So… What's the big deal about the iPad?
I love telling people about the Apple iPad. And the first thing I tell them is, "It's just another computer." If you are bored with the web, bored with email and board with games and video on the web, the iPad is NOT going to light up your life.
With that in mind, it might just be the perfect computer for people who primarily do the following activities.
- Email (you might want to get an external keyboard if you want to go fast)
- Browsing the web
- Reading books
- Watching movies (Air Video Server will even stream the movies off your other system so you don't have to convert or transfer them to the iPad, and of course the NetFlix app is awesome.)
- Playing games (the iPhone brought the tilt and rock to gaming in a new way, now increase your screen size enough for entirely new control systems and you've got a new gaming platform that will be showing huge new advances in the coming months. Just as the iPhone did after it was released.
AND then there's stuff that the iPad is not good for yet, or maybe not ever.
- Microsoft Office (I've been trying to arrange an iPad-Only day, but I keep having to do stuff in PowerPoint.
- Quicken (My mom asked about this one. "That's a deal killer for me," she said. I think eventually Quicken Online will be enough, but not yet, and maybe not for my mom, EVER!)
- Writing
- Complex design or development work (the keyboard and extra screen real estate *are* necessary when you're doing design.)
- Drawing (A friend, and amazing artist, is playing with the iPad's drawing capabilities. And he is doing some amazing things. But he tells me that Steve Jobs is ranting against the use of a stylus. If you've seen my friend's work, you would understand that on some things, even Mr. Jobs has no idea what he's talking about. The drawing and use of a stylus is one of those times.)
- Apps that don't exist in an iPad version. (Just like the old days when the Mac had to fight "It only runs on Windows" all day everyday, the iPad/iPhone app universe is limited.)
So, if that's the case, what's the big deal about the iPad.
- It's here. (Everyone is talking and hyping about the HP/Windows 7 slate and all the varieties of tablets coming with Google's Android OS, and while I am excited to see what will happen when others enter the space, only the Apple iPad is shipping. For now.)
- It is revolutionary. (I do not use an iPhone, so the swipe, pinch and scroll interface of the multi-touch world is still eye-opening from time to time.)
- It's what's coming that is going to blow our minds. (I wrote a comment about the NEXT THING for the iPad. And I do believe education is ready for this transformative, or disruptive technology to hit the desks.)
- We don't even KNOW what's coming. Each hour I spend with the iPad, or watching my kids playing with the iPad is another few neurons firing in my brain and trying to construct a "what's next" idea for the iPad. If you are waiting for the next generation, or thinking the Windows or Google operating systems are going to be better, that's fine, but I'm hours and hours and hours ahead of you already, adapting my way of thinking to what's possible.
Here's one example that made the multi-touch interface leap very tangible for me. Frenzic is a game that I have been playing on the Mac since I bought it about 2 years ago. Here's what the screen looks like.
In the game you place the pie slices into the available circles. The highest points are given for getting an entire pie made of the same color. As your score gets higher the game speeds up and your brain is forced to make choices before you are comfortable with them. It's a form of brain training. Where you get better at processing information quickly, almost without thinking.
It's a simple game. But I swear I can feel my brain building strategies as I go along. It's almost as if you can watch your interior processing getting better. (Maybe better at poking pie slices into circles you say, but I believe the creative AND logical processing are working together in new ways to solve the puzzle. And as I've gotten better, over time, I think my processing speed for logic tasks in other aspects of my life, has gotten more acute. Just my thinking, but this is the theory behind brain training of any kind. I think Frenzic rocks in this aspect.)
So I've been playing Frenzic for a while using a mouse and traditional point and click gestures.
On the iPad (it's really an iPhone app, but pixel doubling on the iPad makes it huge. It looks just like the screen above, at 2X.) the process is non-linear. I don't click and point. I simply POKE the proper circle and the pie slice is placed. It's very different. And quick. And my brain is still getting used to the POKE action. My brain is fascinated with the POKE. It's as if the game that I have been playing and learning to get faster with, has just added a quicker and more efficient method for assigning pie slices to the circles.
It's a simple example of how something we did before the multi-touch interface is transformed instantly by the new options for interacting with the data. I have not beat my high score from the old mouse-driven version of the game, but I am relearning the process. And my strategies are not changing, but the way I execute them is.
Pee Wee used his early-release iPad as a serving tray and that was cool. But I think we're going to find a lot of novel uses for the multi-touch interface. Novel and innovation inform each other.
This is where the iPad will change everything. (Other slate.tablet computers too, it's just that the iPad is here, now.) We will address problems in unique ways to re-solve the ways we were thinking about them. Yes, it's just another computer. With a big multi-touch screen and no attached keyboard. So what.
Exactly. But what's next on the horizon?
UPDATE 4-19-10: Two new concepts have arrived in my input stream. 1. an article by a local newspaper columnist about his iPad experience proclaimed, "The iPad is not a television." And I'm going through the rest of my day mulling that one over. I tell my son, as part of our non-sequitur jokes, "The iPad is not a TV." And he shoots back from the other room. "Why not, it does Netflix?"
And a few hours later this:
Two friends watching Hanna Montana. And what I noticed was… 1. the sound was manageable for them and *really* manageable for me; 2. they continually adapted view positions without any difficulty; 3. they didn't care what I thought the iPad was good for, heck it streams Netflix and HM is is available on "play now."
So… I'm not sayin, the iPad IS a television set. And just because it can jump from Hanna Montana to Mah Jong does not make it a revolutionary device. And then I remember I can get a bare bones one for $500. Imagine when the price drops another 25%! Oh my!
@jmacofearth
permalink: http://bit.ly/iPad-getit
A few posts of interest from Uber.la:
- The Next Interruptive Innovation from Apple's iPad Has Yet to Be Invented, But We're Working On It
- iQuest Day Prep: What's the Apple iPad Survival Package? I'm Going Cold Turkey Next Friday
- Getting Down to Business with the Apple iPad
See all of the Uber.la iPad-iWay posts.
Visit the Frenzic site to see more about the game. Or you can find it in the iTunes App Store.
