Apple Unveils the iPad Discussion

[tmedvick]

You missed my request.
Don't look at this device from what you know about computing. Look at it from the view of the target audience. The same target audience that still sees smartphones as beginning at year iPhone v1.

Look at it from that perspective, then reassess what innovation looks like.

I see your thought, but I disagree. I do not think that they will see this as innovation. I think they will look at it as a bigger iPod. They will want / not want it based on that image, but it is not an image of innovation. My iPhone using friends aren't interested in it because it doesn't offer them something they can't already do and loses SMS. My iPod touch using friends don't want it because it isn't pocketable. Everyone thinks it's good-looking, except for one guy who can't get past the 4:3. No one can justify the money.

Someone I know will get one of these, I would bet, but it is not because of innovation. If I have a really cool shirt available in Small, it is not innovation to make it available in Large. I could never offer it to the Silicon Pines set in my family. It is too much money and too confusing for my grandparents and not powerful enough and too confusing for my parents (I am 40).

[Varjak]

It always amazes me that it seems one has to be 100% for or against something. I admit to being a bit disappointed but not surprised at the choices that Apple made. For me, it's not about what it doesn't do so much as what it could be made to do and which already exists with current technology. I won't list them again. However, I find the non-multitasking issue a bit misleading. From what I understand, the native apps will 'multitask.' Someone on the Times blogs said the iPad sucked because his Macbook could play music while he read a book. I would assume this can do this as well, since isn't the music function something that can run while other apps run on the Touch? But yes, I wish it were more open and they pushed the processor a bit more in this application. I'm sure it will be the processor for the next iPhone/Touch as well.

[Varjak]

For once (joking) I have to side with TMedvick. I'd say try looking at it this way: if Apple had introduced a larger SCREEN as an accessory for the iPhone or Touch that connected in some way; would there be such hysteria? I don't think so. People would say, oh, that's nice it improves or adds a few uses to the iPhone for me. To me, this is essentially a larger screen connected to an iPhone/Touch. Yes, it has iBooks, but that will almost certainly appear for the iPhone/Touch too. It has a nicer processor (ditto).

I do think QF is right though. I could DEFINITELY see getting my mother one of the basic versions of this. She doesn't type much, she is a light user of the internet; but doesn't really like using a laptop (don't ask me why, I don't know). Unfortunately, some of the things I think she'd REALLY like to use it for (video calling with her grandchildren, watching internet video) are not currently possible on it. She's a big reader, but I don't know if she would 'convert' to e-books.

[brickman65]

However, I find the non-multitasking issue a bit misleading. From what I understand, the native apps will 'multitask.' Someone on the Times blogs said the iPad sucked because his Macbook could play music while he read a book. I would assume this can do this as well, since isn't the music function something that can run while other apps run on the Touch?

Yes you are exactly right Varjak. The iPhone OS can multitask within native apps. (ie. You can listen to you iTunes while you do anything else. It just can't run Pandora, etc.) This is a common misconceptions with those who do not like/prefer the iPhone OS. The OS just can't multi-task much.

[cbowers]

That the smartphones and PDA's at the time were a device everyone could use, it just needed to be done better.

The iPad does not build on that. Really. It is bigger and faster. That's it. The faster part is great, the bigger part is just there. It is simply an iPod...

Er, I think there's some trees getting in the way of your view of the forest.
Are you glossing over that an iPod today does more, for less money than our "Palm Pilots" did, and I'd argue still WebOS? With more applications than we ever had on the Palm Platform (many of the same authors and titles too), including the overabundance of flashlight apps. Thank heavens only the Clie's and HandEra/TRG models had real speakers or we'd have had the fart apps back then as well.

As for it being nothing more, but faster and larger. That's actually a huge enabler, and can in fact be the difference between success and failure, if the fundamentals are there. Funny enough a number of years ago, Palm and Windows Mobile were all about doing the same thing faster and on better displays. The problem was the fundamentals about what they were doing and how weren't enough to make doing them faster and bigger worthwhile. I don't think that's the case here. There's a number of things I'd do more on the iPhone's OS if the screen wasn't quite so cramped, and the CPU was a little faster. For example I've found it usable but not overly pleasant to remote mix from stage, an event, via a VNC client on the iPhone to a PC connected to a digital mixer. With the multi-touch controls it's quite possible to zoom in and control a bank of 96 faders. But it could be far more productive to do that on a 10" multi-touch display.

With a Palm (I started at a V) I could do so much. It was simple to use and the possibilities were seemingly endless. I would create databases, play games, track my golf scores, store my grandmother's list of medicine. I had a company providing hardware and software companies trying to get every last ounce of ability out of it, with the company's blessing.

Oh come on now, reality check. I've been there. Started with the PalmPro (2mb IR upgrade), IIIx, TrgPro, Handera330 (OS4beta), Tungsten|C.

You say this is simply an ipod. There's nothing simple about that.
All of what I was doing back then is doable on the iPad out of the gate, in a more simple less expensive, fewer add-ons package.

I've have my HandEra 330 on a keyboard with 240x320 landscape display of Word and Excel documents. WiFi printing to laser printers over a CF WiFi card. Saving back and forth from windows network shares. And I'd either use software to remotely display and control PC based powerpoint slides, or use Margi's presenter to go to run the presentation and VGA out from the Palm itself.

This all cost more than twice the cost of an iPad. Accomplishing all that was the exact opposite simple and elegant. It was geekness in the extreme to pull off on a daily basis.

Worse you had Palm fighting you the whole way on software. Remember that before HandEra came on the scene, that getting a simple software bugfix in a mail app or something else from Palm or Sony meant getting the newer rev of the software in their next device. And what software Palm did include built in was pretty basic, not at all comparable to what you get built in on an iPhone/ipod Touch/iPad. And software updates? Come-on. It took Apple to slap the market straight on that. Free or cheap ongoing updates to all their devices. 99% of all current Apple and 3rd party software for the iPhone/Ipod Touch runs on all 3 generations of hardware, PLUS it's future proofed and runs on the not yet released iPad.

Palm Inc/source/One in all it's incarnations after the US Robotics/3Com era never had a focus on the customer and customer experience. You'll find my name littering the annals of PalmOS customer and development watering holes shinning a bright light on issue after issue killing the platform.

I see my last visit here was some 2 years ago. I've long been done kicking a dead horse. But I did have to poke in and see the Brighthand forum response to this product.

I contentedly live in the Apple Walled Garden. Because for the most part it works. And generally does so, out of the box. Moreover I can do geeky things like have my photos scroll on my TV with zero effort, merely having synced my camera to iPhoto, and adding an AppleTV to my livingroom. Then also with zero effort stream multimedia to multiple locations (AppleTV, airport express), and control the selection and volume with my lowly "ipod" or iPhone. All with Apple hardware, and free Apple software.

I'm an IT manager, so I spend all day keeping a hodge podge of horribly varied hardware and software working together in numerous edge case uses. I have to say that it's a pleasure to come home to my Apple gear, and generally just not have to do IT stuff to have it all harmonize together and let me just live with the stuff. Do I get to live in all the edge cases I could with other devices? No. But married middle life no longer affords me the time and effort required to keep the disparate mess working required to empower all those edge case uses. In truth, likely one of the main reasons I used to be content in those edge cases was that the problem solving keeping whatever non-Apple software/hardware doing those unrestricted edge case uses, was an enjoyable pursuit in it's own right.

I have scores of uses, itching for the iPad, any one of them would cost a $400 single purpose device to solve. None of them would be satisfyingly met by an "unrestricted" netbook kludge running Windows or Linux. Instead I'll have the extensible (though with reasoned limits I've come to appreciate) canvas of the iPad to do many of those tasks in a single device. Sadly, that was the long lost promise of the Palm general purpose PDA, never fulfilled.

[Splicer]

@Drillbit, excellent comparison of PC versus smartphone paradigms there. Hope people hear you, I've been preaching that smartphone OSes are more than enough for all but the high-end of computing for years now.

+1 to that.

I'm reminded of the announcement of the Palm Foleo when it was conventional wisdom that a Blackberry could replace your entire desktop system, but no one could ever do anything useful with anything as small as the Foleo.

(which had its own set of shortcomings that are beside the point.)

My Tungsten|T3 used to be my DESKTOP computer replacement. We've gone a little backwards in the realm of handheld computing since then and the iPad will be a little too large and heavy, but it's a step in the right direction that no one else has been willing to take.

[Splicer]

I see your thought, but I disagree. I do not think that they will see this as innovation. I think they will look at it as a bigger iPod.

Innovation is such a loaded and almost meaningless word. Does it matter if anything is innovative? What matters is what it does.

In a world where everyone is either carrying a stack of index cards or a Selectric typewriter, Apple has announced a Moleskine notebook. And people are pooh-poohing it because everyone has already seen paper, so it's nothing new.

In smartphones as well as desktop and laptop and netbook computers, the world would be a better place with a lot less innovation and a lot more usability. That's what Apple does, with admittedly varied levels of success. The level of success of the iPad has yet to be seen, but comparing the number of gimmicky features or wondering whether it's been done before is meaningless. Remember: the Wright Brothers didn't invent anything. Lots of people made flying machines before they did. The Wright Brothers simply built one where the "inventor" didn't die in the test flights. Innovation? You decide.

[harpgliss]

Hi,

Er, I think there's some trees getting in the way of your view of the forest.
Are you glossing over that an iPod today does more, for less money than our "Palm Pilots" did, and I'd argue still WebOS? With more applications than we ever had on the Palm Platform (many of the same authors and titles too), including the overabundance of flashlight apps. Thank heavens only the Clie's and HandEra/TRG models had real speakers or we'd have had the fart apps back then as well.

As for it being nothing more, but faster and larger. That's actually a huge enabler, and can in fact be the difference between success and failure, if the fundamentals are there. Funny enough a number of years ago, Palm and Windows Mobile were all about doing the same thing faster and on better displays. The problem was the fundamentals about what they were doing and how weren't enough to make doing them faster and bigger worthwhile. I don't think that's the case here. There's a number of things I'd do more on the iPhone's OS if the screen wasn't quite so cramped, and the CPU was a little faster. For example I've found it usable but not overly pleasant to remote mix from stage, an event, via a VNC client on the iPhone to a PC connected to a digital mixer. With the multi-touch controls it's quite possible to zoom in and control a bank of 96 faders. But it could be far more productive to do that on a 10" multi-touch display.



Oh come on now, reality check. I've been there. Started with the PalmPro (2mb IR upgrade), IIIx, TrgPro, Handera330 (OS4beta), Tungsten|C.

You say this is simply an ipod. There's nothing simple about that.
All of what I was doing back then is doable on the iPad out of the gate, in a more simple less expensive, fewer add-ons package.

I've have my HandEra 330 on a keyboard with 240x320 landscape display of Word and Excel documents. WiFi printing to laser printers over a CF WiFi card. Saving back and forth from windows network shares. And I'd either use software to remotely display and control PC based powerpoint slides, or use Margi's presenter to go to run the presentation and VGA out from the Palm itself.

This all cost more than twice the cost of an iPad. Accomplishing all that was the exact opposite simple and elegant. It was geekness in the extreme to pull off on a daily basis.

Worse you had Palm fighting you the whole way on software. Remember that before HandEra came on the scene, that getting a simple software bugfix in a mail app or something else from Palm or Sony meant getting the newer rev of the software in their next device. And what software Palm did include built in was pretty basic, not at all comparable to what you get built in on an iPhone/ipod Touch/iPad. And software updates? Come-on. It took Apple to slap the market straight on that. Free or cheap ongoing updates to all their devices. 99% of all current Apple and 3rd party software for the iPhone/Ipod Touch runs on all 3 generations of hardware, PLUS it's future proofed and runs on the not yet released iPad.

Palm Inc/source/One in all it's incarnations after the US Robotics/3Com era never had a focus on the customer and customer experience. You'll find my name littering the annals of PalmOS customer and development watering holes shinning a bright light on issue after issue killing the platform.

I see my last visit here was some 2 years ago. I've long been done kicking a dead horse. But I did have to poke in and see the Brighthand forum response to this product.

I contentedly live in the Apple Walled Garden. Because for the most part it works. And generally does so, out of the box. Moreover I can do geeky things like have my photos scroll on my TV with zero effort, merely having synced my camera to iPhoto, and adding an AppleTV to my livingroom. Then also with zero effort stream multimedia to multiple locations (AppleTV, airport express), and control the selection and volume with my lowly "ipod" or iPhone. All with Apple hardware, and free Apple software.

I'm an IT manager, so I spend all day keeping a hodge podge of horribly varied hardware and software working together in numerous edge case uses. I have to say that it's a pleasure to come home to my Apple gear, and generally just not have to do IT stuff to have it all harmonize together and let me just live with the stuff. Do I get to live in all the edge cases I could with other devices? No. But married middle life no longer affords me the time and effort required to keep the disparate mess working required to empower all those edge case uses. In truth, likely one of the main reasons I used to be content in those edge cases was that the problem solving keeping whatever non-Apple software/hardware doing those unrestricted edge case uses, was an enjoyable pursuit in it's own right.

I have scores of uses, itching for the iPad, any one of them would cost a $400 single purpose device to solve. None of them would be satisfyingly met by an "unrestricted" netbook kludge running Windows or Linux. Instead I'll have the extensible (though with reasoned limits I've come to appreciate) canvas of the iPad to do many of those tasks in a single device. Sadly, that was the long lost promise of the Palm general purpose PDA, never fulfilled.

Great post, enjoyed reading it very much.

Been two years since your last post? do not be such a stranger.

David

[cbowers]

Yes you are exactly right Varjak. The iPhone OS can multitask within native apps. (ie. You can listen to you iTunes while you do anything else. It just can't run Pandora, etc.) This is a common misconceptions with those who do not like/prefer the iPhone OS. The OS just can't multi-task much.

It is odd to see many old Palm users climbing on that band wagon when they of all people should be familiar with a PalmOS having a kernel licensed from Kadak which had a 4 thread ability but a license restriction not to expose that to non-OS applications. The PalmOS (of old, not WebOS) too is multi-tasking for OS functions (and for at least one company I'm aware of who licensed the ability from Kadak for their own Palm application). For the rest of the apps, they relied on registering for notifications and responding to launch codes. Push notifications seems to be a concept Apple is exploring as well, but they're right to be cautious given how messy it got on PalmOS and the resulting debug apps which let you view how many and what palm applications had hooked into which events to sus out conflicts.

Here's 3 pages of processes currently running on my iPhone.

[tmedvick]

Lots of stuff...

My only point was that I don't see the iPad as anything but a bigger and faster iPod Touch. I don't see it as particularly innovative, nor do I care for Apple 's "Walled Garden". I think this is Apple's response to slates in production elsewhere. And while a beautiful device, it falls short of what I was hoping to see. I still see it as a device with a limited appeal, and Apple once again finds that people can't be trusted with things like USB ports, SD slots (the dongle doesn't matter - a slot lets you add storage to the device, the dongle lets you transfer info for a short time).

I live in my own garden. I choose the software I want to use and how it interacts throughout the house. It's very low maintenance and I will put the capabilities of a Win 7 / Pre set-up against whatever Apple lets you play with.

As far as the Palm history: it was everyone's history at the time, programming 15 years ago was a PITA compared to now, everywhere. But Palm, and everyone else was forging a new path. The glacial movement of Palm, nearly killed the company, particularly the way it would fumble over itself if it had a decent idea and never manage to get the work done.

So, no, I don't think the iPad is innovative, just larger and faster. And, No, I am not impressed by this. I may change my mind when 4.0 comes out and Apple has finished baking this project a bit more, but right now, the Pad doesn't do enough to let me put my Netbook down, doesn't do enough to make me want to carry another device with me, doesn't do enough to make my son (an Apple loving 17-year-old) do anything but laugh at it's shortcomings, and it doesn't make anyone I know want one (I am a 40-year-old programmer: this last part was really unexpected). In the end, that is why I don't find it innovative. The iPad is a diverged device looking to fill a void that I am simply not feeling right now.