a little frustrating.
I'm sure all these kinks will eventually be worked out, but as it is, I still find myself grabbing my Macbook Pro when I'm going to be any "serious" browsing or my iPhone when I'm just looking something up really quickly.
I really like the iPad for some things, but in my experience, browsing hasn't been all it was cracked up to be.
It's a great experience for browsing a web page. But here's something I had to do when I had my iPad, which sucked with it, but is great on desktop:
We have a wiki and I needed to move a bunch of comments to work items in our bug database. So on my desktop I would have just have two instances of the browser open and would literally read from the wiki and create new work items in the bug database.
On the iPad this was painful. There's no side by side view (that I could get to work at least), and it seemed to reload the bug database every time I'd toggle back to that page!!! I don't want a reload, just show me the page I was looking at 10 seconds ago!
The side by side issue for windows, especially browsers is intrinsic in the small screen size. For now, the desktop is the place for activity like that.
However ... Remember all those Star Trek episodes with people sitting at a desk with _several_ pad like devices spread out in front of them; like a paper covered desk? Now imagine a similar situation with several tablet devices that have some type of screen bridging/device linking software. I can easily imagine scenarios where this will be useful. Now imagine combining that _with_ a desktop display.
Frankly, I think there is a big future in tablet and multi-screen devices as adjunct input and manipulation platforms. Dig up a copy of a short anime called _Pale Cocoon_ and watch what the people are doing with the computer interfaces in that show. Whether or not the UI concepts would actually work in real life, the ideas presented are _very_ much worth thinking about.
Neither is it for me. I'm sending mine back. Things I don't like: (a) Eye strain, (b)It doesn't provide enough utility for me to justify another device in my life, and I don't want another media consumption device. In short, it's another toy.
(c) An awkward device angle when touch-typing and trying to read what I'm typing.
That the iPad is consistently classified as a media consumption device seems an attempt to trivialize its significance by people who consider themselves power users. I agree that currently the use cases of most applications fall into this category, that it is expensive and I doubt you will ever do application development on a device of its form factor, but it is clearly not just a media consumption device. A few example applications are the two very nice musical instruments the Korg iElectribe http://www.korg.co.uk/products/software_controllers/iPad_iEl..., which sells for $10 while its HW equivqlent is around $450, and the MiniSynth Pro http://www.yonac.com/ a fully functional FM synthesizer. Neither of these applications would have been possible prior to the iPad. Others are the drawing applications Brushes http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/id363590649?mt=8 and SketchBook Pro http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/sketchbook-pro/id364253478?mt.... I also like the touch and hand drawing interface to OmniGraffle a diagramming application http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/omnigraffle/id363225984?mt=8.
I think the majority of creative or power user applications will be for those with a complex control surface, such as the examples above. The large touch interface of the iPad is much simpler to use than a traditional mouse keyboard. Also when compared to Wacom drawing tablets http://www.google.com/products/catalog?hl=en&rlz=1G1GGLQ... it is competitive, at the iPad low end the iPad is about $200 more, though not quite as functional, the iPad does not have pressure or stylus tilt sensitivity but it is portable. If you are interested in developing these types of applications you have to have one. If you do not have one you will never see were the deficiencies are or know which problems to solve. The device as only been available for 10 days. I would expect it will take a year or two before the application space has been adequately sampled.
Another obvious short coming, or opportunity, is with file synchronization and management. I am currently using dropbox, https://www.dropbox.com/ with ReaddleDocs http://readdle.com/products/readdledocs, which works for reading. If documents are generated on the IPad you have to use iTunes, eMail or an application specific server for document synchronization. Neither of these is adequate.
The typing problem you mentioned can be solved by a case that holds it an an angle, such as http://www.goincase.com/products/detail/CL57512. The number of viewing and use positions for the device is greater than that for a laptop. Also heavy duty typing can be handled with a bluetooth attached keyboard though for my needs the the onscreen keyboard has been adequate.
> That the iPad is consistently classified as a media consumption device seems an attempt to trivialize its significance by people who consider themselves power users.
Not really. It comes from an idealism that technology (especially the internet) would, speaking broadly, shift our society away from a centralized model where the many are beholden to the few and towards something more distributed and egalitarian.
If you cherish that goal, you're fairly likely to see the iPad as a step backwards -- it is not about the size of the step ("significance") but its direction.
For me, the iPad does not provide more utility compared to other devices I use to warrant carrying around and maintaining yet another device (Yad? iYad?). If it did or I thought it would, I would keep it. That it makes me physically uncomfortable is another factor. YMMV.
I'd think if you truly cherish that goal (as I do) you'd have noticed by now that no single device or technology represents a step of any significance in any direction.
It wasn't the existence of the internet that changed the creator:consumer ratio for the better. It was the use of the internet as such. And that use exploded thanks to any number of consumption-focused technologies along the way.
Consider that even if no-one creates long-form text on an iPad, it's existence as a consumption machine might re-popularize the format and draw more creators to write for digital bookstores, shifting the creator:consumer relationship thanks to the ease of entrance (compared to dead-tree publishing).
Or for a more proven example: consider the App Store. Reviled-since-inception by techno-freedom purists, its net effect has been positive for entire classes of software that are as-of-yet implausible via the internet.
Though the store serves only these consumption-focused devices, the audience those devices attracted and the comparative low barrier for entry by creators has drawn creators and been a huge step forward.
Windows tablets have had more pure potential to push the creator:consumer ratio forward for a decade and they've done essentially nothing. How useful is a world-view in which they're viewed as a step forward and the iPad a step back?
All that aside, the core argument is still bogus. The iPad is getting a rap as a media consumption device solely because it's bad at text input without peripherals.
Well, guess what? Any form factor is bad at some Arts without peripherals. And peripherals often dictate ergonomics. Keyboard/Mouse PCs suck at digital painting, a/v capture, a/v editing and any number of disciplines without peripherals. We don't pan them for not being a creative panacea out-of-the-box. And we certainly don't begrudge laptops their convenience, even though a digital artist has to lug around a cintiq to do decent work on the road, and is thus limited in use cases.
Games. Art creation tools. Sound mixing. Musical creation tools. There are plenty of media-rich applications written by independents and minor players, enjoying far more success on the app store than they could via shrink-wrap channels or home consoles.
But that's due to a captive audience and a single channel of sales. You could make the same arguments for many things.
Disney can turn a higher profit selling soda in their parks because they are the only ones selling soda in their parks and a 20oz bottle costs $2.00+. That doesn't mean this is a net win for anyone but Disney.
If WalMart were the only retail store on the face of the planet, people that were able to sign deals with WalMart would also enjoy great success...
The reason they wouldn't do as well in shrink-wrap channels is that they would have to have a larger marketing budget, and market to a wider audience at smaller returns. The audience of iPhone users is an audience with low barriers to impulsing purchases, and an audience of relevance (i.e. iPhone users going to the AppStore are all potential customers, random people in a B&M store may or may not be potential customers).
If Apple only allowed in EA, Activision, Ubisoft, etc - you'd have a point with your captive audience analogy. The PS3, PSP, PSN, etc fit in great with your argument.
But the App Store is different than that. More than just the big names are allowed in and are making money. And that's the net win.
Apple delivered a massively lower barrier of entry (even if it's arguably higher than necessary and certainly higher than we might like) and they've gone out of their way to provide services that massively level the playing field: hosting, equal placement[1], cc processing, international support, etc.
Even though it's still a closed platform, more creators are making a living by creating and that's a net win in my book.
[1](Try getting a shrink wrap game on a shelf at Best Buy next to The Sims. Increased marketing/packaging/distribution costs aside: it simply does not happen unless you sign on with a publisher.)
> If Apple only allowed in EA, Activision, Ubisoft, etc - you'd have a point with your captive audience analogy. The PS3, PSP, PSN, etc fit in great with your argument.
But the App Store is different than that. More than just the big names are allowed in and are making money. And that's the net win.
I don't entirely agree with that. The AppStore only allows in people that Apple 'likes.' Granted, this is a larger group than say the vendors at Disney's theme parks or Walmart's retail contracts, and maybe that is a net win. But it's still a captive audience. Apple could achieve the same effect with the AppStore + random apps installed from the internet.
The AppStore would still be the same integrated purchasing experience, and I'm willing to bet that most people would still sign up to be part of the AppStore. But this also leaves the avenue open for people that Apple "doesn't like" to create apps that target the platform.
What would you think if Ford Motor Co decided to make all their cars only accept tires make in a proprietary fashion that tire makers had to license from Ford Motor Co? They could make the same arguments as Apple. They could claim that they are only doing this to 'ensure the quality of the tires used on their cars.' It would be their right to do so, just as it's Apple's right to restrict their platform. But I think there would be a ton of people upset about the move.
> Even though it's still a closed platform, more creators are making a living by creating and that's a net win in my book.
I agree that it's a net win because it's 'better than what we had before.' The issue is that it could be even better but Apple is purposefully holding us back from that because we should 'just be happy' that things are 'better now than they were before.'
Though it's a flawed analogy, it's sort of like rescuing us from slavery to make us indentured servants instead of going the full monty and setting us free. Sure being an indentured servant is a hell of a lot better than being a slave, but we could have been set free at the same time. [ I realize that in reality indentured servants were little better than slaves of a different name. I'm going off the flawed picture that most children's history books paint for us to build this analogy. ]
> It wasn't the existence of the internet that changed the creator:consumer ratio for the better. It was the use of the internet as such. And that use exploded thanks to any number of consumption-focused technologies along the way.
The use of the internet is deeply intertwined with its form -- television could never, even if we worked incredibly hard at it, have been used in the same way. The message is the medium, and the form of the technology we adapt does, in fact, matter significantly.
Example: we would absolutely not be having this little debate if we only had iPads. :)
(And not to start a side debate, but I'm deeply sceptical of the app store being all that revolutionary; almost everything I've seen is a usability-tweaked version of software that already existed on the desktop or web. Further, it is absolutely against ideals of decentralization when it comes to the creation of software!)
That seems to be an extremely awkward angle for typing.
> Also heavy duty typing can be handled with a bluetooth attached keyboard though for my needs the the onscreen keyboard has been adequate.
Kinda ruins the mobility of the device compared with a lap top. You'll have to carry around the iPad, a stand, and a keyboard, which you could only reasonably use on some sort of table.
I think it is OK, in the most inclined position it is about 30 degrees with respect to the surface and you can rest your hands on the edge of the device and the surface on which it is resting. Your wrists are up slightly so it could get uncomfortable after prolonged use. It is more comfortable than hunched over with the device in your lap and arms perpendicular to the device as described in the article and is closer to the position of a laptop setting on a table. It would be no problem to use it to interact with this site for example. I would see the bluetooth keyboard as a docking station.
Who wants to spend $500 on something that kindof browses the web, and then needs a bunch of addon cruft in order to do anything useful?
Didn't apple learn their lesson with the MBA? Get the air...and a USB hub...and an external DVD burner...and an ethernet dongle...and an external hard drive! Look at how portable it is! (especially when thin notebooks have all of these things built in).
It is expensive with the current feature set and will likely have to drop below $300 to become common place but for music control surface applications it's 25% the cost of a Lemur and is more functional since it is programmable http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/442113-REG/Jazz_Mutant...
For most uses I doubt you will need any attachments, with the exception of the case.
My irritation with the opinion expressed in the article and the general content consumption opinion is that the judgments are based on currently available software and hardware configuration and trying to use it like a laptop or phone. It is neither and will likely have new uses and assume some uses of these devices. Dismissing it after only a little more than a week seems unthoughtful and short sighted.
If you are interested in investigating applications for the new form factor the iPad will likely be the only game in town for a year or so and I would buy one. If you are looking to use it for something other than a toy I doubt I would buy it. It could be another few years before similar devices actually catch on with then obvious uses or it could fail and your money and time are wasted.
I would caution against using the music creation applications as good examples of iPad applications. Firstly, musicians rarely skim on their gear, if an iPad and a $10 App will do the same job as a bit of hardware costing twice the price more than half of them will buy the hardware. I've not used a synth very much but I doubt a touch screen provides an adequate replacement for the musical keyboard, nevermind the more natural feel of real buttons and knobs. Finally, any reasonably serious musician will buy a sound card priced in the hundreds of dollars, they will not be happy with a 3 1/4 inch analog output from one of their primary tools.
For music instruments, multitouch is an amazing revolution. For too long, we've been restricted to either very expensive control surfaces with physical knobs and faders, or software solutions which required a mouse and only let us move one virtual fader or knob at a time.
Now, I can turn a 10" screen into any imaginable control surface, including using all 10 fingers to move multiple objects at the same time. It's heaven. The iPad does what you would have had to spend $thousands for previously in the recording/mixing world.
The touch screen will not provide an adequate replacement for buttons and knobs - if you emulate buttons and knobs, that is. With capacitive multi-touch, there's a real opportunity to rethink the interface here. Interaction in the past was limited to what hardware can do in real life, so why should we keep those limitations now that they don't exist? The music world, unfortunately, has this "old-school" mentality for the most part. The focus is on previous hits and successes with synths and hardware that worked in the past (in this case the Electribe), not with what could be created with new ones. There's a real opportunity here that will take time to play out.
As for the sound card - I agree, the DAC in the iPad is probably similar to the other iDevices in the past.. Pretty good for consumer standards, but poor by pro standards - not to mention multiple outs, ins, etc. Where the iPad stands to gain the most is as a remote controller for a larger rig running on a laptop - via Bluetooth or Wifi. Heck the audio jack could be used for modulated data and have it interpreted by the host machine as a control input, a la Serato et al. Ever since the $2k Lemur people have been hungering for this - it will happen sooner or later!
I find it very hard to imagine an interface that will replace the spring controlled hardware knob that controls the volume of sound coming out of my computer, and I have seen and used a stupefying amount of gadgets that enable me to control sound.
Consider that the passion of musicians to produce their music has led to eons of refinement in interface and design, A material technology which the hi tech world with its planned obsolescence paradigm does not often appreciate.
All innovation is welcome and exciting, few things in the world of a musician brings more joy then a discovery of a new sound, or a new technique he can learn.
but you know? that guitar interface? it just works.
...
Of course the touch screen is exciting for musicians...
check out Amit Pitaru/Zach Gage bring Sonic Wire Sculptor. its fun
My apologizes if that came off wrongly. It was intended as my observation of musicians who do not produce music solely as a hobby. Obviously most of the people I know come from a fairly technical background, while plenty of people still produce amazing music on a bargain store 8 track, there are lots of people who will complain about sound quality differences that a normal person could not pick out if their life depended on it.
Haven't spent much time around musicians, have you? Any reasonably serious musician will have a no compromises, no excuses approach to sound quality, and that includes paying top dollar for the absolute highest quality gear you can get. Thousands -- or even tens of thousands -- of dollars is not an uncommon asking price for a single piece of kit, like a speaker or a mixing desk (knobs only; no GUI bullshit; mixing is about listening and feeling, not pointing and clicking). If it's top quality then there will be musicians and sound engineers clamoring to pay. You may pay twice the price for a 1% increase in sound quality, but a serious musician can hear that 1%, and it will drive him nuts. You may think it's snobbish, but that's reality in the pro music world.
You don't understand. I'm not saying that musicians don't care about sound quality. What I am saying is that judging seriousness by the price of your gear is a giant pile of bullshit.
More specifically, I'm saying I think doing so is a part of what keeps people out of making music--the idea that you have to be "serious" about it by spending a lot of money on recording gear or it somehow doesn't count. Far too often it's just the opposite: people just blow money on the gear because buying things is fun and they tell themselves they need it to make better music. And hey, maybe people will end up buying some iPads for that stupid reason, too. The point is that the cost of the gear and "seriousness" are not so directly related. I don't mean there is never a relation, only that you can't really draw this kind of generalized meritocratic conclusion about the art and artist from something so independent of their actual merit as the tools they use.
You may think it's snobbish, but that's reality in the pro music world.
Again, I wasn't saying that desiring the best sound quality is snobbish. What I think is snobbish is assuming that only professional musicians are serious, or that someone who involves an iPad in their musical process is somehow inherently less serious than one who doesn't.
I would caution against writing off touch screens so readily. Take a look at the Misa Digital Guitar (http://www.youtube.com/misadigital), for example.
Jordan Rudess, the keyboardist for Dream Theater, has an iPhone (loaded up with various synthesizer apps) as one of his (many, often expensive) instruments.
You don't know me, so why are you surprised? I thought I would like it and could use it, it's not working out, I don't expect it to work out, so I'm returning it. It's not a political statement.
He doesn't need to know you to be surprised by your point (b), which would be possible to work out without buying the thing. It is surprising. It is similar to someone buying a Porsche and then returning it because, among other reasons, it is a fast car. This is something you know before buying it. To return it to the dealership, saying "I don't like it, because it is fast", is quite surprising.
Now, if you didn't know it was just another media consumption device - perhaps you thought you could also do some serious work on it - that would be different.
If you are creative person (musician, visual artist, designer, writer), the iPad might very well be the first usable digital sketchpad for your medium. I tire of people saying the iPad is primarily for consumption; it's simply not true. It may not appeal to the computer hacker, but it certain appeals to many other kinds of hackers.
I think it probably is primarily for consumption, as evidenced by the apps that it ships with.
I have no doubt that visual artists can create pretty good work with one, but I think they'll generally prefer pen based interfaces. Especially if they have giant sausage fingers. :)
I don't think it's primarily for anything. Apple doesn't ship any creative tools with OS X either. The iPad is what you think it is. I find it telling that geeks think it's primarily for consumption because they can't code in it- it's called tunnel-vision.
It also only can use Bluetooth to connect to devices. That limits one's ability to do things like edit HD video with it. It also limits the possibilities with respect to hooking a lot of things up to it (like musical keyboards, etc). Don't just assume the people are saying it's 'consumption-only' just because you can't program on it.
I would contest that a visual artist will not be satisfied with the lack of pressure sensitivity, a designer unimpressed with the relatively small screen size, a musician with the lack of high quality audio outputs and I can't come up with a single reason a writer would prefer an iPad over a regular laptop.
I think what the iPad will do is move touch interfaces into the main stream for a much larger class of devices. What I doubt it will do is revolutionize very much.
Fantastic! ABe is a classically trained artist and an incredible draftsman. For years I've been trying to find examples of his non-anime/manga work, which I've read is _very_ good.
I'm a visual artist, both digital and old school, charcoal and oil paint variety. 35+ years experience. I love drawing on my iPod Touch and expect to love the iPad even more. I can imagine better (always can) but short of sticking a 21 inch Cintiq into my back pack when I got out sketching or to life drawing session, the iPad will be the best bet for a while.
Sell it on eBay. They seem to be going for around $575+ for the 16GB model. It's not really a bad profit: getting paid $75 to play with a new toy for a week.
His credibility to talk about the usability of an iPad goes away when he shows himself to be uneducated on some software terminology? I don't have a clue about the chemical makeup of sucralose, but I feel confident stating that the new Splenda Diet Coke tastes better than regular Diet Coke.
I think the most important thing I've gathered from this article among others is that the iPad can do a lot for you and can do it pretty well, but possibly not exactly as you would like it. I think it has one the best sleek form factor to performance ratios out there, with style and ease of use to boot. So it really can't help but produce entertaining and useful software for people (with developer support). Power users who already have multiple desktops/laptops may struggle to justify their purchase, but in a large household I don't think people will be questioning the irony of the device when they're too busy using it.
Same, and when I hooked up a bluetooth keyboard for the first time and propped it up like a regular screen I type at 100% speed. The Apple bluetooth keyboard and this thing are almost the same size, so on trips I'll be able to answer long emails, write blog posts, and maybe even reply to HN with ease!
It's all about expectations with the iPad. It's not going to be a pure laptop replacement if you do any "serious" work (don't even think about web dev for example, although it would be awesome if Panic released Coda for the iPad), but for about 80% of what I do (especially when traveling) it's absolutely perfect. Combine that with home use, coffee shops, and instant child entertainment and you have a device worthy of your $500.
If it doesn't fit into your life, don't get it! I still don't understand the point of the reviews where they try to do EVERYTHING possible on the iPad. It's clearly not meant for that, stop treating it like it is.
I have a Macbook Pro, I just don't like lugging it around on trips when it's overkill (the sucker is 5 - 6 pounds easily).
A netbook? I hope that's a joke. Why would I want a cheaply built, underpowered (I'll bet the iPad out performs most netbooks), mini laptop that doesn't run OSX or iPhone OS (as in I can't stand Windows or any linux distro)?
At risk of sounding like a fanboy I'm going to quote Steve Jobs himself: "We don’t know how to build a sub-$500 computer that is not a piece of junk,"
The iPad is underpowered in that it can't run Vim or emacs. If you are a developer, being able to run a text editor is the baseline for a device.
Why would you want a cheaply built laptop? So when your bag gets stolen or dropped or whatever, you lose a $200 netbook rather than a $500 iPad or a $1000 laptop.
I actually mentioned in a reply above that the iPad will never be a good machine for development.
Honestly, life is too short, I'm not going to sacrifice quality because of a fear that at any moment my bag may be stolen. It's also pretty easy to not, you know, leave your bag sitting somewhere in public? A $300 difference is worth it because of the upgrade in quality and less frustration.
Again, this all comes down to your personality and lifestyle. Steve Jobs did not get up on stage and say the iPad is a laptop replacement. It's a device meant to replace SOME, not all, of your daily activities (heck maybe they are not even daily, maybe it's your weekend only device or something). If you don't see it fitting into your life, don't buy one. That doesn't mean it doesn't work for someone other then you though!
There are quite a few netbooks that are more powerful than the iPad, and cheaper to boot. Intel Atom stuff can actually output 1080p video... imagine that? And actually, if you buy the right one, its not all that hard to set one up as a hackintosh either.
Sure, that's fine, but he was the one claiming the iPad was more powerful in the first place. I was debunking his claim. If it doesn't matter, why bother claiming it at all? And yes, IPS is nice.
I've been using a Dell Mini 9 as my primary development machine for over a year now. There's more than enough power to fire up emacs, chrome, and a jvm (we're a JRuby shop). I love the amazing portability, and the ergonomics are adequate.
'Piece of Junk' is in the eyes of the beholder. In my experience, a $300 netbook has been the most productive machine I've ever owned.
edit: Sorry about the dupes, for some reason my phone freaked out and sent this three times. Fixed now.
It might be the most productive machine to you because it limits your distractions, but in a head-to-head I'm about 99.9% positive I'm far more productive on my Mac Pro w/ dual monitors because I don't waste my day consuming media. And, I'll put my money where my mouth is. :)
I bought my netbook as a toy and now use it almost everywhere for almost all of the things I used to do on a full system. I don't even bring along my much more powerful laptop to most places anymore. It's without a doubt the best consumer electronics purchase I've made in the last 5 years.
I also know that in a pinch, I can plug in a monitor and a usb keyboard and use it like a full machine (just with no 3d, and a slower processor). But for 95% of what I need (and I need some pretty processor intensive tasks, like photo editing, audio editing, etc.) it works "good enough". And it's unbeatable value for the dollar.
My thoughts exactly. Purely as a reading device, it will be fantastic for scientific papers which are usually in hard formatted PDFs. Reflowing them for a small e-ink device sucks and makes them hard to read. Having color is a huge bonus (10 shades of grey in a color coded graph is a royal pain). The iPad + the GoodReader app will let you take hundreds of papers and technical books with you. The fact that it has a pretty good web browser and email app with WiFi is an awesome bonus.
> Just think about it on an airplane. I could load it up with movies and watch for an entire flight, thanks to the iPad's excellent battery life. Of course, because of the lousy keyboard I can't use it in place of a laptop, so I would have to carry the iPad and my MacBook. How is it that, for years, I've pined for a lighter laptop, and now I'm considering carrying an extra pound-and-a-half just to watch videos on an airplane?
Or, don't. The iPad goes with you into the seat. Apple's wireless bluetooth keyboard goes in your carry-on, and stays there until the hotel room desk where you might actually do some typing. The rest of your business trip, the iPad lets you reference things, make minor edits, show Keynote on a VGA projector, and keep up with email and news.
(And for printing at the client's location, you do the same thing with your iPad you do with your "real" laptop: email the client the file for them to print because their IT won't let your laptop see their printer queue.)
Good point. Also, the iPad + charger + Bluetooth keyboard is only 2.1 pounds. I challenge you to fit 10 hours of mobile productivity in a smaller footprint.
Apple just solved the battery issue in their laptops: http://www.apple.com/macbookpro/specs-13inch.html A less disjointed setup (you don't have to worry about the laptop display falling over like the iPad might if bumped) and a more powerful system. It's 4.5 lbs, but that's still pretty damn light if you ask me.
Price is a big differentiator though. It's hard to compete with $500 + whatever the keyboard costs.
It doesn't scare me as a user - it scares me that yet another device encouraging passive consumerism may become immensely popular. It's sad to become used to hearing "I can't cook/sing/draw/dance/code/whatever" - I would rather live in a world where everyone is a producer of some sort, in a way that content and culture are not monopolised by Big Industry.
Maybe 'scary' was a bit strong - I'm not exactly trembling under my bed ... yet.
Even creators must consume most forms of Art.
Musicians watch movies; woodcarvers leaf through photo-journals, dancers rarely compose their own music.
Ergo, the machine that a hundred creators are most likely to have in common, is one that consumes well. It seems the only thing we should logically expect is consumption and popularity to go hand in hand.
But what exactly about the iPad acts as a break on creation?
It isn't suited to composing and editing large blocks of text out-of-the-box; but only a couple forms of Art require that.
Notably, the iPad is an arguably better machine for the creation of every art you explicitly called out, save coding.
Does a cook need a keyboard and mouse in the kitchen?
Seems a quick-reference that can sit in a recipe-book-holder and doesn't require putting down the butcher knife would be welcome.
Wouldn't a dancer be better off with a machine that is easily picked up, put down, carried through a routine at half-speed and can naturally scrub through an instructional video? (My wife has already used my iPad to do exactly this.)
Wouldn't a singer suitably benefit from an iPad on a music stand, showing instant pitch-feedback (via its microphone) and live-scrolling note chart?
And clearly drawing is more-easily done on a tablet than with a mouse.
As a big fan of creation, I'm downright excited that such a device has come to market that gets more cruft out of the way and brings computing to the natural habitats of other artists.
That only developers with serious tools can code for it, and only at Apple's pleasure certainly isn't ideal. But that isn't so huge a roadblock and the up-side is that we're enabling all these other arts.
But seriously, think about it. Why would a "media consumption" device become popular? It might be because "passive consumerism" is popular. The iPad does what most people already do with laptops and desktops, which they did before with TVs and VCRs and CD players and game consoles and newspapers and magazines and books.
It's just technology conforming to what people actually do, which historically seems to work out in everybody's favor--moreso than trying to change human nature to fit an ideal, at least--in the form of new capabilities and the cognitive surplus to use them.
My main problem with the iPad is the weight. At 1.5 pounds it is incredibly light, yet at the same time becomes heavy quickly. Unless you are resting it on a table or on your body it gets heavy faster than you'd expect. My top use scenario, reading in bed, is just not comfortable with it. Mine already went back. I think we have about 3-5 more years before tablets are ready for me.
I agree with the sentiments echoed in this article. For me, tablets, although useful, are not the revolutionary devices they are made out to be. As I see it they are not the gateway for new types of applications, anything you can do on a tablet, you can do on laptop (personally I like the idea of a laptop with a detachable screen).
I wholly agree with the comments about Kindle too. I can see the benefit in having a Kindle, it offers a relaxing and focussed environment on which to catch up on the one thing I never have enough time - or am to distracted by web/mail/chat - to do, and that is READ.
I think it's a wedge device. It will not be an overnight sensation. More so, the first viable larger format touch experience in the beginning of a steady and gradual increase in this kind of UI playing a major role in how we interact with information and media. Apple has planted roots creating enough momentum for the space to begin growth in earnest. We'll see steady improvements to the iPad, new competing tablets, touch screen desktops, and so on. It's started...the iPad is simply a tipping point. Not a singular revolution in itself.
From the beginning, I knew this device won't go so far. I'm more optimistic with the new HP slate.
When I get a device bundled with Windows 7, with the ability to run any windows application and not only Flash, it's just like tele-porting my computer to this little device.
The iPad OS is a phone OS, whatever powerful it is, it'll be always way behind any desktop OS.
Point 2 is multi-tasking. And about iPhone OS 4.0 multi-tasking, it just made me laugh, it just proved me Apple failed to support real multi-tasking.
One guy writes that iPad is not for him and that means that "this device won't go so far"?
Selling 300 000 of these on the first day means nothing I guess.
The iPad OS is a phone OS, whatever powerful it is,
it'll be always way behind any desktop OS.
A car, whatever poferful it is, it'll be always way behind any train. So?
And about iPhone OS 4.0 multi-tasking, it just made
me laugh, it just proved me Apple failed to support
real multi-tasking.
You laugh, users don't care. Will they be able listen Pandora in the background? Sure they will. Will they receive skype calls, even when Skype is not in front? Sure they will.
Will navigation software run in background, even you switch to other app? Yes it will.
Meanwhile enjoy your well thought multitouch suppor of Windows 7 on HP slate and the battery life with real multitasking.
> Selling 300 000 of these on the first day means nothing I guess.
So you can guarantee me that the iPad will without any doubt whatsoever 'take off' solely based on the fact that they sold a ton of product on the first day?
It is by no means a guarantee of anything. It's possibly indicative of a trend, but first day sales shouldn't mean anything other than how successful the product was marketed. How well the product takes off after that is a function of marketing, how well it meets consumer expectations (i.e. it could somewhat miss on consumer expectations, but be bolstered by an excellent marketing strategy), and how much of a market there is for it.
> A car, whatever poferful it is, it'll be always way behind any train. So?
Not everyone can afford to have a device for every purpose. Many people have to budget around getting a single device that can do as many things as possible.
> Meanwhile enjoy your well thought multitouch suppor of Windows 7 on HP slate and the battery life with real multitasking.
What are you trying to say here? That because he wants 'real' multi-tasking that he's an idiot and should be sent off to use Windows 7 and have poor battery life? Is it such a crime against humanity to want to have a decent multi-touch experience and 'real' multitasking?
" I'm comfortable using a computer, and I don't tend to surf the Web as a form of entertainment"
This is going to be the biggest factor to determine if a tablet is right for you. I'm comfortable enough at my desk using my computer but I can only take so much of it. Most of my web browsing outside of work is entertainment or at least long form reading. Both areas I think the iPad excels at. I could use a laptop on my couch or in bed but I find that a bit awkward but, most importantly, the iPad blows it away on battery life and screen quality -- and for entertainment purposes it's just easier to do most stuff.
I don't understand why this is worth writing about. The nexus one isn't for me, and neither is the iphone, I didn't run out to blog about it and repeat the same point 200 other people have already made
Apple should have forgotten about the iPad and focused on Apple TV. Selling an Internet box with a Boxee like interface and all the content from the studios we seek. Sell various subscriptions. That would be revolutionary and yet will take a years to get there due to the studios getting huge wads of their revenue via cable TV. Who the majority of us hate our cable company and long for substitute like the Apple TV mentioned here.
133 comments
[ 1.3 ms ] story [ 300 ms ] threadNice touch. I'd also like to hear it in Shatner.
Her parents, definite technophobes, were intimidated by it. The first thing they wanted to look at was a slideshow on smugmug.com, some pictures of their granddaughter. Also Flash. They looked at me incredulously as I explained to them that you couldn't view the slideshow on the iPad. They tried to use the navigation on the website, but the navigation links were small and adjacent to the shopping cart link. At the height of their frustration, I pulled out my MBP so they could watch the slideshow on it. The thought of explaining to them how to set up their iPad to sync photos gives me chills.
OTOH, my 3-year-old LOVES it. She can use a mouse and a trackpad, but she has to concentrate and make deliberate movements. On the iPad, she flies. She can get to her favorite apps and watch her videos in a flash. There are lots of downsides to having this device in a toddler's hands, and I'd never let her use it unsupervised, but that's an aside from the usability issue.
I have a feeling that if the iPad sells well, the "why do it in HTML when we could do it in Flash" style of site will die out. It's no consolation right now, of course, but I wouldn't complain if that ends up happening (and, really? Flash just to show some pictures one after another?).
As it stands, the iPad exists in a state that makes it almost unusable for the overwhelming majority of web users (at least as anything more than a novelty, much like web browsing on the iPhone)
If mom's savvy enough to use a computer aside from her iPad then she can use that computer to get to the sites she wants to go to that her iPad doesn't support. If she's only savvy enough for an iPad, then she's still better off being able to get to the non-Flash parts of the web than nothing.
ECMAScript may be google's horse in the race, but it's still just an add-on.
Bottom line seems to be that people love the way Flash sites look. If we can achieve that differently, bully for us, but most people probably won't notice.
and watch her videos in a flash.
Delicious irony.
I am firmly against wooden toys and want to give my kid a computer asap (OK, nothing against wooden toys, but you get the idea).
So I wondered if the iPad is durable enough for a kid. Ultimately I expect cheaper variants to appear, with special kids durability (of course not from Apple, but maybe Android or sth like that).
Would be interested in hearing more stories about kids on pads.
Less chance of splinters.
I think it's interesting that kids take to the device more easily than adults. Part of that is simpler usage, but part of it is not having preconceived notions about how to use the device. It also makes me think that a certain class of users is going to have to take some time with the iPad. My wife hated our netbook when I bought it; now I have to pry it from her hands.
I'm not disappointed at all in the iPad, but then again my expectations weren't extremely high. I knew typing would be a chore. I knew that there were going to be ergonomic challenges. I wasn't expecting the browser to be on par with the desktop. Also, I mostly bought it to develop for.
I'm thinking that most of it is simpler usage. Unless you're qualifying "I can't access my favorite websites because they use flash" under 'preconceived notions.' At least for me, I would be disappointed where the functionality was lacking (i.e. "it can't be done" vs "it can only be done in a different way"), and that is something that a child wouldn't suffer from as much.
I don't know how it is with others, but my kid is fascinated with all my computers. My netbook, my MBP, my Droid, my Touch, and now my iPad. I don't discourage her curiosity. We had a VIC-20 when I was a kid and later a Commodore 64, and that's probably the reason I love programming to this day.
What she wants most of all is for her parents to sit with her as she discovers. The iPad is really good for that - the best computer I own for that use case, I think. I can't stand the Leapfrog for long, but watching her with the iPad is fun. It helps that I have the chops to build little apps to distribute on my own devices.
What I was saying was that if it was a disappointment for you, but your 3 year old loved it, it's probably not worth keeping. Child curiosity can be appeased for less than $500.
Now if you loved it as well, it's a different story.
Definitely. My daughter loves play-acting with her toys (most of which are just cheap plastic things from Toys R Us). Pencils and crayons with reams of paper last for quite some time. Blocks, balls, and mini versions of adult things (e.g., toy phones, kitchen appliances) that let them play pretend, are all great hits.
In my experience, the specific toys (i.e., the ones that have clearly defined "play" scenarios) are the ones that get great attention for an hour, and then are left at the back of the closet until we get rid of them.
Computer software is similar - my son loves any building/open world type game (simcity, bridge builder, the sims, harvest moon), but usually loses interest at games that have very specific goals (most platform type games, although mario and the lego games seem to be exceptions).
Seriously, my 2 year old kid enjoys my iPhone. I'm just annoyed that they don't support HTML5 audio to the degree that I (and others) could be building the type of simple interaction apps he enjoys with HTML.
The iPad will make a fantastic browser for the tablet web, if and when that web is built, but today it's a poor substitute for a mouse and keyboard when websites expect those.
Tabs are much more cumbersome. Instead of just clicking a tab, you've got to zoom out, pick your window and zoom back in. It's a lot more motion.
Scrolling, typing, copying and pasting are also not as simple. Touch scrolling is nice, but it's a lot more movement. Typing and copy/paste are just slower. I still type slower on the large iPad keyboard than on the much smaller iPhone keyboard.
Another problem I have with it is that if I'm filling out a form, for example a message on Facebook, and I need to switch to email to copy something and come back to Safari and paste it in, there is no guarantee that the Facebook message I started typing will still be there. It's a little frustrating.
I'm sure all these kinks will eventually be worked out, but as it is, I still find myself grabbing my Macbook Pro when I'm going to be any "serious" browsing or my iPhone when I'm just looking something up really quickly.
I really like the iPad for some things, but in my experience, browsing hasn't been all it was cracked up to be.
We have a wiki and I needed to move a bunch of comments to work items in our bug database. So on my desktop I would have just have two instances of the browser open and would literally read from the wiki and create new work items in the bug database.
On the iPad this was painful. There's no side by side view (that I could get to work at least), and it seemed to reload the bug database every time I'd toggle back to that page!!! I don't want a reload, just show me the page I was looking at 10 seconds ago!
Not a good experience.
However ... Remember all those Star Trek episodes with people sitting at a desk with _several_ pad like devices spread out in front of them; like a paper covered desk? Now imagine a similar situation with several tablet devices that have some type of screen bridging/device linking software. I can easily imagine scenarios where this will be useful. Now imagine combining that _with_ a desktop display.
Frankly, I think there is a big future in tablet and multi-screen devices as adjunct input and manipulation platforms. Dig up a copy of a short anime called _Pale Cocoon_ and watch what the people are doing with the computer interfaces in that show. Whether or not the UI concepts would actually work in real life, the ideas presented are _very_ much worth thinking about.
Pun intended?
I think the majority of creative or power user applications will be for those with a complex control surface, such as the examples above. The large touch interface of the iPad is much simpler to use than a traditional mouse keyboard. Also when compared to Wacom drawing tablets http://www.google.com/products/catalog?hl=en&rlz=1G1GGLQ... it is competitive, at the iPad low end the iPad is about $200 more, though not quite as functional, the iPad does not have pressure or stylus tilt sensitivity but it is portable. If you are interested in developing these types of applications you have to have one. If you do not have one you will never see were the deficiencies are or know which problems to solve. The device as only been available for 10 days. I would expect it will take a year or two before the application space has been adequately sampled.
Another obvious short coming, or opportunity, is with file synchronization and management. I am currently using dropbox, https://www.dropbox.com/ with ReaddleDocs http://readdle.com/products/readdledocs, which works for reading. If documents are generated on the IPad you have to use iTunes, eMail or an application specific server for document synchronization. Neither of these is adequate.
The typing problem you mentioned can be solved by a case that holds it an an angle, such as http://www.goincase.com/products/detail/CL57512. The number of viewing and use positions for the device is greater than that for a laptop. Also heavy duty typing can be handled with a bluetooth attached keyboard though for my needs the the onscreen keyboard has been adequate.
Not really. It comes from an idealism that technology (especially the internet) would, speaking broadly, shift our society away from a centralized model where the many are beholden to the few and towards something more distributed and egalitarian.
If you cherish that goal, you're fairly likely to see the iPad as a step backwards -- it is not about the size of the step ("significance") but its direction.
It wasn't the existence of the internet that changed the creator:consumer ratio for the better. It was the use of the internet as such. And that use exploded thanks to any number of consumption-focused technologies along the way.
Consider that even if no-one creates long-form text on an iPad, it's existence as a consumption machine might re-popularize the format and draw more creators to write for digital bookstores, shifting the creator:consumer relationship thanks to the ease of entrance (compared to dead-tree publishing).
Or for a more proven example: consider the App Store. Reviled-since-inception by techno-freedom purists, its net effect has been positive for entire classes of software that are as-of-yet implausible via the internet.
Though the store serves only these consumption-focused devices, the audience those devices attracted and the comparative low barrier for entry by creators has drawn creators and been a huge step forward.
Windows tablets have had more pure potential to push the creator:consumer ratio forward for a decade and they've done essentially nothing. How useful is a world-view in which they're viewed as a step forward and the iPad a step back?
All that aside, the core argument is still bogus. The iPad is getting a rap as a media consumption device solely because it's bad at text input without peripherals.
Well, guess what? Any form factor is bad at some Arts without peripherals. And peripherals often dictate ergonomics. Keyboard/Mouse PCs suck at digital painting, a/v capture, a/v editing and any number of disciplines without peripherals. We don't pan them for not being a creative panacea out-of-the-box. And we certainly don't begrudge laptops their convenience, even though a digital artist has to lug around a cintiq to do decent work on the road, and is thus limited in use cases.
I'm curious as to what you're referring to here.
Disney can turn a higher profit selling soda in their parks because they are the only ones selling soda in their parks and a 20oz bottle costs $2.00+. That doesn't mean this is a net win for anyone but Disney.
If WalMart were the only retail store on the face of the planet, people that were able to sign deals with WalMart would also enjoy great success...
The reason they wouldn't do as well in shrink-wrap channels is that they would have to have a larger marketing budget, and market to a wider audience at smaller returns. The audience of iPhone users is an audience with low barriers to impulsing purchases, and an audience of relevance (i.e. iPhone users going to the AppStore are all potential customers, random people in a B&M store may or may not be potential customers).
But the App Store is different than that. More than just the big names are allowed in and are making money. And that's the net win.
Apple delivered a massively lower barrier of entry (even if it's arguably higher than necessary and certainly higher than we might like) and they've gone out of their way to provide services that massively level the playing field: hosting, equal placement[1], cc processing, international support, etc.
Even though it's still a closed platform, more creators are making a living by creating and that's a net win in my book.
[1](Try getting a shrink wrap game on a shelf at Best Buy next to The Sims. Increased marketing/packaging/distribution costs aside: it simply does not happen unless you sign on with a publisher.)
But the App Store is different than that. More than just the big names are allowed in and are making money. And that's the net win.
I don't entirely agree with that. The AppStore only allows in people that Apple 'likes.' Granted, this is a larger group than say the vendors at Disney's theme parks or Walmart's retail contracts, and maybe that is a net win. But it's still a captive audience. Apple could achieve the same effect with the AppStore + random apps installed from the internet.
The AppStore would still be the same integrated purchasing experience, and I'm willing to bet that most people would still sign up to be part of the AppStore. But this also leaves the avenue open for people that Apple "doesn't like" to create apps that target the platform.
What would you think if Ford Motor Co decided to make all their cars only accept tires make in a proprietary fashion that tire makers had to license from Ford Motor Co? They could make the same arguments as Apple. They could claim that they are only doing this to 'ensure the quality of the tires used on their cars.' It would be their right to do so, just as it's Apple's right to restrict their platform. But I think there would be a ton of people upset about the move.
> Even though it's still a closed platform, more creators are making a living by creating and that's a net win in my book.
I agree that it's a net win because it's 'better than what we had before.' The issue is that it could be even better but Apple is purposefully holding us back from that because we should 'just be happy' that things are 'better now than they were before.'
Though it's a flawed analogy, it's sort of like rescuing us from slavery to make us indentured servants instead of going the full monty and setting us free. Sure being an indentured servant is a hell of a lot better than being a slave, but we could have been set free at the same time. [ I realize that in reality indentured servants were little better than slaves of a different name. I'm going off the flawed picture that most children's history books paint for us to build this analogy. ]
The use of the internet is deeply intertwined with its form -- television could never, even if we worked incredibly hard at it, have been used in the same way. The message is the medium, and the form of the technology we adapt does, in fact, matter significantly.
Example: we would absolutely not be having this little debate if we only had iPads. :)
(And not to start a side debate, but I'm deeply sceptical of the app store being all that revolutionary; almost everything I've seen is a usability-tweaked version of software that already existed on the desktop or web. Further, it is absolutely against ideals of decentralization when it comes to the creation of software!)
That seems to be an extremely awkward angle for typing.
> Also heavy duty typing can be handled with a bluetooth attached keyboard though for my needs the the onscreen keyboard has been adequate.
Kinda ruins the mobility of the device compared with a lap top. You'll have to carry around the iPad, a stand, and a keyboard, which you could only reasonably use on some sort of table.
Didn't apple learn their lesson with the MBA? Get the air...and a USB hub...and an external DVD burner...and an ethernet dongle...and an external hard drive! Look at how portable it is! (especially when thin notebooks have all of these things built in).
For most uses I doubt you will need any attachments, with the exception of the case.
My irritation with the opinion expressed in the article and the general content consumption opinion is that the judgments are based on currently available software and hardware configuration and trying to use it like a laptop or phone. It is neither and will likely have new uses and assume some uses of these devices. Dismissing it after only a little more than a week seems unthoughtful and short sighted.
If you are interested in investigating applications for the new form factor the iPad will likely be the only game in town for a year or so and I would buy one. If you are looking to use it for something other than a toy I doubt I would buy it. It could be another few years before similar devices actually catch on with then obvious uses or it could fail and your money and time are wasted.
Now, I can turn a 10" screen into any imaginable control surface, including using all 10 fingers to move multiple objects at the same time. It's heaven. The iPad does what you would have had to spend $thousands for previously in the recording/mixing world.
As for the sound card - I agree, the DAC in the iPad is probably similar to the other iDevices in the past.. Pretty good for consumer standards, but poor by pro standards - not to mention multiple outs, ins, etc. Where the iPad stands to gain the most is as a remote controller for a larger rig running on a laptop - via Bluetooth or Wifi. Heck the audio jack could be used for modulated data and have it interpreted by the host machine as a control input, a la Serato et al. Ever since the $2k Lemur people have been hungering for this - it will happen sooner or later!
Consider that the passion of musicians to produce their music has led to eons of refinement in interface and design, A material technology which the hi tech world with its planned obsolescence paradigm does not often appreciate.
All innovation is welcome and exciting, few things in the world of a musician brings more joy then a discovery of a new sound, or a new technique he can learn.
but you know? that guitar interface? it just works.
... Of course the touch screen is exciting for musicians... check out Amit Pitaru/Zach Gage bring Sonic Wire Sculptor. its fun
Snobbish bullshit like this is a bigger threat to creativity than anything the iPad does or doesn't do.
More specifically, I'm saying I think doing so is a part of what keeps people out of making music--the idea that you have to be "serious" about it by spending a lot of money on recording gear or it somehow doesn't count. Far too often it's just the opposite: people just blow money on the gear because buying things is fun and they tell themselves they need it to make better music. And hey, maybe people will end up buying some iPads for that stupid reason, too. The point is that the cost of the gear and "seriousness" are not so directly related. I don't mean there is never a relation, only that you can't really draw this kind of generalized meritocratic conclusion about the art and artist from something so independent of their actual merit as the tools they use.
You may think it's snobbish, but that's reality in the pro music world.
Again, I wasn't saying that desiring the best sound quality is snobbish. What I think is snobbish is assuming that only professional musicians are serious, or that someone who involves an iPad in their musical process is somehow inherently less serious than one who doesn't.
EDIT: Here he is playing the iPhone in the middle of his keyboard solo, live: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONGpprZBkrs
Now, if you didn't know it was just another media consumption device - perhaps you thought you could also do some serious work on it - that would be different.
If I can do work on the iPad, does that mean my work isn't serious?
If you are creative person (musician, visual artist, designer, writer), the iPad might very well be the first usable digital sketchpad for your medium. I tire of people saying the iPad is primarily for consumption; it's simply not true. It may not appeal to the computer hacker, but it certain appeals to many other kinds of hackers.
I have no doubt that visual artists can create pretty good work with one, but I think they'll generally prefer pen based interfaces. Especially if they have giant sausage fingers. :)
I think what the iPad will do is move touch interfaces into the main stream for a much larger class of devices. What I doubt it will do is revolutionize very much.
It may still be less of a loss than Apple's restocking fee, though.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSnIXfoSU6I
It's all about expectations with the iPad. It's not going to be a pure laptop replacement if you do any "serious" work (don't even think about web dev for example, although it would be awesome if Panic released Coda for the iPad), but for about 80% of what I do (especially when traveling) it's absolutely perfect. Combine that with home use, coffee shops, and instant child entertainment and you have a device worthy of your $500.
If it doesn't fit into your life, don't get it! I still don't understand the point of the reviews where they try to do EVERYTHING possible on the iPad. It's clearly not meant for that, stop treating it like it is.
Would be a good bit cheaper too.
A netbook? I hope that's a joke. Why would I want a cheaply built, underpowered (I'll bet the iPad out performs most netbooks), mini laptop that doesn't run OSX or iPhone OS (as in I can't stand Windows or any linux distro)?
At risk of sounding like a fanboy I'm going to quote Steve Jobs himself: "We don’t know how to build a sub-$500 computer that is not a piece of junk,"
The iPad is underpowered in that it can't run Vim or emacs. If you are a developer, being able to run a text editor is the baseline for a device.
Why would you want a cheaply built laptop? So when your bag gets stolen or dropped or whatever, you lose a $200 netbook rather than a $500 iPad or a $1000 laptop.
As for not running OS X? Google 'hackintosh'.
Honestly, life is too short, I'm not going to sacrifice quality because of a fear that at any moment my bag may be stolen. It's also pretty easy to not, you know, leave your bag sitting somewhere in public? A $300 difference is worth it because of the upgrade in quality and less frustration.
Again, this all comes down to your personality and lifestyle. Steve Jobs did not get up on stage and say the iPad is a laptop replacement. It's a device meant to replace SOME, not all, of your daily activities (heck maybe they are not even daily, maybe it's your weekend only device or something). If you don't see it fitting into your life, don't buy one. That doesn't mean it doesn't work for someone other then you though!
'Piece of Junk' is in the eyes of the beholder. In my experience, a $300 netbook has been the most productive machine I've ever owned.
edit: Sorry about the dupes, for some reason my phone freaked out and sent this three times. Fixed now.
I also know that in a pinch, I can plug in a monitor and a usb keyboard and use it like a full machine (just with no 3d, and a slower processor). But for 95% of what I need (and I need some pretty processor intensive tasks, like photo editing, audio editing, etc.) it works "good enough". And it's unbeatable value for the dollar.
My thoughts exactly. Purely as a reading device, it will be fantastic for scientific papers which are usually in hard formatted PDFs. Reflowing them for a small e-ink device sucks and makes them hard to read. Having color is a huge bonus (10 shades of grey in a color coded graph is a royal pain). The iPad + the GoodReader app will let you take hundreds of papers and technical books with you. The fact that it has a pretty good web browser and email app with WiFi is an awesome bonus.
If you want a device to read PDFs, play some games, and browse the web it's fantastic.
iPad + GoodReader + 10 hour battery life is bliss.
Still pretty f'ing good.
Or, don't. The iPad goes with you into the seat. Apple's wireless bluetooth keyboard goes in your carry-on, and stays there until the hotel room desk where you might actually do some typing. The rest of your business trip, the iPad lets you reference things, make minor edits, show Keynote on a VGA projector, and keep up with email and news.
(And for printing at the client's location, you do the same thing with your iPad you do with your "real" laptop: email the client the file for them to print because their IT won't let your laptop see their printer queue.)
For anyone that travels a lot and writes, the iPad is a godsend. Please see http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2010/4/11/856114/-My-iPad-...
Price is a big differentiator though. It's hard to compete with $500 + whatever the keyboard costs.
This is the bit that scares me.
Clearly it should inform your purchase decision, but why should it be scary?
No one device is for all people to do all things. So why should a particular weakness inherent in this form-factor be scary?
Maybe 'scary' was a bit strong - I'm not exactly trembling under my bed ... yet.
Ergo, the machine that a hundred creators are most likely to have in common, is one that consumes well. It seems the only thing we should logically expect is consumption and popularity to go hand in hand.
But what exactly about the iPad acts as a break on creation?
It isn't suited to composing and editing large blocks of text out-of-the-box; but only a couple forms of Art require that.
Notably, the iPad is an arguably better machine for the creation of every art you explicitly called out, save coding.
Does a cook need a keyboard and mouse in the kitchen? Seems a quick-reference that can sit in a recipe-book-holder and doesn't require putting down the butcher knife would be welcome.
Wouldn't a dancer be better off with a machine that is easily picked up, put down, carried through a routine at half-speed and can naturally scrub through an instructional video? (My wife has already used my iPad to do exactly this.)
Wouldn't a singer suitably benefit from an iPad on a music stand, showing instant pitch-feedback (via its microphone) and live-scrolling note chart?
And clearly drawing is more-easily done on a tablet than with a mouse.
As a big fan of creation, I'm downright excited that such a device has come to market that gets more cruft out of the way and brings computing to the natural habitats of other artists.
That only developers with serious tools can code for it, and only at Apple's pleasure certainly isn't ideal. But that isn't so huge a roadblock and the up-side is that we're enabling all these other arts.
You mean like one of these? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book
But seriously, think about it. Why would a "media consumption" device become popular? It might be because "passive consumerism" is popular. The iPad does what most people already do with laptops and desktops, which they did before with TVs and VCRs and CD players and game consoles and newspapers and magazines and books.
It's just technology conforming to what people actually do, which historically seems to work out in everybody's favor--moreso than trying to change human nature to fit an ideal, at least--in the form of new capabilities and the cognitive surplus to use them.
I wholly agree with the comments about Kindle too. I can see the benefit in having a Kindle, it offers a relaxing and focussed environment on which to catch up on the one thing I never have enough time - or am to distracted by web/mail/chat - to do, and that is READ.
When I get a device bundled with Windows 7, with the ability to run any windows application and not only Flash, it's just like tele-porting my computer to this little device.
The iPad OS is a phone OS, whatever powerful it is, it'll be always way behind any desktop OS.
Point 2 is multi-tasking. And about iPhone OS 4.0 multi-tasking, it just made me laugh, it just proved me Apple failed to support real multi-tasking.
Meanwhile enjoy your well thought multitouch suppor of Windows 7 on HP slate and the battery life with real multitasking.
So you can guarantee me that the iPad will without any doubt whatsoever 'take off' solely based on the fact that they sold a ton of product on the first day?
It is by no means a guarantee of anything. It's possibly indicative of a trend, but first day sales shouldn't mean anything other than how successful the product was marketed. How well the product takes off after that is a function of marketing, how well it meets consumer expectations (i.e. it could somewhat miss on consumer expectations, but be bolstered by an excellent marketing strategy), and how much of a market there is for it.
> A car, whatever poferful it is, it'll be always way behind any train. So?
Not everyone can afford to have a device for every purpose. Many people have to budget around getting a single device that can do as many things as possible.
> Meanwhile enjoy your well thought multitouch suppor of Windows 7 on HP slate and the battery life with real multitasking.
What are you trying to say here? That because he wants 'real' multi-tasking that he's an idiot and should be sent off to use Windows 7 and have poor battery life? Is it such a crime against humanity to want to have a decent multi-touch experience and 'real' multitasking?
This is going to be the biggest factor to determine if a tablet is right for you. I'm comfortable enough at my desk using my computer but I can only take so much of it. Most of my web browsing outside of work is entertainment or at least long form reading. Both areas I think the iPad excels at. I could use a laptop on my couch or in bed but I find that a bit awkward but, most importantly, the iPad blows it away on battery life and screen quality -- and for entertainment purposes it's just easier to do most stuff.
I don't think it likely Apple will pay any attention to the AppleTV platform, its a dud.