I can't wait to hear about all the copy-cat tablets with crappy UI/UX, horrible battery life, and operating systems that were not meant for the form factor! Oh, oh, I hope they have flash too so I can get angry and throw it at the wall when it crashes constantly. Give me as many features as possible. Kill the iPad!
One interesting quote from the article (the only interesting part for me):
It’s like the iPad was a device we never knew that we needed. Until Apple gave it to us.
That is the job of effective advertising, to make us need products that we didn't need before. Apple is good at this. I know I don't really need an iPad, and am determined to wait until the second generation comes out, yet I can't help but marvel at the effectiveness of Apple advertising and media coverage which makes it seem like the iPad is something everyone "needs".
I don't see this as effective advertising (though that is what gets you to buy it) as much as effective UX design. I never thought I needed a phone with anything but the ability to call, but now I can't imagine not having an phone with internet, GPS, email, etc. That change wasn't advertising, but the best design and form factor made at the time of its release.
Advertising gets you into the store, but an innovative product creates the "need we never knew we had."
If that was an advertising-created false-need, as with, say, a Slap Chop, you'd expect the four-weeks-later stories to all read: "As it turns out, I didn't really need it."
It would be some powerful advertising indeed, that could trump a month of actual use.
Like others said, this has nothing to do with advertising. In fact, everyone interviewed in the article were already self-admitted Apple fanboys meaning the advertising probably wasn't all that important; they were going to buy it the second Steve Jobs got up on stage.
The important part is that after the initial "magic" has worn off, early adopters still love the device. They are not returning it or selling it. They take it everywhere they go and prefer to use the device over their laptop or desktop when it's possible to do so.
This is simply the effect of Apple building a really awesome product, not advertising.
I think it's the loyal fan base that allows Apple to define new products. They listen to Apple, because Apple has repeatedly delivered great experiences in the past. Very few companies have this power.
I think the Apple fayboyism may be coloring some of these statements. The idea of a touch-screen tablet is hardly new, and many people, myself included, have been waiting for someone to develop a device like the iPad for years. Look at all of the hype that surrounded the CrunchPad announcement, even when we rightly assumed it was vaporware.
Apple isn't really an innovation company. They're great at executing on ideas that no one else has yet turned into a viable product, which puts them on the cutting edge. But they've never came up with something entirely new and created demand for it where none previously existed.
And I can find plenty of points at which the iPad falls short of my tablet wish-list, but that didn't stop me from getting one.
> many people, myself included, have been waiting for someone to develop a device like the iPad for years.
Of all these people, every one of them decided to passively wait, instead of taking on the task themselves?
As far as Apple innovating, IMHO, they are the current masters of producing analog interfaces for digital systems. They have to charge a premium for it, because it's harder. But plenty of people are apparently willing to pay that premium for that interface, instead of the cheapest microcontroller and a minimal number of momentary switches, so Apple wins. I don't know if choosing their own strategy instead of following the race to the bottom is innovative or not, but it certainly leads to products that stand out.
I guess I need to somehow stop, but so far I haven't been able to not think 'some mild version of Stockholm syndrome' whenever someone says something like, "Many users have lamented over the lack of multitasking, but for me, this 'missing' feature is a bonus all on its own" like that last person in this blog post.
People can't be this unaware that they can turn notifications off and just work on one thing when that is what they want. Is it that they can't bring themselves to do it? Maybe some people need someone else to exert their willpower for them.
Come on, HN, give me another viable perspective on this before this one calcifies in my head.
I tend to agree. In fact, I find it's just as easy to load up an iPad with distracting notifications as a desktop.
So the extent to which people are discovering the benefits of a sort of digital 'cone of silence', but attributing it to a lack of multi-tasking is frankly puzzling to me.
I think the word "multitasking" gets way overloaded in these discussions. In this case, it's not that people are happy that their other applications' processes aren't continuing to be preemptively scheduled by the kernel. They're happy that all iPad apps always take up the whole screen. There's certainly a cost to that, but many feel there's a benefit, too.
Yeah, the connotation has certainly drifted from the technical source of the term, taking on the weight of a whole interaction style. Imho, OS's should put controls on applications like mixers have on channels: "mute" and "solo".
A bit off topic, the application of such technical terms to other things, like people, has a bit of fascination to me. Mostly because so much of how we get along in the world and our perceptions/reasoning in general are shaped by the vocabulary we adopt to describe. Anger as heat, a person builds a head of steam, blows their top. Did the experience of anger change when that metaphor took hold? Now people might multitask whereas before they might have thought of it as juggling tasks. The first seems so much more astute; the second not like something to be done with anything important. Ok, I'm seriously procrastinating, now... sorry.
It reminds me of the "I don't always want to be available" argument against cell phones I heard a lot in the late 90's. Surely those folks knew they were allowed to power the phone off whenever they wanted.
So they interviewed a Director, Designer, and a Manager. Have any coders on here tried integrating an ipad into their life?
I've read a few people discussing how they've making their laptop strictly a "code" only machine and the ipad for web-browsing/other things. I personally want something I can write and draw notes in, think of it as the digital whiteboard you conceptualize your code with. I've avoided just getting a tablet pc because they're too heavy, bulky and make me deal with a mouse-derived os (windows) to do things.
I'm really looking forward to the hp/palm, notion ink offerings.
I haven't yet used my iPad for coding. I don't think I will. I do have a really great ssh/vpn app for the iPhone/iPad, so in a pinch, I can get to my servers and make a fix or check a log file. But other than that, I don't expect to use my iPad for coding. I'm just too bound to emacs and a keyboard to see it being a reasonable use of the iPad.
However, for almost everything else, I've been using and preferring the iPad. I had already relegated all RSS feed reading, Twitter and Facebook (anything that could distract me from coding) to my iPhone. Now using the iPad, I'm even more efficient with my time and the experience is more enjoyable. And as a general entertainment device, the iPad wins across my entire family: my wife and 5 year old daughter both love it.
All that said, there are definitely some areas in which I feel the iPad is deficient. I expect these to be resolved over time, but it's something to consider:
- Google Docs just doesn't work on the iPad. Considering how much I use Google Docs, this is a major blow to the usefulness of the iPad.
- The email client is weak. If you get a large amount of email or are on several mailing lists, then you'll still fallback on using some other web or desktop email client. I really wish I could use the iPad as my main email device, but its just not suitable yet.
- GMail for the iPad is actually decent except for one bug: you can't properly scroll when composing long emails that span one vertical screen space. Again, this just makes GMail useless on occasion.
- Some multitasking would be great. Honestly, I like the focus you get when you're dealing with one app at a time. But I would really like to be always signed into Skype and GTalk. I would like to be able to load more than one web page at a time and switch between them without requiring them to reload (ok, that's more a memory problem than a multitasking problem).
Also, I got the wifi-only version thinking I wouldn't really want or need the 3G version. Now I would strongly recommend the 3G version if you can afford it. The iPad is just so much more mobile than a laptop that I take it everywhere if I can. The battery life is amazingly great for a device like this. So having access everywhere would make the iPad even better.
Which ssh/vpn app do you use? I'm looking at iSSH or TouchTerm Pro (just b/c they are confident to charge $10) but I'd appreciate some real world feedback.
- GMail for the iPad is actually decent except for one bug: you can't properly scroll when composing long emails that span one vertical screen space. Again, this just makes GMail useless on occasion.
I don't have an iPad, but is this an issue of the non-obvious "use two fingers to scroll a textarea" that I and others deal with on iPhones?
Wait, people who get paid to make iPad apps like the iPad? No way! Next you're going to tell me that Senators who get campaign funding from Con Agra generally vote in favor of agricultural subsidies.
Who cares? Whats the point of writing even more drivel about the iPad, it really doesn't matter. The fanboys already have one, and the people who don't want them or don't care certainly won't have their mind changed with this fluff.
edit: haha, I bet I was downvoted by the guy who wrote and submitted the article. It is drivel, dude.
I can promise you that I didn't downvote you! Not my style :)
Maybe hard to believe, but the three people I interviewed for the article were really that in love with their iPads. Maggie (QA) actually came to me with the idea for the article, because she wanted to talk about how she was using it professionally. So I got a couple people together that were also using it for work to give their opinions as well. But I do wish now I had tried to balance out the article with more opinions. Another guy at our company came out with a post on his personal blog last week, in favor of the kindle over the iPad, and I should have asked him to contribute to the article!
Thanks for reading though, I really enjoy the feedback!
24 comments
[ 4.0 ms ] story [ 68.8 ms ] threadIt’s like the iPad was a device we never knew that we needed. Until Apple gave it to us.
That is the job of effective advertising, to make us need products that we didn't need before. Apple is good at this. I know I don't really need an iPad, and am determined to wait until the second generation comes out, yet I can't help but marvel at the effectiveness of Apple advertising and media coverage which makes it seem like the iPad is something everyone "needs".
Advertising gets you into the store, but an innovative product creates the "need we never knew we had."
It would be some powerful advertising indeed, that could trump a month of actual use.
The important part is that after the initial "magic" has worn off, early adopters still love the device. They are not returning it or selling it. They take it everywhere they go and prefer to use the device over their laptop or desktop when it's possible to do so.
This is simply the effect of Apple building a really awesome product, not advertising.
Apple isn't really an innovation company. They're great at executing on ideas that no one else has yet turned into a viable product, which puts them on the cutting edge. But they've never came up with something entirely new and created demand for it where none previously existed.
And I can find plenty of points at which the iPad falls short of my tablet wish-list, but that didn't stop me from getting one.
Of all these people, every one of them decided to passively wait, instead of taking on the task themselves?
As far as Apple innovating, IMHO, they are the current masters of producing analog interfaces for digital systems. They have to charge a premium for it, because it's harder. But plenty of people are apparently willing to pay that premium for that interface, instead of the cheapest microcontroller and a minimal number of momentary switches, so Apple wins. I don't know if choosing their own strategy instead of following the race to the bottom is innovative or not, but it certainly leads to products that stand out.
People can't be this unaware that they can turn notifications off and just work on one thing when that is what they want. Is it that they can't bring themselves to do it? Maybe some people need someone else to exert their willpower for them.
Come on, HN, give me another viable perspective on this before this one calcifies in my head.
So the extent to which people are discovering the benefits of a sort of digital 'cone of silence', but attributing it to a lack of multi-tasking is frankly puzzling to me.
A bit off topic, the application of such technical terms to other things, like people, has a bit of fascination to me. Mostly because so much of how we get along in the world and our perceptions/reasoning in general are shaped by the vocabulary we adopt to describe. Anger as heat, a person builds a head of steam, blows their top. Did the experience of anger change when that metaphor took hold? Now people might multitask whereas before they might have thought of it as juggling tasks. The first seems so much more astute; the second not like something to be done with anything important. Ok, I'm seriously procrastinating, now... sorry.
I've read a few people discussing how they've making their laptop strictly a "code" only machine and the ipad for web-browsing/other things. I personally want something I can write and draw notes in, think of it as the digital whiteboard you conceptualize your code with. I've avoided just getting a tablet pc because they're too heavy, bulky and make me deal with a mouse-derived os (windows) to do things.
I'm really looking forward to the hp/palm, notion ink offerings.
I haven't yet used my iPad for coding. I don't think I will. I do have a really great ssh/vpn app for the iPhone/iPad, so in a pinch, I can get to my servers and make a fix or check a log file. But other than that, I don't expect to use my iPad for coding. I'm just too bound to emacs and a keyboard to see it being a reasonable use of the iPad.
However, for almost everything else, I've been using and preferring the iPad. I had already relegated all RSS feed reading, Twitter and Facebook (anything that could distract me from coding) to my iPhone. Now using the iPad, I'm even more efficient with my time and the experience is more enjoyable. And as a general entertainment device, the iPad wins across my entire family: my wife and 5 year old daughter both love it.
All that said, there are definitely some areas in which I feel the iPad is deficient. I expect these to be resolved over time, but it's something to consider:
- Google Docs just doesn't work on the iPad. Considering how much I use Google Docs, this is a major blow to the usefulness of the iPad.
- The email client is weak. If you get a large amount of email or are on several mailing lists, then you'll still fallback on using some other web or desktop email client. I really wish I could use the iPad as my main email device, but its just not suitable yet.
- GMail for the iPad is actually decent except for one bug: you can't properly scroll when composing long emails that span one vertical screen space. Again, this just makes GMail useless on occasion.
- Some multitasking would be great. Honestly, I like the focus you get when you're dealing with one app at a time. But I would really like to be always signed into Skype and GTalk. I would like to be able to load more than one web page at a time and switch between them without requiring them to reload (ok, that's more a memory problem than a multitasking problem).
Also, I got the wifi-only version thinking I wouldn't really want or need the 3G version. Now I would strongly recommend the 3G version if you can afford it. The iPad is just so much more mobile than a laptop that I take it everywhere if I can. The battery life is amazingly great for a device like this. So having access everywhere would make the iPad even better.
I don't have an iPad, but is this an issue of the non-obvious "use two fingers to scroll a textarea" that I and others deal with on iPhones?
edit: haha, I bet I was downvoted by the guy who wrote and submitted the article. It is drivel, dude.
Maybe hard to believe, but the three people I interviewed for the article were really that in love with their iPads. Maggie (QA) actually came to me with the idea for the article, because she wanted to talk about how she was using it professionally. So I got a couple people together that were also using it for work to give their opinions as well. But I do wish now I had tried to balance out the article with more opinions. Another guy at our company came out with a post on his personal blog last week, in favor of the kindle over the iPad, and I should have asked him to contribute to the article!
Thanks for reading though, I really enjoy the feedback!