The biggest event of the day was Steve Jobs’ keynote speech in which he announced Apple’s new tablet. Most critics out there are saying it’s a disappointment because it’s just a big iPhone. That’s okay… I don’t think most people got the message behind this announcement anyway. Let me try to explain why I think the iPad doesn’t suck.
The first source of frustration with the iPad is the fact that most people misinterpreted its purpose. They think it was supposed to be a laptop, much like the first tablet PCs a while back. Well, let’s replay the keynote. Jobs says that the iPad was conceived to fill a gap between notebooks and smartphones. Did you notice the word in bold? So, if you think the iPad sucks because it doesn’t have USB ports or any other nonsense like that, I’m sorry but your problem isn’t the iPad, it’s English. Go buy a dictionary.
Now, let’s talk about the “between” part. Try to imagine a scenario where your smartphone sucks. For instance, let’s say you saved an article on Instapaper and want to read it on the iPhone. You grab the phone and go sit on your couch because it’s way more comfortable than your desk and start reading. It’s really inconvenient for a long read, right? Or, think even worse – launch the Kindle app for iPhone and try reading for more than 5 minutes. You could do those things well in your notebook bigger screen, right? But think wisely: do you really want to carry your notebook to your couch a let it sit in your lap and burn your genitals while reading? I don’t think so. That’s where the iPad fits perfectly.
Imagine any scenario where you want to do something that requires a computer (let’s say, watch some crap on YouTube) but you don’t want to carry your notebook around. That’s where you’ll use the iPad and benefit the most out of it. Everything Steve Jobs did while seated on that couch today I always wanted to do, but it’s very inconvenient to use either my MacBook or iPhone to do that. Netbooks? Bah, same inconvenience as the notebooks – and they’re worse in every aspect than a notebook. Netbooks are the hype-following people’s notebook or, a more noble use, a way of digital inclusion in less developed countries.
That’s part one of the whole picture. The second point is usability. You probably know someone that has zero proficiency for using computers but owns an iPhone and get his/her way around it very well. Because it’s very easy to use and do the things people want. That’s why the iPhone is almost at the point of what I call the state-of-the-art of a certain technology. I strongly believe that a technology only reaches its maximum when its use becomes transparent to people. Example: you don’t need to know how a telephone works in order to operate it – you just do it. The iPhone is almost there – it’s a computer that doesn’t require almost any computer knowledge to operate. And that’s the case of the iPad as well – I bet a lot of people with no computer proficiency can and will use it well. It’s digital inclusion to those who can’t/don’t want to use our desktop-based operating systems.
Because of these two reasons, I believe the iPad will succeed and Apple will make a lot of money out of it.
Of course, nothing is perfect. There are a lot of things that needs to be addressed in the future. First, the OS still doesn’t allow multitasking/application backgrounding for 3rd-party apps (yes, you read correctly – 3rd party – those saying you can’t listen to music while browsing the web are idiots who never used an iPhone and/or never bothered about Googl’ing about it). It isn’t a real problem for most apps, but things like Skype or Pandora would greatly benefit from that. Second, it lacks a frontal camera. Why not install iSight and allow video conferencing? Third, the border is too wide and the screen resolution is too low. A screen of that size could easily benefit of a higher resolution.
Opposing to the vast majority of people, I don’t think lack of Flash support is an issue. First, because I believe Flash importance will dim out in the future due to HTML5 – there are new ways of streaming video without need of stupid proprietary plug-ins that don’t work properly. And the iPad already has a YouTube app like the iPhone, so if you still need Flash for video, I believe you want to watch porn. Well, not my problem, really. Apart from videos, the other popular Flash apps, like games, rely on a simple concept that doesn’t apply to and cannot be emulated on touch screen devices: OnMouseOver. Yeah… you never paid attention to that, right? That in most Flash apps, hovering the mouse cursor over something is fundamental for the application to work properly. How are you going to do that in a touch screen device? Bummer…
So, now that I talked too much about something that doesn’t even exist, let’s end this and wait until April. Then we’ll see what’s what!