A compendium of commentary on the iPad

While I am interested in new devices that hope to improve our interaction with data or more grandly hope to improve our lives, in the case of the recent announcment of Apples iPad I am still finding the online reaction as fascinating as the device itself.

The following is a selection of some of the more reasoned opinion on the iPad I have read recently.

Design-centric Thoughts on Apple's iPad

The iPad is not a laptop nor is it a smart phone. It is a couch device, a bedroom device (don't read that the wrong way), and a kitchen device (swivel it to cook from a recipe you find online). In all these places, a laptop always felt wrong. The iPad is optimized for media consumption: surfing the Web, reading blogs/news/books, watching TV shows, playing casual games, listening to music, managing personal productivity (calendar, contacts) and looking at photos.

Now some might note that the modern Web is as much about creation as it is about consumption and that people are no longer just consumers of media -they are participants in the conversation. While this is increasingly true, the vast majority of time spent online is still focused on consumption. And a lot of creation remains lightweight (commenting, rating, status updates) -which the iPad easily supports.

Is the iPad the harbinger of doom for personal computing?

The fundamental difference between a Mac and an iPhone is that I can run any software I want on my Mac. I can buy it on a DVD, I can download it from the Internet, or I can compile it myself. I can get rid of OS X and install another operating system. The Mac is a general purpose computer in the classic sense. The iPhone is not.

Apple decides which software I can run on my iPhone. Apple provides the only means by which I can get it. The platform is for all intents and purposes, closed, and the hardware is closed as well. Sure, the iPhone is great to use, but the price of using it is that you're rewarding Apple's choice to bet on closed platforms.

What bothers me is that in terms of openness, the iPad is the same as the iPhone, but in terms of form factor, the iPad is essentially a general purpose computer. So it strikes me as a sort of Trojan horse that acculturates users to closed platforms as a viable alternative to open platforms, and not just when it comes to phones (which are closed pretty much across the board). The question we must ask ourselves as computer users is whether the tradeoff in freedom we make to enjoy Apple's superior user experience is worth it. Via Ruk.

Joe Hewitt - iPad

... in the end, what it comes down to is that iPad offers new metaphors that will let users engage with their computers with dramatically less friction. That gives me, as a developer, a sense of power and potency and creativity like no other. It makes the software market feel wide open again, like no one's hegemony is safe. How anyone can feel underwhelmed by that is beyond me.

A message to the Internets regarding the iPad

And you know what, just like Steve Jobs said, you need to hold it for yourself. It's a different computing experience. It's intuitive and simple. The device is blazingly fast and obvious how to use. It is a third kind of computing between a smartphone and a laptop.

I am a technology professional. For almost 20 years I've tested, used, broke, fixed, and played with all kinds of technology from broadcasting to air conditioning to software. I am not easily swayed in these things. But even with all my skepticism, I think the iPad is something different. A new way of computing that will become commonplace.

iTampon, er, iPad clashes with the big, bad web

And that's when it hit me: the overlapping windows thing, it's less about me, and more about an effect of computing: it's all networked together. That email I send has to do with the IM conversation I'm having, which is turning towards the webpage I just clicked on, which I found on my Twitter client, that just compelled me to change the song I'm listening to... Apple made the decision to make a machine that is a great multimedia device. A beautiful screen that let's you focus on what you're looking at, without all the other "distractions." But those "distractions" are part of the modern day viewing experience. And while Steve is leisurely strolling through the NYT, clicking page by page, keeping his audience holding their breadth as the page loads (1, 2, 3, 4, 5 seconds of staring at a white page), all the Apple fanboys were surely furiously clicking "refresh" on Engadget while flipping back and forth to Twitter and IM. Via DesignNotes.

How to Frame the Internet II: Entertainment and Culture Post iPad

In terms of segmenting information, I'm very enthusiastic about the iPad. One aspect in particular is intriguing, and it is the very aspect that annoys Gizmodo so much: No Multitasking.

Here is the slow web in effect. The opportunity to focus on the one task at hand. Combined with the intimacy of the device, we're going to see an entirely new way of interacting with information.

It is a more reflective way, one that might even correct some of the signal-to-noise issues we've for so long taken as a given of the digital age.

Future Shock

The Real Work is not formatting the margins, installing the printer driver, uploading the document, finishing the PowerPoint slides, running the software update or reinstalling the OS.

The Real Work is teaching the child, healing the patient, selling the house, logging the road defects, fixing the car at the roadside, capturing the table's order, designing the house and organising the party.

If the iPad and its successor devices free these people to focus on what they do best, it will dramatically change people's perceptions of computing from something to fear to something to engage enthusiastically with. I find it hard to believe that the loss of background processing isn't a price worth paying to have a computer that isn't frightening anymore.

The iPad Big Picture

They're Microsoft and Intel rolled into one when it comes to mobile computing. In the pre-taped video Apple showed, Bob Mansfield said of the iPad, "No one else could do it." Only Apple.

A compendium of commentary on the iPad

While I am interested in new devices that hope to improve our interaction with data or more grandly hope to improve our lives, in the case of the recent announcment of Apples iPad I am still finding the online reaction as fascinating as the device itself. The following is a selection of some of the more reasoned opinion on the iPad I have read recently.

Design-centric Thoughts on Apple's iPad

The iPad is not a laptop nor is it a smart phone. It is a couch device, a bedroom device (don't read that the wrong way), and a kitchen device (swivel it to cook from a recipe you find online). In all these places, a laptop always felt wrong. The iPad is optimized for media consumption: surfing the Web, reading blogs/news/books, watching TV shows, playing casual games, listening to music, managing personal productivity (calendar, contacts) and looking at photos. Now some might note that the modern Web is as much about creation as it is about consumption and that people are no longer just consumers of media -they are participants in the conversation. While this is increasingly true, the vast majority of time spent online is still focused on consumption. And a lot of creation remains lightweight (commenting, rating, status updates) -which the iPad easily supports.