iPad thoughts

One week to go.

Very few gizmos are met with the sheer quantity of punditry that is obligatory for a new Apple offering, and the iPad is no exception.

I doubt I can make points that haven't been made elsewhere countless times, but for my own part, here are my hopes and concerns for the new device.

What I'm excited about

Mobility

Repeat after me: a tablet is not a small laptop.

And this is a very, very good thing.

A laptop is a self-contained, luggable[1] computer. It's quite useful when you're seated somewhere. It's virtually useless, even treacherous, when you're standing up, walking around, or doing pretty much anything else.

A tablet, on the other hand, can be useful both when seated and not. I use my iPhone when I'm sitting down, but perhaps even more so when I'm walking.

In my office, I frequently walk around to talk to co-workers about problems I'm having, or problems they're having. Do I take my laptop with me? Once every couple of months. Maybe. I don't generally take it to meetings, even.

I took it to meetings before I had my iPhone, but now that I can keep an eye on email without my laptop, why bother?

An iPad? That, hopefully, will be a whole 'nother story. I figure I'll nearly always have my iPhone when I'm wandering through the office, and the iPad will be with me closer to a quarter of the time, maybe more, because I can just grab it and go, and it's useful without sitting down.

Proximity

When I'm reading on my home computer, I like to lean back and relax. However, that takes me farther away from my screen, so I'm forced to adjust. I can enlarge text, but I can't enlarge graphics quite so readily without magnifying my screen[2].

Furthermore, although I have a bluetooth mouse, it's still a pain to navigate when I'm not in close contact with my desk, especially when I'm navigating through a series of pages with small navigation links (e.g., webcomics).

The iPad will be a perfect "kick back and relax" type of device, especially if/when content migrates from webpages (that are too often not designed for convenient navigation) to iPhone OS applications that are designed for the touch format.

Which leads me to...

Navigation

Serial content on the web is a disaster. It doesn't have to be, but it nearly always is.

Look at Dilbert. Move back a month, and try to navigate forward one day at a time. Notice that the forward arrows move around[3] on the page even on this minimal interface, so there's no place where you can leave your mouse and count on the next action working.

On proper iPhone applications, you swipe, or tape the right side of the screen. That's serial navigation in a nutshell, done right.

How much would I pay to have Gunnerkrigg Court in a native iPhone/iPad application with proper navigation? Quite a bit, even though it's free on the web.

It's all about the experience.

The Experience

Using a well-designed touch application under a well-designed touch operating system on a piece of beautifully-designed touch hardware with a large, colorful screen is a pleasure.

How many times have you said that working with a computer is a pleasure? Not often, I bet.

Today, I have everything but the large screen, and I am desperate for that last, missing piece.

Apple has produced a peerless ecosystem of hardware and software. I hope that the iPad brings that experience to a large, new audience.

Speaking of which...

The Audience

How many times have you wondered where you saved that file, or what hidden dialog box is preventing the window at the front of your screen from responding, or why the application shortcut on your desktop no longer works?

How many times have you been huddled over your computer trying to get your anti-virus software to find and kill the latest piece of junk that's preventing you from getting anything done? Or watched a friend or relative try to do it for you?

As a computer professional, I desperately want people who don't want to understand the inner workings of their computer to not have to.

The iPad is a big step towards that dream. Its application-centric instead of document-centric design takes away the flexibility that a desktop or laptop have, but in exchange it offers a huge win in basic usability.

Give an iPod touch or iPhone to a three-year-old, and they'll be able to use it right away. Give an iPad to a grandmother who wants to be able to keep in touch with her family, tell her that she doesn't have to worry about modems, anti-virus software, or misplacing important files...

I'm betting she'll thank you.

Especially given its...

Large screen

Many pundits criticized the iPad for just being a large iPhone.

Well, duh. The iPhone and iPod touch are marvellous devices hindered primarily by their small screen. The screen size makes them highly portable, but for old fogeys like me, I want a bigger screen!

Even with my recent acquisition of progressive lenses, I still find the screen difficult to read at times, and there are any number of applications that could be much more enjoyable with a large screen. Mind mapping with iThoughts is already quite pleasant; using it on a larger screen should be an utter delight. Playing Civilization Revolution (assuming it doesn't crash every few minutes) can kill countless hours on a small screen; if 2K Games revises it for the iPad, I'll be absolutely thrilled.

And reading any book I want on a graphically-sophisticated, handheld device? Mmmm.

Appliance, Appliance, Appliance

I really think that, given some creativity from developers and businesspeople, the iPad will be a huge hit in the business world.

Mount one outside your conference room for displaying its schedule, allowing new meetings to be slotted into open slots (or existing meetings to be canceled), and it can provide any number of other functions as well.

Realtors, take these with you to meet clients, and you can offer 3D views of houses you're selling, perform searches for other homes in the area, pull up a history of home prices in the neighborhood, etc. Sure, you can do all this with a laptop, but how much easier will it be to share this information with 2 or 3 other people if you're all seated around a flat display on a table instead of having everyone huddled around a small laptop display?

Retailers, give these to your floor staff. Need to find out if you have an item in stock at this location or a different one? Piece of cake, especially with a camera or other scanner to read barcodes.

Concerns

Really, I don't have many personal concerns for the device. Would I like to be able to run Pandora in the background while I browse the web? Sure. But I'll always have my iPhone with me, even if I'm not near a computer to provide my music.

I do have a few concerns that I would like to see addressed to assist with more widespread adoption. So for the benefit of those who have yet to fall in love with the device...

iHub

The iPad is not a computer in the traditional sense, and it still requires a full-fledged computer for backups and upgrades.

Moreover, there are websites which won't work on the iPad for a while, until the web design world fully acknowledges the fact that Flash simply isn't going to work on Apple's mobile devices[4].

I encourage Apple to help move the device to a new audience of users who just want a simple computer to keep them in contact with the outside world by providing something similar to the AppleTV: an appliance that runs iTunes and Safari, purely for the sake of providing the management features that the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad lack.

Apple could make this "iHub" even more useful by removing the need for a display. Plug in an iPad and use it as a dumb display while the iPad is syncing with the device.

Multi-user Support

To some degree in the business space, and to a much larger degree in a family household, the ability to have custom sets of applications and content for different users would be very useful.

On the other hand, Apple may have decided it would rather just try to sell each household several iPads.

Footnotes

1. Yes, I know "luggable" was once used to describe extremely heavy computers that resembled large laptops.


2. Hold down the control key while using the scroll button on your mouse in MacOS X. Easy, but magnifying the page generally leads to more awkward navigation.


3. Don't see it change locations when using the top arrows? Try moving from February 9th to February 10th, or July 31st to August 1st.


4. I'll probably post a note about Flash in the near future, but suffice it to say that I'm a fan of open web standards, which means I'm emphatically not a fan of Flash.