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Did you hear that? It was the sound of rabid fanboys from all across the Internet and the world, rejoicing, twittering, blogging, podcasting that tomorrow has arrived! Apple's website says it all: "iPad is here."
iPad, Apple's next generation computing device, has hit store shelves just as your friendly neighborhood parcel service delivered boxes to those who ordered the device weeks in advance.
iPad is a slab-shaped device with an aluminum back, and framed black on the front. It runs on the same multitouch technology that powers Apple's iPhone and iPod touch devices. Quite a few people simplify the iPad as simply a bigger, nearly ten-inch-high (242.8 mm) iPod touch. That assertion is both a fallacy and a truth.
What is iPad?
iPad is not quite a MacBook, but bigger and more powerful than either the iPhone or the iPod touch.
The Personal Computer Appliance
A netbook is really just a cheaper and smaller laptop. Apple’s answer to the netbook and to the Personal Computer in general is to rethink the personal computer and create an ecosystem to turn that universe into an appliance.
In short, iPad is an appliance.
Revolutionizing Publishing
iPad represents a new genre of computing. It will replace paper. It will help revolutionize the publishing industry by offering an analogue to their current business model. iPad promises to simplify our lifestyle and as more and more great content gets published on the iPad, iPhone, iPad ecosystem (or for that matter, Android apps), the less and less Google becomes relevant.
It promises to deliver content much better and much simpler than the Web by changing how to navigate through endless volumes of information.
Not everyone is for iPad
Cory Doctorov wrote on "why he won’t buy an iPad (and thinks you shouldn’t either)," and argued:
“Journalism is looking for a daddy figure
I think that the press has been all over the iPad because Apple puts on a good show, and because everyone in journalism-land is looking for a daddy figure who'll promise them that their audience will go back to paying for their stuff. The reason people have stopped paying for a lot of "content" isn't just that they can get it for free, though: it's that they can get lots of competing stuff for free, too. The open platform has allowed for an explosion of new material, some of it rough-hewn, some of it slick as the pros, most of it targetted more narrowly than the old media ever managed. Rupert Murdoch can rattle his saber all he likes about taking his content out of Google, but I say do it, Rupert. We'll miss your fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a percent of the Web so little that we'll hardly notice it, and we'll have no trouble finding material to fill the void.”
That’s just it. iPad applications and Content don’t have to be paid content. Countless apps like Marketwatch, Strait Times offer free content today, on iPhone, iPod apps, and by extension, iPad.
Blogs can appear as applications on iPad.
A whole new revenue model simply emerges: you can charge a one-time download fee, you can opt for a subscription model, and of course, you can offer the app for free and offer advertising.
Does iPad represent the End to Tinkering?
Techies have been arguing that iPad represents an end to tinkering. You can't open the hood to see the processor. You can't install a different operating system on iPad. The best response to this comes from andre torrenz who wrote, "why I will be buying an iPad this weekend:"
"Anyway, to get back to the title of this post, I will be buying an iPad this weekend because I enjoy using thoughtful, well engineered products. I have tried many times to use non-Apple computers, to use the open and "free" choice and you know what? They are terrible. Really bad! Worse than bad, they're almost creatively stifling.
I think more of those who bang the "freedom of computing" gong should spend a little less time proclaiming the end of creativity at the hands of others and instead start using these products. These are good products! They are built on top of Unix! Why not use them to build even better ones? Under the hood are bash prompts and frameworks that maybe even have lines of code they themselves wrote."
Doctorov and others miss the point.
This is a whole new ball game.
This is the next version of the Internet that suddenly makes urls archaic but makes presenting web technology driven content (via HTML, CSS) much better.
In fact, iPad and its ecosystem doesn’t offer a threat to the Open Web, it creates new ways for Content Creators like bloggers and podcasters who can choose to offer their content for free. What iPad and its ecosystem does, however, is to create a threat against Search Engine Optimization, ergo: a threat to Google. Simply put, iPad content is a clear and present danger to Google indexing all the web’s, and by extension, all of humanity’s content.
iPad then becomes a boon for the publishing industry because iPad represents an ecosystem for them. It becomes a platform where traditional publications could migrate their content and into a digital format that they can be most comfortable with.
The device is big enough that it becomes an analogue for paper.
The platform can enable traditional content producers to protect their property and at the same time retain the traditional subscription model for, say, newspapers and magazines. Book publishers can migrate their content online to a platform that merges the power of the web and the packaging of an app. Suddenly, traditional content creators could publish electronic books with the richness of paper and the web.
Death to the browser?
What's even better: gone will be the need to publish content that has to match every browser on the planet. No more creating voodoo just to make sure that content appearing on Safari matches content appearing on Firefox. It is the Content Creator who has the final say on how his content appears to everyone to get that perfect presentation.
Content is still King.
For the self-publisher, the processes becomes even more easier. On equal footing with the biggest publishing house, indie players can do all traditionalists can do. In both cases the content gets protected from the search engine.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) doesn't become valuable, but placement on the iBook store does. That's scary for Google. If what we've seen on iTunes music store and the AppStore holds true, then indie content providers will be at par with the big name publishers. Content is King. Google can't index content locked inside the iTunes store without an agreement with Apple.
On fast company, Gina Trapani wrote about "Why You Shouldn't Buy an iPad (Yet)", arguing "The early adopter tax isn't the only cost of acquiring an unproven device." She further argues that developers have been testing their apps against a software simulator, and not on a real iPad yet.
Yet apps are here.
On the AppStore are three of the most powerful, must-have apps for your iPad. You can create a word document on the go with just the iPad. You can create spreadsheets or prepare that presentation on the go. There's Keynote, Pages, and Numbers. They make up Apple's iWork productivity suite, which is similar to Microsoft Office. iWork apps like Pages, Keynote, and Numbers (links will open iTunes), which come from the Mac and now have iPad versions can also open, respectively, Word, Power Point, and Excel documents.
Take Keynote for iPad, Apple's presentation product. Apple reworked their Mac-based presentation tool and wrote an iPad app for it. Now you can use gestures, a tap here, a tap there to create slides.
The virtual keyboard, which by the way is the same size as a laptop keyboard, pops up, and what's great about it is that it is configured for you to write. If you're using Numbers, and you tap on to a cell, then the keyboard is intelligent enough to pop open a keypad for the kind of data that you will be entering, whether it is digits or duration or date and time or simply text.
iPad Accessories
Couple these apps with iPad accessories like the iPad Dock connector to VGA Adaptor, and maybe include Apple's Wireless Keyboard and boom! Suddenly, you can plug your iPad into a bigger display or onto a projector for the client presentation.
Sales forces don't need to carry bulky laptops, because all you really need is the iPad. The wealth of applications now present for iPhone and iPad Touch will find themselves on iPad. So the argument that iPad doesn't have apps or the user will need to wait for apps to be developed is a fallacy.
There are other iPad accessories like the iPad camera connection kit, iPad book case, and many more to come, most certainly if not from Apple then from third-party makers.
What do the pundits say?
Andy Inhatko of the Chicago-Sun Times wrote,
"It’s a computer that many people have been wanting for years: a slim, ten-hour computer that can hold every document, book, movie, CD, email, picture, or other scrap of data they’re ever likely to want to have at hand; with a huge library of apps that will ultimately allow it to fulfill nearly any function; and which nonetheless covers the dull compulsories of computing (Mail, the web, and Microsoft Office-style apps) so well that there will be many situations in which this 1.5-pound slate can handily take the place of a laptop bag filled with hardware and accessories.
In fact, after a week with the iPad, I’m suddenly wondering if any other company is as committed to invention as Apple. Has any other company ever demonstrated a restlessness to stray from the safe and proven, and actually invent things?"
iPad isn't just a reinvention of what the Personal Computer is, but a reinvention of how we view and digest content on the Internet, and on books. If the Web is the marriage of audio, video, and text then content on iPad and similar applications can take the next step forward. The explosion of creativity that this one device ushers in is simply profound and amazing.
Walt Mossberg in "iPad review: Laptop Killer? Pretty Close," wrote, "After spending hours and hours with it, I believe this beautiful new touch-screen device from Apple has the potential to change portable computing profoundly, and to challenge the primacy of the laptop. "
David Pogue of the New York Times described the iPad as being designed by a bunch of perfectionists. Pogue is absolutely right on that regard, of course.
Pogue also wrote that techies' argument on creating content for the iPad is spot on. What about for the consumer? Pogue concluded that "For most people, manipulating these digital materials directly by touching them is a completely new experience--- and a deeply satisfying one."
At the center of the universe addressed, aptly, as One Infinity Loop, Stephen Fry of Time Magazine met with Steve Jobs so he could write "iPad Launch: Can Steve Jobs do it again?":
A little calmer, I remind Jobs that at the product launch of the iPad in January, he had stood in front of two street signs, one reading "Liberal Arts," the other "Technology." "This is where I have always seen Apple," he told the audience, "at the intersection of the Liberal Arts and Technology."
I suggest there's a bit more to it than that; surely Apple stands at the intersection of liberal arts, technology and commerce? "Sure, what we do has to make commercial sense," Jobs concedes, "but it's never the starting point. We start with the product and the user experience. You seen an iBook yet?" His pleasure in showing me the Winnie the Pooh iBook bundled with every iPad is unaffected and engaging. He demonstrates how the case can be used as a lectern and as a stand. "I think the experience of using an iPad is going to be profound for many people," he says. "I really do. Genuinely profound." That rings a bell. "I've heard it said that this is the device for you," I reply. "The one that will change everything." "When people see how immersive the experience is," Jobs says, "how directly you engage with it ... the only word is magical."
From Inhatko to Mossberg to Pogue to Fry, the pundits all say that iPad is a consumer electronics device. It is a computer that people won't think of as a computer. This is the device Bill Gates has been lusting for but has failed to deliver. This is the device that could only be invented because of Apple's core philosophy of "the simple, not the complicated," but more than that it is Apple's ability to stand at the intersection of Liberal Arts and Technology that makes this device possible.
This is why iPad is a Windows Killer.
What's amazing here is that little by little, people don't have to carry bulky laptops to do simple and productive tasks. iPad is the beginning of an Age of Computing that makes this easy and ubiquitous.
Tethering iPad to a traditional computer signals that this device is not meant to be your primary machine. Maybe someday this will be done away; after all, this simply is the first of a genre of devices that makes the computer fit people's digital lifestyle and not let the computer determine that for us. The magic of iPad is that like all other Apple products, its simplicity just works. iPad is the beginning of tomorrow.
Apple isn't selling a netbook or a computer in iPad. It isn't selling a tablet computer. It is selling a magical device that you don't have to think about as a computer, just an extension of your expression. That's powerful. That's magical.
In the end, new mother and project manager, Tara "Tiger" Brown aptly tweeted the magic of iPad, "As a new Mom, I approve of the iPad as a great way to watch movies, read, & play games while givin the bewb. If only it could change diapers."
This is why Apple is in the business of selling magic.
This is why iPad.
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image of iPad, used with permission from Apple, Inc.
Screenshot of websites by author.
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