Gamechanger.
So, yesterday was the big day. Mr. Jobs came out, did his “reality distortion field” thing and announced the Apple iPad. On the surface, it’s a typically technolust-worthy Apple device with a ton of cool features. But is that enough? I must admit, I’m somewhat on the fence about it. It’s certainly a beautiful object, as is almost everything designed by Jonathan Ives, but what will be its niche?
There are a bunch of missing features that the blogosphere has exploded in a paroxysm of discontent about – namely, the lack of ports, the lack of Flash support in the browser, the lack of a camera, and the lack of multitasking. Will these things cause the iPad to be stillborn, or is it not even aimed at these people? Did we set our expectations too high?
Let’s investigate their complaints a bit more closely. Firstly, lots of people are lamenting the lack of SD card and USB slots on the device – this, to me, is the least of its problems – for a start, Apple are offering USB and SD card adapters, and you can always sync to your desktop for any situation where this won’t work. It’s not a device designed to be used in isolation. It’ll function autonomously, but you’ll still need a desktop or laptop to make the most of it. In this regard, it’s like the iPhone. Meaning, those who are used to the iPhone will be right at home.
Now, Flash support I have a bit more of a problem with. Apple have thus far refused to support Flash on the iPhone – given the size and limited processor power of the device, this is somewhat forgivable. But on a device with a decent-size screen that claims to be the “best” way to surf the Internet – not good. I have previously posted on here about the wonders of the HTML5/CSS3/jQuery triumvirate as a way to implement rich media – Apple are obviously hoping that things move in this direction and are doing their best to nudge things that way, but until it is fully supported by Internet Explorer (which still, alas, has the lion’s share of the browser market) it’s going to remain a niche technology, requiring you to essentially develop your Web site twice. Apparently Flash has 97% market penetration, so, for now, it’s still the rich media technology of choice. Apple have definitely missed a trick here. They need to kiss and make up with Adobe, fast. And get them to do a version of Photoshop for the iPad while they’re at it.
Next, the lack of Web cam and multitasking. I’m going to group these together, as, in my experience, people tend to use messaging apps such as iChat, Windows Live Messenger and Skype while they’re doing other things. On the iPad, this isn’t possible right now. You chat or browse the Web, not both at the same time. The platform is perfectly capable of multitasking – you can listen to music using the built-in music player while browsing the Web, for instance, but Apple doesn’t allow for it in their software development kit – they’re keeping it to themselves. Multitasking functionality has already been enabled on the iPhone by the hacking community – it’s something that those people who have been brave enough to “jailbreak” their iPhones have been able to have for a while now. Official support for multitasking is something to hopefully look forward to in the forthcoming iPhone OS 4.0 (which may well hit before the iPad goes on sale), but, for now, it’s not happening. So, for those of you who were hoping to use the new iWork software while listening to Pandora and IM’ing your friends, you will be disappointed. The actual lack of a camera was probably done to keep down the price point, to compete with the Kindle DX, but it would have been nice to see the higher-end, 3G-equipped models with a camera. The other reason I can see why Apple are discouraging multitasking is that, despite the iPad having a decent amount of storage space, it doesn’t have much actual system RAM (memory) – if you run multiple things at the same time, they all have to live in RAM, so by disallowing it, they’re enabling developers to make better use of the available memory. But, for many, this won’t be a dealbreaker, especially if they’re used to the way the iPhone works. In fact, in terms of Web cam functionality, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Apple come out with an external Web cam for it at some point.
The other thing that Apple wasn’t clear about in their presentation was the capabilities of iWork – it offers that kind of hands-on document processing experience I was hoping for in my last blog post on the subject, but will people find it useful? On the surface, sure. It looks great, has a funky user interface, and can be used with an external keyboard. But will it save Word and Excel documents? They said it will open them, but will it save them again? According to the Apple Web site, it’ll save documents only in iWork and PDF formats. This will most certainly be a dealbreaker for many, many people who use Microsoft Office. The desktop version of iWork is a great and successful attempt at making a more user-friendly office suite, but it only has a fraction of the market penetration that Microsoft Office has. Apple knows this, hence the desktop version of iWork quite happily exports Word and Excel files, so it’s perfectly possible to do – hopefully this won’t pass them by. There are apps on the App Store that allow you to create, edit and save Microsoft Office files, so even if Apple don’t do it, someone else will. Also, Apple have broadened the scope of what they’re letting programmers do with the device – for instance, the new iPhone/iPad SDK, has opened up the possibility of using VoIP (voice over IP) apps over a 3G connection, hence it could be used as a phone if you really wanted to (not that I know anyone who’d want to hold something the size of a big, thick magazine up to their ear in public).
The main bone of contention seems to be, what can the iPad do that a netbook can’t? Netbooks have Flash, can multitask, can play media, often come with Web cams and aren’t subject to the software restrictions of the App Store. To be honest, in terms of actual tasks, yes, you can do more on a netbook, for less money. But that’s not really what the iPad is about. A netbook is, at the end of the day, a small laptop. The iPad isn’t – it wasn’t designed to be. It seems to have been designed to fill a narrower niche – primarily as an anytime-anywhere media consumption device, with some additional productivity functionality. Think back to when the iPhone was first announced – some people were underwhelmed with the hardware, some thought it was too gimmicky and some just downright thought it was crap. But nobody could have foreseen the impact of the App Store and how ubiquitous the device has become. Every mobile phone nowadays is trying to be the iPhone. That’s because Apple offered the iPhone as a platform, rather than just a device. What made the iPhone was what people did with it. So let’s see what the app developers out there can come up with. They have a whole new platform, new form factor and a new operating system that makes the most of them to play with, and, based on what they’ve done on the iPhone, I have faith in their creativity.
The best summary I’ve read so far of the iPad launch and people’s apparent ambivalence to it is by Stephen Fry, the British master of wit and wisdom, comedy partner of Hugh “House” Laurie, and dedicated Apple fanboy. He attended the launch, and has some very reasonable comments about the device’s pros and cons, stated far more eloquently than I can manage. Basically, the device isn’t aimed at people like me – it’s not designed to be a laptop replacement heavy on the geek credentials. I already own a MacBook for all that stuff. Think of it more as an appliance, like a portable TV, and it starts to make more sense. This is something your grandma could use while relaxing on the sofa – she could do some basic Web browsing and e-mail, read a Barbara Cartland novel and listen to some easy listening music in a way that she’d probably get utterly lost with on a regular computer. Am I going to get one? Maybe. It’d be an ideal device to help make those 7-hour flights back to the UK pass more quickly. Let’s see what software those clever people out there in programmer-land make for it by launch day – it’s the software that will sell it to me.
