The iPad: It's about control systems, not eBook reading | Hacker News Reader

The iPad: It's about control systems, not eBook reading

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62 pointscubicle6729 comments

I can believe the iPad will do well in this market, but I don't believe apple gave it more than a tiny amount of thought when designing the thing.

Apple are all about mass consumer markets, it'd be totally out of character for them to design a system for home automation, or even doctor's offices.

Not that they won't be happy that it'll do well there, but it'll be a pleasant side effect rather than a goal.

Yep. I remember a few years back seeing Jobs compare Apple to Chrysler (I think?) in this respect... something along the lines of: Chrysler makes minivans for families. They happen to also be really good for businesses that need to shuttle executives around, and Chrysler is happy to sell to them, but that's not who Chrysler is thinking about when they design them.

This was obviously a few years ago. :)

I think the key is the merger of personal media, communications, entertainment, and home automation. Imagine that you're reading a magazine article on the iPad. This reminds you of a band. You go over to the media remote app and put an old album of theirs on. Out of curiosity, you do a search and go over to the Amazon page and order their new song. This reminds you of something else that you ordered and you check on the package tracking. You see that it will arrive when you are out of town and message your girlfriend to see if she'll drop by and pick it up off the front steps on the way home from work in a few days.

Most of that, you could do on the PC. But with the iPad, you could do all of that just sitting on the couch.

The home automation part: You call up a recipe app as you walk to the kitchen. You flip to the ingredients view and you see that you need some more ginger. You flip the ginger into a shopping cart app for Whole Foods and it gets added to your "Personal Shopper" bag for you to pick up later.

Not unlike how Java evolved: Gosling and Joy envisioned something to use for smart appliances and network-aware devices. Its popularity stemmed from the fact it was far more useful outside of that context in enterprise and client-server development.

And thank goodness too, man...did you ever see Jini? What a disaster.

Of course, I'm sure some will say the same about Java, but it's hard to argue against the fact it was more useful than originally intended.

It's an interesting idea but I don't see how that would work. Apple is not an OEM -- you can't call them up and easily order 50,000 iPads to integrate into your own offerings. You would have no idea when a new iPad is coming out and what features it may have. The iPhone/iPad platform aren't super manageable. This is something I'm sure Apple will be working on but right now the idea of a hospital using the iPad in any large deployment would be really difficult. You can't even do something as simple as centralized LDAP authentication from an iPad. As far as I know there's no way to push applications to an iPad or remotely upgrade it's firmware or all these other small things you would have to consider. A dumber tablet makes more sense for something like home automation or control panels for other integrated systems. They might be more expensive right now but the iPad will definitely drive prices of large touchscreen tablets down. So if you were building something like a home automation system would you build an iPad app for it? Sure. Would you design your entire platform around relying on the iPad? Absolutely not.

http://www.apple.com/support/iphone/enterprise/

And in particular the iPhone Configuration Utility: http://support.apple.com/kb/DL926

This much seems clear: the iPad will change how mobile workers work. Cops, postal workers, meter readers, field technicians & scientists, doctors, you name it.

Furthermore, it will disrupt numerous markets: portable DVD players, GPS units, PDAs, laptops, industry-specific bespoke mobile platforms (what is that thingy the UPS guy uses?), control systems, newspapers, magazines, you get the idea. Anything less would not be worth Apple's time.

> This much seems clear: the iPad will change how mobile workers work. Cops, postal workers, meter readers, field technicians & scientists, doctors, you name it.

I'm afraid I haven't been paying attention: is there a brief, cogent argument for why the iPad will do this whereas the Tablet PC form factor did not?

I've been using a tablet for a few months now. (HP tc1100, which many feel is on a par with Apple industrial-design wise, though of a slightly different philosophy.)

I think styluses are for geeks only. Using handwriting recognition and gestures is like writing on paper, only it's not really. It's also like using your desktop PC, but not really. Geeks like us can learn these new conventions and have fun coping with a stylus. To most people it's a terrible pain in the *ss.

Taking up a pen tablet also involves taking up the stylus. That's 100% more overhead than something like the iPad. A paper reference book can be looked at, browsed, indexed, flipped through just by putting your hands on it. Install software to allow that on a pen tablet, and you still have to pick up that stylus in addition to going to the tablet.

In short, it's more immediate. It's immediate enough to reach a mainstream audience. Pen tablets were not.

The audience (ipod/iphone) Apple already reaches will want to move on to the next gadget. There will be a much larger range of people(mom->geek->artist->workers) with these devices, 'new technologies,' and quite possibly a new generation of computing could spray from this somewhat cheap device.

I mean it IS cheap. The data plan IS cheap.

I had never heard of a tablet pc; until, I was browsing craigslist for a cheap Wacom solution last month. I've heard of an iPad and its not even in stores yet. It will probably be half a decade before I stop hearing about the iPad.

Perhaps we should give it a chance.

...is there a brief, cogent argument for why...

Software.

Let me tell you, the iPhone has already changed how this "mobile worker" works.

I could be talking to a coworker, unsure of some documentation. Or I could be eating while reading news. Or I could be waiting in line for 3 minutes and reading a few paragraphs of a programming guide. Or (one of my favorites) holding my squirming two year old in one arm (holding the phone) and the hand of my four-year old in the other, showing the Wikipedia entry for the island of Capri to my seven year old.

It's a tablet! That fits in your pocket! That you can use one-handed! That has data access everywhere!

The freakin' future, folks. We're living in the freakin' future.

Let me tell you, the iPhone has already changed how this "mobile worker" works.

It's a tablet! That fits in your pocket! That you can use one-handed! That has data access everywhere!

It's the freakin' future, folks. We're living in the freakin' future.

No it won't. It's great as a stylish remote for $10,000 yuppie home theatres.

But: Can I get one that's ruggedized to work in a mine, or explosion proofed for an oil rig, or certified for medical environment? Can I get rs232/Can/I2C? Can I build an adapter without selling my company to Apple?

Even if I did, I want to sell an expensive logging/inspection package then Apple take 40%

Apple has developed--and I think even sells--an iPod Touch that's adapted to work as a mobile checkout for high-end retail.

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/09/11/03/exclusive_look...

http://www.tuaw.com/2009/12/02/apple-looking-to-sell-ipod-to...

Reviewing the discussion here, I think his important point is being missed: Due to the supply chain Apple has built through iPod then iPhone/iPod Touch, the iPad is an extremely cost competitive multitouch interface. In fact it's so cost competitive that you might want to use it mounted. Forget carrying and maybe even rotating. It's a (relatively) cheap multitouch interface with great usability and a health programming community breeding future professionals.

Your heart might be crying out that this is not cool or sexy, and therefore incompatible with Apple, but it's a very interesting proposal. I can foresee a potential future where 50% of iPad hardware sold gets nailed down and screwed in.

^This.

I sure hope someone comes out with a detachable wall mount+charger for the iPad.

This is what I believe also. I think the iPad will be useful as a mobile touch panel for a larger device behind it like a home, factory, machine or internet based thingy.

I think something like this will be a mobile touch panel for everything that will have a computer in it, which will be more and more things as time goes on.

It could be good for both eBooks and control systems.

Good read; rather than a hand-wavy "things we haven't imagined yet", he spells out, with details, something that the iPad would be good for.

The question is though, why will it be better than all the previous tablet PCs?

Technically, the iPad is still 'meh'. When it has a holographic display or you can wear it as a watch with a flip out screen, or control it by thought alone, then I could understand the hype.

I just don't understand why it's supposed to better than anything else already on the market - tablet or not. Am I just getting old? What makes it Special besides the brand?

I don't think so. My money is on it remaining a niche product. I think there's a fair amount of 'valley hype' around it TBH.

Software, primarily.

But, more relevant to this essay: I don't know of another tablet with a screen the size of iPad's, a 10 hour battery, and a shell that's 1.5" thick. (Not that it doesn't exist, I'm just not aware of it.)

HP Compaq Tablet PC Tc4200 vs. iPad

• 1.3" thick vs. 0.5" thick

• 4.6 lbs vs. 1.5 lbs

You could duct-tape three iPads together and you'd have roughly the size and weight of one Windows Tablet PC. This matters a lot carrying one around a hospital. And this is to say nothing of the fact that all the exposed ports and vents on the PC prohibits its use in a number of contexts, while the iPad could easily be fitted with a sealed silicone case.

• Full desktop OS vs. specialized mobile OS

Yes, Apple's platform is tightly controlled. But if you're building a web-based application, why not deploy it on a low-maintenance, streamlined device instead of something with enough complexity to run Crysis while spreading Conficker in the background?

This seems to me like an example of a particular kind of myopia: because the author has been involved in the control-panel industry, he perceives that industry to be a more important part of the world than it really is.

the touch screen on the iPad is remarkably sensitive. Do you really think they did that just for gaming?

Well, no, I think they did it for the user experience of the device as a whole, but even if it was just for gaming: Videogames take in $10 billion a year. Crestron and AMX together make about $0.7 billion.

I interviewed at Savant once and got an offer. They seemed like a pretty cool place, but they were way out on Cape Cod and I figured I'd go insane out there.

It is funny to read an article saying the iPad will be about X, when there are so many X's out there. The iPad represents the refinement of a platform (tablets) that has a shot at transcending the models of computing we have had so far. Just look at where the iPhone is at as a platform now with 3 revisions under it's glassy screen. The iPad a few generations down the road (30 inch, Multitasking) will change the computing landscape.

In the 1990's (Thanks Jeron) we were all expecting VR to be the next step away from the 2D windowed computing environment. For some reason that didn't take off. At the same time there was a lot of academic hype around the idea of ubiquitous computing. I think the iPhone/iPod Touch was the first tentative step into this direction, but without the real estate for effective daily work. I think the iPad will solve a lot of these issues and therefor go way beyond anyone's expectations.

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