iPad: Or, why you have to look at the advertising
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I'll explain what I mean. From about 1995 to about 2007, the copmuter industry was predictable. Microsoft dominated the desktop and the laptop. A user interface in 1995 (e.g. Windows 95) looked and worked much the same as one in 2007 (e.g. Ubuntu 7.10). Sure, Microsoft had competitors, but Linux and Mac OS were niche systems that seemed likely to continue to be so.
But now, we have new user interface paradigms, e.g. the gesture systems used by the iPhone and iPad. We have new computing devices, particularly smartphones. We have new killer applications -- telephony and TV and books are all merging into computers, i.e. becoming a program you run on your computer.
It's even exciting on the programming language front, with new languages like Clojure, Erlang, Haskell, F#, etc having the possiblity of breaking out into the staid corporate computing world dominated by Java and C#.
Microsoft's dominance no longer seems assured. Apple or Google could easily exceed their market capitalisation in a few years. And platforms are doing deals with search engines: Firefox with Google, Ubuntu with Yahoo. Everything seems up in the air, uncertain, exciting.
Let's see how well it actually does before we go on about how brilliant Apple's marketing guys are.
Yes, the iPad has potential. It doesn't make sense to dismiss it offhand just because some of us might not have a use for it.
No, not every single Apple product has changed the world, even though they're all introduced as revolutionary. It doesn't make sense to accept their marketing copy as gospel. Lots of companies pay lots of money for sentences like that, it doesn't mean they're all successful.
Ultimately, the market will decide this one. Yes, it MIGHT change the world, but it really is too early to tell one way or another.
I actually wouldn't call this revolutionary. That's why we're not reacting gleefully. It's evolutionary. It just happens to have evolved in a way that gives it a potential radical significance.
Semirelated: Studying advertisements is a brilliant way to study history. It lets you in on all society's biases and wants and needs and fears. Modern advertisement is as insightful to the human condition as modern poetry, though it goes at it a bit ass-backwards and rarely as tactfully.
However, you're entirely right. It's going to be really interesting to see how this pans out.
I submitted this because I was a bit irked at how commentary here is steadfastly ignoring what the iPad is and how it's going to be sold. I enjoy critics as long as they understand what they're criticizing. Aaronsw's post was enough to provoke me into submitting this.
If anybody thinks this isn't appropriate tone for HN, feel free to flag it! I have no particular expectations for this submission.
And the "mouth-foamy" tone (Apple "the most powerful company that’s ever existed."?) kind of helps to make your point, so I'd suggest that it works both for and against you in that way.
:)
From the perspective of an art student Apple's essentially cornered every market now. Whether you're a multimedia programmer, a musician, a filmmaker, a newspaper editor, or a novelist, now Apple controls you on this thing. Even something like HTML5 support means that suddenly I don't have to worry about web standards for this entire block of the market, thanks to Webkit.
The good news is that it's in Apple's interest to appeal to artists and to smaller publishing groups. Between this and the Supreme Court's ruling this week, the University of the Arts is throwing lusty drunken celebrations. Every student here's just been told they're going to be employed and making a lot of money.
Of course, I'm not an art student, so correct me if I'm wrong :)
There's another way the iPad appeals to vain, picky art types, and that's how fringeless it is. Even OS X bothers me in small, subtle ways that my iPod touch avoided with its utterly simplistic design. Taking that design and building a computer out of it means I might actually finally appreciate a piece of hardware. Simplicity means losing hardcore technique, but I enjoy the thought of being able to doodle digital images with my hands.
The iPhone lets me buy movies on the fly, which gives me a great convenience. But it's small. The iPad, on the other hand, lets me buy from anywhere, but it's large enough to make movies enjoyable. If I'm about to get on an 8-hour flight, maybe I buy a book and rent a movie. The fact that I can pay a small amount of money, get something to watch on the plane, and never have to worry with physical packaging, that's nice.
Certainly that encroaches on Apple TV. But Apple TV is a bastard son anyway.
I see the iPad as more of a home-mobile device, rather than a mobile device. That is, it's a device mainly for home use which allows you to be mobile around the house with your information, instead of a device you take outside. A laptop is a device you take outside, because it can do so much more if you need it--like work stuff. If you're going out you'd want to know you have a more capable device on hand just in case.
If the iPad gets the ten hours it claims, it may be perfect for frequent flyers who want their own music, video and books, and a bit of e-mail reading and document perusal on the side.
It would have been better if they had all the fancy touch controls on a macbook air size device that could flip open 350 degrees into a tablet, and flip back into a normal laptop.
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It is okay to speak with force. At times force is needed to cut through layers of of mental resistance. New ideas that we don't understand scare us. We fear what we don't understand. The points you are trying to make are over the head of most people. 99.9999999% don't get "it". If they did we would have more companies that could compete with apple not just copy apple.
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What do I mean by copy Apple? One example is the iPhone. If Apple never made the iPhone. What would phones look like right now? We would have the the Razor3 and it would allow us to download ring tones, not apps.
Heres some food for thought from Einstein:
"Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex... It takes a touch of genius --- and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction." - Albert Einstein
"The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift." - Albert Einstein
And the most important to this discussion:
"The significant problems we face can not be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them." - Albert Einstein
The iPad is not a solution to the question of: whats a better computer or whats a better phone. Just as the iPhone wasn't a better Razor.
The iPad is a consumer device in the truest sense of the word. It's a device that was built to make it as easy as possible for the user to consume media whether it's the Web, movies, music, photos, etc. Plain and simple.
Oh, and comparing the iPhone to the Razr is a bit of a strawman. There have been plenty of PDA-phones in the past: WindowsMobile phones, Palm PDA-phones, etc. They just never did provided a good enough interface to the user to really take off. So yes. The iPhone was an evolutionary leap instead of a revolutionary leap.
> At times force is needed to cut through layers of of mental resistance. New ideas that we don't understand scare us. We fear what we don't understand.
At the end of the day, the iPad is a consumer electronic device not a solution to world hunger. Please get some perspective. Writing a blog post praising the iPad when everyone else is disappointed with it is not some sort of 'shining moment' for journalism that will be recognized by generations to come as a turning point when the tide of Apple-haters was stemmed, ushering in the new Golden Era of Apple.
> 99.9999999% don't get "it"
I'd say that 98% of people don't even know that Apple had a keynote today.
> If they did we would have more companies that could compete with apple not just copy apple.
Most other companies are not in Apple's business. They are making hardware with some software thrown on to push the hardware, or they are selling some software for some hardware. Most companies don't have the attention to detail that Apple does. Yea, sometimes they screw things up (sometimes badly), but OS X doesn't have parts of OS7 hanging around in it the way that Windows Vista still had some little-used apps with icons from the Windows 3.1 days. Most other companies are just pushing their product out the door to turn a profit, but Apple prides itself on projecting an image of quality they way that a high-end car-maker does.
I also really don't like it when people get all uppity about 'copying.' "Who copied who" is a tired game in the software/hardware industry. The real issue is when someone copies something and claims it as their own, not when someone copies something. People adopting the techniques and methods of others is how progress is made.
If you want to play that game, then Apple copied the entire idea for the gui/mouse interface from Xerox. Apple also copied the functionality of Time Machine from countless other utilities that were mostly relegated to the realm of system admins (or 'power users' in the case of Linux/BSD + rsync/rdiff). You might say 'but they copied it better.' But if you want to start talking like that then you better suffix 'everyone copies Apple' with 'poorly' lest you imply that 'copying' at all is a bad thing (and there should be a stigma attached to it).
The evolutionary theory term of art is "punctuated equilibrium": stable stable stable WOW stable stable
The Razr, first time around, captured people's imaginations because it suddenly offered the deep, unheard of cultural need to have the world in your pocket and have it be so small and sleek that you forget what that means. The iPhone is very comparable, except when Apple did it they redefined world.
I'd say that 98% of people don't even know that Apple had a keynote today.
But when the commercials come out, 75% of people will drool.
If you look at it from a cultural perspective, Apple is once again selling us the future. It was already here, sure, but now it'll be at your doorstep, charged, as soon as you like.
Maybe I missed those adverts, but the Razr was just a sleek design. Its claim to fame was how small it was. It was still just a phone though. It didn't offer 'the world in your pocket' unless you define 'the world' to mean 'a phone line and my contacts book.'
However, it notes this popularity was never matched outside the USA.
I also really don't like it when people get all uppity about 'copying.' "Who copied who" is a tired game in the software/hardware industry. The real issue is when someone copies something and claims it as their own, not when someone copies something. People adopting the techniques and methods of others is how progress is made.
- Apple does marketing really well.
- Apple does ridiculously awesome UIs
- Complaining about the fact that it's not particularly technically impressive is irrelevant, most people buy Apple products because of the magic rather than tech specs.
However, thinking about it some more I can see a few problems for the iPad in general:
- Two of the previous 'magical things' Apple produced - namely the iPod and iPhone, had a clear application to get people in the door. In the iPod case it was n-thousand songs in your pocket, in the iPhone case it was 'look, it's an iPod you can make calls with'. People were already sold on portable music players and phones beforehand, Apple just took that need and made a much more awesome device.
- The iPad on the other hand does not have such a clear application. All of the cool stuff like maps/music/games and things can already be done on the iPhone (which most people will be carrying around anyway). The other side - normal web surfing, applications, writing, graphics, etc. - is handled quite nicely by Apple's laptops. I'm not sure why someone would buy an iPad instead of an iPhone, and then, once they have an iPhone, I'm not sure what the iPad offers that makes it worth the extra $500.
- Apple have had beautiful, well marketed things in the past that haven't conquered the universe (the G4 cube, for instance, which was lovely). Marketing isn't always enough.
Still, I have to love Steve Jobs if only for his ability to (apparently) congruently gush that as a tablet the iPad is much better than either phones or laptops, both of which his company sells lots of.
I agree that the iPod and iPhone were much easier sells. But I suspect that the iPad will be seen as a superior product. I mean, the one thing Apple does not corner the market in is standard computing. OS X machines lose out to the Windows market. If anything, this is an entry into that market, same as netbooks were; if you look at this as a cheap, simplistic laptop that just happens not to be a clamshell, then it makes more sense. People looking for a good deal can buy this, and it handles basic computer-y things for them, and it turns out that they don't need all the cruft modern computers bring with them.
But actually in this case I've got some perspective, because last month my mother began asking me about the tablet. She owns an iPhone but no laptop; she likes my laptop but doesn't want to drop that much money for something she won't use much. Her questions were things like: Can I watch a movie on one? Can I check my email? Can I read books? For somebody who needs to do basic computer things like email and Internet, but who doesn't need anything specialized, there's nothing you need that the iPad can't do. (I'm curious as to how many people in the US own laptops. I've never thought about it before.)
As for the G4 cube comparison (though that made me think for a second!), I think there's one huge difference: The OS. This is easily the best operating system ever made in terms of usability. There's almost no abstraction. No mouse, no doubleclicking, no app folder, no dock, no task bar... you push a button and it launches something, and that thing is usually designed so that it makes perfect sense without instructions.
I didn't get why that was a big deal until I saw the streaming keynote and actually looked at the applications. I'd bet that Youtube on an iPad is simpler and funner than Youtube on a Macbook, because there're fewer steps to going about doing anything. The simplicity of the OS allows for far more elegant app design, to the point where I think people will notice and be sold on that design alone.
The problem, though, is that this "magical screen" probably won't be very efficient for getting work done. Which means most people won't be able to replace their computers. And I think it's going to be hard to convince these people that they need a so-called "middle device".
EDIT: I should also add that I think the appeal will be much broader once publishers make digital books and textbooks that are actually superior to their paper counterparts. But that might take years.
I think it'll appeal to more people than just that. I suspect it'll make headway into the e-reader territory — some people will pass up e-paper for flexibility. It'll also be considered by anybody enthusiastic about newspapers or magazines, and I think there might be more of them than we currently see. Certainly that's what my neighbor was excited about when he dropped by to talk.
It's going to be absolutely enormous for students. Anybody who uses their laptop for casual notetaking will want this. I use my iPod and I want it also, though for me it would be a gratuitous purchase. People that want a Macbook but can't drop a thousand dollars will consider paying half that for a tablet.
As for getting work done: I can see myself using this as a primary writing tool. I'd prefer that to a Macbook, actually, because of the flexibility. (I don't mind touch-typing.) I can also see a lot of powerful applications being made around this. Could you replicate Coda as an iPad app? I think it's possible. Could you make a powerful image editor? Perhaps not in the iPad's current state (though maybe?), but as it becomes more powerful I think there's easily enough space to create a gorgeous editing interface. I can already run Final Cut Pro on my laptop with no problem, and using flash memory means things move even more quickly; we won't see professional-class applications by the end of this year, but by 2012 I suspect we'll start to see them.
Within my immediate family one purchase has been decided (my mother wants an ebook computer and a music program) and I suspect several more are on the way. When one thing can do so many things at once, it appeals to lots and lots of people. I doubt people who already have two Apple products will need this third one, but people with only one or the other or people looking to make a switch suddenly have a brilliant bridge.
I'm eager to see how this works as an eReader. I still think that reading a book on a backlit display sort of stinks. I'm wondering if people will spring for the iPad as an eBook reader because it has so much else to offer, and then realize a few days later that they just can't ignore the eye strain.
The ereader angle will be interesting also. I find that I don't mind reading books on lowlit screens, but I still vastly prefer the Kindle. I'd also like to know if reading certain types of writing works better without e-paper. Perhaps reading glossy magazines feels better when your screen's glowing at you.
From my personal experience of being "that computer guy" for countless friends, relatives, and random people on the street, that statement accurately describes over 90% of the home computer market (i.e. everything but business/professional use).
I have to assume that you will be able to print wirelessly, but there's that tiny fear that somehow you can't as a protective feature for the ebooks. Silly question, but can you print from a Kindle or a Nook?
I'd rather have a computer, which is why I don't like Apple products. However, I understand why this puts me in the minority.
Funny how hard it is for geeks to let go of thinking that the worth of a product is defined by how many features it has!
I think huge segment of peoples computing needs could be met by a device like this. I think there is a whole segment of computing uses now that have left the keyboard and screen formfactor behind. Rather than this device needing a niche, I think it may end up that portable computers with keyboards are a niche.
Having said all that, I was disappointed by the release. The bezel is ugly and I'm not convinced that it's necessary for holding. The aspect ratio seems wrong and ugly. The screen is much lower ppi than the ipod/iphone. Half an inch seems too thick as well. All in all its not the sleek futuristic machine it should be. Hopefully version 2 will fix some of these things.
I think the huge (relatively) screen will make up for the ppi. As for half an inch, I suspect that with something this big anything thinner might even seem fragile. But we'll find out on launch, and whatever we hate Apple will fix and sell to us again.
Human beings are not machines, and one of the most important things is how they feel. Apple knows that,that is what marketing is all about and this means for me that Ipad is going to be a success because:
1)When you rotate the screen, it feels responsible instantly.
2) When you touch, it feels responsible again because of the hardware accelerated touch screen.
3) People could use it to write without making sounds(silence).
4) No cables, no strings, it just "feels right" like a physical notebook.
5) No ugly keyboard.
6) No limits in the orientation.
7) First serious computer you can rotate to read a book right, when you use a laptop and rotate for changing the aspect ratio ugly keyboard gets on your way.
I'm happy for the ipad, it means computer competitors that don't get it will just copy it, like the iphone.
Not to nitpick, but ITYM responsive.
That's exactly nitpicking.
Upvoted, among other things, for making me imagine a waterfall of iPads displaying upon them photographs of waterfalls. Unrelated imagery. Thanks!
But, as I said, I could be wrong. My own apathy for the product certainly isn't anybody else's.
I thought that point of photo frames (digital or not) was to display your photos, not to have an iPad sitting on the coffee table that has all of your photos on it ready to sift through. This is like saying that putting a photo album on your coffee table makes photos in frames obsolete.
Unless you're claiming that people will buy iPads with iPad-holsters and set them up on tables/shelves to constantly display a stream of their photos, then you haven't proved that the digital photo frame is "on it's way out."
But I'm the odd man out, I guess. I'd always thought digital photo frames were dead anyway; from the opposition that line got here, I guess I'm wrong! Apologies.
> I'd rather have a device upon which all my family memories are stored.
This has been possible with computers for what, at least 15 years now? Whether or not it's more intuitive on an iPad is subjective. But as far as having it all stored digitally, a computer can already do that.
The thing the iPad revolutionizes about photos is that it allows you to walk around with it around the house.
Several billion? what are you smoking?
hyperbole /haɪp'ɜːʳbəli/
Synonyms: exaggeration, hyperbola, overstatement
If someone uses hyperbole, they say or write things
that make something sound much more impressive than
it really is.Seriously, that's not even a hyperbole. That's a really stupid statement, even for a hyperbole.
My audience is not a bunch of idiots. They got it. You're the only one out of thousands of readers who's complained.
- Hardware
- Software
- Human Interface Design
- Marketing
- User/Developer Ecosystem
Of these 5, the last two are often the missing secret sauce. Of these 5, the last one is the most powerful. They realize this. Why do you think they do everything that they do with the stores?
Open Source shows that you can have nothing but software and ecosystem.
You may not agree with all his arguments, but the post addresses the "no innovation" claim head on (scan for Sgt. Pepper’s, if you can't find it).
What excited me after I saw the keynote: Speed and apps. The fact that this thing is blisteringly fast is exciting in and of itself. No load times for anything? Pretty neat. And then they did some of the demo apps, the NY Times one in particular, and basically showed off then and there how the newspaper industry could save itself, and I was struck by the fact that given a screen of this size and a processor of this speed (whatever that actual speed is), you're capable of making a lot of very powerful things.
iPhone apps right now are some of the best programs ever made. In terms of build and ease-of-use and aesthetic quality, there're some things there that blow away and Windows/Mac app I've ever used. The fact that now developers have even more room to make their content means to me that we're going to see some applications that are cool to a degree that we've never seen before. If hearing birdcalls on your phone is magical already, I want to see what those same creative minds are capable of given ten inches of real estate.
So, not exciting on the surface, but the implications make me really giddy. I'm sure when we get closer to launch date Apple will reveal ads that say all that but more smoothly. I'm actually excited to see what the ads will be like.
Seriously though, the article is pretty good -- I can feel the stickiness of the jizz on his keyboard.
I think it's all right for me to call Apple my favorite company. If we want to be douchesnobs, they've earned their pedigree. More red dot design awards than any other company in history, more black pencils, an impressive list of advertising trophies, and business sales that shock and awe us all. As an entrepreneurial advertising major who enjoys industrial design, I think it's safe to say I've got a good excuse for liking Apple.
As an entrepreneurial advertising major who enjoys industrial design, I think it's safe to say I've got a good excuse Apple.
And I think it's safe to say, that as someone who makes a living from writing software, that I am not going to like devices that restrict users from running my software... even if it has a really pretty case. (I have eyes. I know Apple's stuff is beautiful.)
FWIW, I was a long-time Apple fanboi, diligently lining up to buy whatever new product they had the first day it was available. But then one night, I was debugging some software, and some debugging functionality didn't work because Apple specifically broke it to prevent someone from reverse-engineering iTunes. (Google "PT_DENY_ATTACH".) I formatted my Powerbook that night, switched to Linux, and never looked back.
Apple's not going to win me back with a nice screen or great marketing. When they stop selling music and videos with Restrictions Management and when anyone can run any code on any of their devices, Apple will be my favorite company too. But I doubt that will ever happen.
Usually I'm not a fan of the slew of Apple articles. This time I thought it warranted some, but even so it's very over-the-top. For whatever reason we've all decided to hate the shiny thing with the terrible name. I thought it might be fun to chip in with my opinion, which I'd written as a private blog entry a bit earlier.
I'm satisfied with the compromise Apple and independent developers have reached with the iPhone. If I can jailbreak at any time and get more freedom for my machine, then I'm fine with ceding it for the time being. Maybe some point in the future I'll turncoat and go after something more open, but I'm moderately retarded as a programmer at the moment and I've been slow to develop.
This is an aside, but, based on your last comment: Does Apple sell music with DRM anymore? Now they sell their files as unlocked m4ps with an option to convert to aac. That stopped me from downloading mp3 copies of all those albums, so I was satisfied; is there a restriction still there that I somehow missed?
Indeed I did :)
Does Apple sell music with DRM anymore?
As far as I know, many songs are non-DRM'd, but not all of them. But really, DRM didn't work out for the music industry, and it is gradually going away. It's videos/software/books that I am worried about now. For example, I would love to be able to buy TV episodes instead of pirating them. But they won't play on any computers I own, so I can't. DRM goes away, the content industry gets my cash. (But it's not good for Apple if I can watch the videos on non-Apple hardware, so I can't.)
Hm. I thought that their big announcement last year was that they'd converted the entire store to DRM-free, but I could be mistaken.
It's videos/software/books that I am worried about now.
Yeah, I agree about this one. Right now, I try and treat each thing on a case-by-case basis. I never buy digital video, but I'll buy my games off Steam and I buy the occasional Kindle book because Valve and Amazon have done such a job of winning my trust. (Even when Amazon messes up, like with the 1984 thing, they're very good at realizing they were dumb and sounding convincing in their apology.) I also feel like books and games are so easily pirated that if something bad happens, I can get myself a copy anyway.
Now, video rental is something different. I'm completely fine with the idea of paying for temporary access if I'm watching a TV show or a movie. DRM doesn't matter if it'll be gone a few hours from now anyway.
(If this were Reddit, I would have said "fuck yer". Actually I wouldn't have... but someone would have.)
Now I understand why I don't want one. I don't like magic in my reality. I prefer tech.
Yes Apple will make these things sell, using empty buzzwords that makes geeks cringe. But the author didn't have to be a dick about it.
The Howard Zinn story was more important than this.
But you missed my point. They're not empty buzzwords. Looking at the tablet in terms of dimensions and RAM and DPI is like looking at a film in terms of how many reels it takes to project it in a theater. Yeah, there's something going on there that's worth a discussion, but to assume that the point of the movie is to make a long film strip is a little silly.
"Magic" is not an empty buzzword. "DPI" is. I don't care about DPI. I care about I can push a button here and it'll give me a blank screen and I can DRAW on it. Just like magic. Or I can watch baseball and TOUCH it and make things happen on the screen.
There's a lot of technology going on there, but the technology isn't the point. The magic is the point.
javascript:(function w(){document.body.style.fontFamily='Georgia';})()It'll make you happy to know I'm switching to a no-holds-barred Helvetica/Cufón combination shortly. Everybody wins!
EDIT: Just for you guys, Georgia's the default font again.
I'd like Apple to figure out a policy that lets Pandora stream in the background, or Last.FM. Those are the only two I care about. Using push notifications for IM works perfectly for me: I see the messages as they happen, which is all I care about.
This made me laugh: "and so the only thing you need to make a beautiful program is a beautiful graphic designer"
Something very similar is happening here. If I have an idea for a great hardware product, now I have the option of using this existing hardware, which is beautiful and has a beautiful method of interacting. Certain of the UI specs have already been handled for me. So there's less of a gap between my having an idea and my launching it than there was, say, five years ago.
I'm hoping for further similar breakthroughs. It would be nice if making a program was simply a matter of sketching out the user interface and seeing it realized.