On the iPad
"What do you think of the iPad?"
I've been asked this by several people over the past few days. It's a simple question that defies a simple answer. Forced to sum my thoughts in a single sentence I would say, "If nothing else, no device has caused so much conversation about so many fundamental aspects of computing since, well, likely the original Macintosh."
[Momentary aside: Remember the Macintosh? In the 80's there was a computer called the Macintosh. In the 00's there was a computer called The Mac. Some time in the late 90's the intosh was quietly sent into retirement. If I walked into an Apple Store today and told the greeter-human, "I'm looking for a Macintosh," I would expect to be met with a couple of blinks of confusion.]
If you're looking for an opinion useful to a potential purchaser of this thing I'll say, "I'm betting it will be pretty damn cool. My main recommendation is for you to reserve judgement until you can go and hold on in your hands and get a feel for it. I don't think that it's the kind of thing that is easily or well summed up in writing or reviews."
If you're looking for a business opinion, I think this device will be successful, especially since the business model groundwork for this thing has been well established by the iPhone.
The rest of what I have to write is about the concept of the computer and what's happening to it, so if that doesn't hold a gripping interest for you, now is the right time for you to skip ahead to your next bit of leisurely reading.
In the days leading up to the product announcement the media worked itself up into a lather over this thing, and this started to annoy me. "Oh calm down," I thought to myself, "It's just a product. An Apple product, yes, but you know, still just a product." My bemusement was fueled by the fact that people who were in a position to have some concrete knowledge of what was going on were circumspect, while those who knew nothing beyond New Apple Product were in a tizzy. I dismissed this as irrational exuberance and figured that whatever was coming wouldn't be paradigm-changing.
About two days after the announcement, I changed my mind about that. This is a harbinger of fundamental change.
The iPhone certainly shook things up, but the paradigm that got turned on its head was that of the phone - even discussions about how it was a palmtop computer were still about what someone thought they would be getting in a phone. When the laptop first emerged it was a curious innovation and caused a lot of talk, but mostly that was about how desktop computing could suddenly travel. And granted there have been all sorts of groundbreaking prototypes. Microsoft's Surface even found its way to production, albeit with a tiny and peculiar niche market.
There are probably others that warrant mention, but the bottom line remains this: it has been nearly two decades since a device has caused so many serious reconsiderations of fundamental assumptions about the computing platform:
What is fascinating is that none of these topics are particularly new, per se - but they've quite suddenly moved from esoteric and speculative to stunningly concrete and vividly immediate. I haven't held one of these in my hands, haven't sussed out the crucial details, don't know anything other than reading between the many, many lines that have been written. So I'm not going to talk about good or bad, better or worse.
But I am going to talk about sea change.
When I started drafting this I included the phrase, "If I wrote a tech blog I'd probably break these each into individual columns, milking this for three weeks of material. But I'm not, so you're getting it in one big overwhelming chunk." I've quickly realized that such a thing would be unwieldy at best, utterly unreadable at worst. (Like, you know, I'm worried about my "readership." Heh.) So yes, I am going to break this up into pieces, if only for my own peace of mind.
Stay tuned.
I've been asked this by several people over the past few days. It's a simple question that defies a simple answer. Forced to sum my thoughts in a single sentence I would say, "If nothing else, no device has caused so much conversation about so many fundamental aspects of computing since, well, likely the original Macintosh."
[Momentary aside: Remember the Macintosh? In the 80's there was a computer called the Macintosh. In the 00's there was a computer called The Mac. Some time in the late 90's the intosh was quietly sent into retirement. If I walked into an Apple Store today and told the greeter-human, "I'm looking for a Macintosh," I would expect to be met with a couple of blinks of confusion.]
If you're looking for an opinion useful to a potential purchaser of this thing I'll say, "I'm betting it will be pretty damn cool. My main recommendation is for you to reserve judgement until you can go and hold on in your hands and get a feel for it. I don't think that it's the kind of thing that is easily or well summed up in writing or reviews."
If you're looking for a business opinion, I think this device will be successful, especially since the business model groundwork for this thing has been well established by the iPhone.
The rest of what I have to write is about the concept of the computer and what's happening to it, so if that doesn't hold a gripping interest for you, now is the right time for you to skip ahead to your next bit of leisurely reading.
In the days leading up to the product announcement the media worked itself up into a lather over this thing, and this started to annoy me. "Oh calm down," I thought to myself, "It's just a product. An Apple product, yes, but you know, still just a product." My bemusement was fueled by the fact that people who were in a position to have some concrete knowledge of what was going on were circumspect, while those who knew nothing beyond New Apple Product were in a tizzy. I dismissed this as irrational exuberance and figured that whatever was coming wouldn't be paradigm-changing.
About two days after the announcement, I changed my mind about that. This is a harbinger of fundamental change.
The iPhone certainly shook things up, but the paradigm that got turned on its head was that of the phone - even discussions about how it was a palmtop computer were still about what someone thought they would be getting in a phone. When the laptop first emerged it was a curious innovation and caused a lot of talk, but mostly that was about how desktop computing could suddenly travel. And granted there have been all sorts of groundbreaking prototypes. Microsoft's Surface even found its way to production, albeit with a tiny and peculiar niche market.
There are probably others that warrant mention, but the bottom line remains this: it has been nearly two decades since a device has caused so many serious reconsiderations of fundamental assumptions about the computing platform:
- the interaction paradigms between the human and the device;
- challenging the notion of The File as the monolithic keeper of state;
- the measures of chip speed and RAM to determine the worthiness of the device;
- the tipping point for our core media: audio, visual, video, and print; and
- the evolution from tinkerer's toolset to simple appliance.
What is fascinating is that none of these topics are particularly new, per se - but they've quite suddenly moved from esoteric and speculative to stunningly concrete and vividly immediate. I haven't held one of these in my hands, haven't sussed out the crucial details, don't know anything other than reading between the many, many lines that have been written. So I'm not going to talk about good or bad, better or worse.
But I am going to talk about sea change.
When I started drafting this I included the phrase, "If I wrote a tech blog I'd probably break these each into individual columns, milking this for three weeks of material. But I'm not, so you're getting it in one big overwhelming chunk." I've quickly realized that such a thing would be unwieldy at best, utterly unreadable at worst. (Like, you know, I'm worried about my "readership." Heh.) So yes, I am going to break this up into pieces, if only for my own peace of mind.
Stay tuned.