You’re missing the iPoint
I did try and avoid wading into the torrent of iPad love/hate streaming through Twitter but it seems that a lot of people just dont ‘get’ the device and where it sits in the market so I thought I’d dust off my soap-box and add try shout over the noise to anyone who might listen.
First, let me state, this isn’t a fanboy post, I don’t actually care that the device is from Apple, I’d have the same opinions if this was released by any other manufacturer.
I’ve lost count of the number of people who have said “I already have a phone and a laptop, why would I want this?”, which to me is like saying “I already have a car and my legs, why would I want a push bike?”. The answer is: You might not need this! This product, just like any other consumer electronic product is not meant for absolutely everyone on the planet, you might not need it, so why publicly moan that Apple hasn’t released something you absolutely positively have to have to make your life complete?
The iPad isn’t meant to replace your laptop, or your phone, it’s a coffee table device. Something that sits in your living room for when you need it, maybe you pick it up to look through your TV guide and set some programs to record on your Sky+ without messing about with the remote control, maybe you sit with your partner and do your weekly food shop from the sofa, or flip through your DVD collection to find a film to watch which when you’ve found one, starts playing on the TV at the tap of the pad, if it’s getting late and you’ve not finished the movie, take the device upstairs and carry on watching the film from where you left it. It’s for those tasks and situations where a laptop is just too much.
On a morning it might be sat in a cradle on your bookshelf, a large format display tells you the weather forecast, the headlines and your schedule / to-do list for the day while you’re sat across the room eating your cereal. In the evening it might stay in the cradle and act as a photo frame pulling photos from your families Flickr accounts like most WiFi frames do these days.
The applications while travelling are fairly obvious, you might want to take a laptop with you if you want to work, but for most trips you might take your iPad instead, sat on the beach with it in a (relatively) water and sandproof case which would be more possible with this device than a laptop.
Yes, your iPhone can do a lot of this already but browsing, reading or watching for extended periods of time isn’t comfortable, and it’s not meant to be. You wouldn’t take an iPad with you everywhere you went, I think most of the time it would sit in your living room and do most of the things you’d normally sit on your laptop and do in a casual-computing form.
“gestural interfaces will eventually change the way we work,
these are the first steps.”
For me, as a designer I can also see me taking this to client meetings to demonstrate website designs, or to re-work flowcharts or information architectures by dragging things about with the client. Yes, a laptop can do this, but that’s not the point, gestural interfaces will eventually change the way we work, these are the first steps.
Too many people are concentrating on what the iPad does *right now* and not thinking about what the device will be capable of once the developers get their hands on it. You’re going to moan about multitasking but I’ll put money on that being supported down the line.
This, to me, is the first consumer product that starts to really demonstrate the technologies that Microsoft envisioned in this amazing video which I saw at dConstruct.
Opinions? Want to call me an idiot? feel free, the comment box is below 
Tags: apple, gestural interfaces, ipad, touch
This entry was posted on Thursday, January 28th, 2010 at 1:04 pm and is filed under Inspiration. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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19 Responses to “You’re missing the iPoint”
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Great post, My thoughts exactly.
I think the iPad (awful name!) will have limited appeal in the 1st year or two of release and I think that people need to understand this.
It will take this long for developers to see problems for which this can be the solution, but in the next 3 – 5 years I can see it (or similar devices) becoming the central point of homes and offices.
However, am I right in thinking that flash still isn’t supported? If it’s not I am not sure how they can claim that it does browsing better than a phone or laptop!
RT @stanton: Why I think you’re missing the point about the iPad http://coffeepowered.co.uk/2010/01/youre...
via Twitoaster
I agree completely – and with the Amazon Kindle DX at $489US, I think the iPad makes far more sense than a black and white Kindle….
Although Apple seem to make really good things these days, I’m not quite sure why this would do better than other tablet devices, which are quite niche. However it may be the books thing, like the iPod won over other mp3 players with iTunes.
@dave
“I think the iPad (awful name!) will have limited appeal in the 1st year or two of release and I think that people need to understand this.”
I think it’ll be much sooner, the device was annouced yesterday but isn’t for sale until April (from what I’ve read) and the SDK is in developers hands now. So I bet we’ll see a raft of adverts like the iPod which don’t sell the device, they sell what you’ll be able to do with it. There’s an ad for that
“However, am I right in thinking that flash still isn’t supported? If it’s not I am not sure how they can claim that it does browsing better than a phone or laptop!”
So it depends how you define “better”, as I’m a standards-based designer and developer I actually congratulate Apple for snubbing (and I do believe it’s a snub) vendor proprietary plugins to access content. HTML5, javascript and CSS3 are reaching a maturity where they can rival most of the effects which have traditionally been achieved with Flash. Lack of Flash support on consumer devices helps the standards movement, and I don’t mind that at all
@Paul Morriss
“I’m not quite sure why this would do better than other tablet devices”
User experience and price point are the first that come to mind. There have been tablets before, but they were stylus driven, Apple are fantastic at entering young or abandoned markets and building the best product which the previous manufacturers all try to emulate and replicate. It happened with MP3 players. It happened with mobile phones. Will it happen with tablet PC’s, let’s wait and find out
RT @stanton: Why I think you’re missing the point about the iPad http://coffeepowered.co.uk/2010/01/youre...
via Twitoaster
Henry Ford reputedly said of the invention of the motor car, that if he had surveyed his customers before it’s introduction and asked them what they wanted, they would have said “More Horses”.
I have to say I agree here – the iPad will work as a coffee table device, for casual use. If they can get the price down enough that anyone, and not just tech/apple enthusiasts will be able to own one, it could be as common as a DVD player or a TV.
I use the iPhone for a lot of quick and easy browsing, when I simply don’t want to move from the sofa to the office – but as you say, it’s too small for continued use – the iPad fits in here…
What I don’t see however, is why it’s such a big deal! It’s a touchscreen computer with a cut down operating system. It’s been done before, although I assume since it’s Apple that the UX design will be a lot better than its competitors. People have been expecting a device like this for years, and now it’s out. There’s not been any surprises, it’s not particularly new or innovative… it’s slick, sure, but why so much hysteria?!
The flash argument is a whole other issue. I too am a standards-based developer, and generally I feel that 99% of things you might want to do with flash, can and should be better achieved with some nice javascript and an accessible fallback – but flash still has it’s uses. Those uses are basically, flash games and flash animation.
If you want to play a flash game, or you want to view someone’s flash animation – you use flash. There’s loads of content out there, and some of it is really spectacular. I’ve lost countless hours on newgrounds.com viewing some really nice work… and I really don’t see why the iPad, or indeed the iPhone for that matter, should stop me from doing this!
The bottom line is that if Apple intends to make all their money from apps through the app store, flash will allow people to circumvent their revenue stream. Really, that is the *only* reason I can see that they won’t allow the plugin on these devices.
@gary stanton (no relation)
it’s not particularly new or innovative… it’s slick, sure, but why so much hysteria?!
That’s the Apple hype machine in action, unfortunately by keeping things so secretive they encourage extreme speculation and an unrealistic expectation of what the end product will deliver, coupled with the utter devotion of their fans and media, this will always cause the same reaction to a new product.
I just really hope that Apple connect all the dots up to allow you to start a move on your apply tv from this; and sync it wirelessly. I really hope they break out of the iPhone homescreen too as I wouldn’t mind a photoframe or weather while it was sat on a bookshelf.
Still waiting for a version or two later though – like I did with the phone (mainly so I can play with someone like Mr Boag’s when I next see him without buying one
)
This is a futuristic product way ahead of its time whilst the Apple keynote doesn’t exactly sell it either as it shows stuff we’ve already seen before on an iPhone/iPod. So not exactly a surprise people don’t get it.
You have to use your imagination to understand what this device will be capable of. It’s flexibility in terms of what it can do means that when independent developers start to release apps for it we are going to see exponential uses that you can’t even imagine right now. This will be a big deal no doubt about it and with HTML5 offline storage and CSS3 support its going to be a breeze to develop for.
These are all good points. I think it can be summed up as the iPad is meant to augment your life and make it easier. For instance there is no need for a peeler in the kitchen if you have a knife but who wants to use the knife?
So now we have a device for running safari.
And thanks to Chrome OS we will soon have devices for running chrome.
All we need then are devices for running IE and other devices for running Firefox.
And then some day maybe someone invents a device that can run all of them, or maybe even other programs that the user can decide, maybe dozens of them.
I hope i will live to see such a magic age.
“So it depends how you define “better”, as I’m a standards-based designer and developer I actually congratulate Apple for snubbing (and I do believe it’s a snub) vendor proprietary plugins to access content. HTML5, javascript and CSS3 are reaching a maturity where they can rival most of the effects which have traditionally been achieved with Flash. Lack of Flash support on consumer devices helps the standards movement, and I don’t mind that at all”
So come April do you see all of these Video sites as being able to move over to HTML5 for making the content available?
What about education platforms? I believe a number of those rely on Flash?
I am all for designing and developing to standards and personally I am not a fan of Flash, however to answer you question of what is better, I believe it is the same as many things. I want a seamless experience. As an average user I don’t want to be worrying about whether the site I want to visit uses Flash or not.
Whilst you and I (and most standards people) have good reasons for not liking Flash, the fact is the most of the web don’t really care IMO, they just want things to work.
[...] http://coffeepowered.co.uk/2010/01/youre-missing-the-ipoint/ [...]
@Rob Smith
“there is no need for a peeler in the kitchen if you have a knife but who wants to use the knife?”
Great analogy
@Dave
“So come April do you see all of these Video sites as being able to move over to HTML5 for making the content available?”
Maybe not by April, but definately at some point soon! YouTube are already testing their HTML5 video service and I’d suspect the other video sites will follow suit. At the University of Leeds our developer is already playing with HTML5 for our educational video platform.
“What about education platforms? I believe a number of those rely on Flash?”
True, although again, the iPad isn’t meant for everyone. If these platforms see the iPad as the ideal device to place in the hands of their users, then would they/could they/should they develop a HTML5 version of their platform?
“they just want things to work.”
Absolutely 100% true. Yet with Flash they’re prompted to download plugins every so often, my mum phones me up when she encounters a flash site that isn’t compatible with her version of flash asking me what this plugin dealy-o is and what she should do. Flash isn’t the seamless experience we’re led to believe although admittedly a plugin prompt might be more friendly than a ‘lego brick’.
I think you’re absolutely right. The iPad is an accessory to existing tech. And beautiful one at that.
The reason a lot of people are so vocally slating (pun intended!) the iPad is because the industry was expecting a game changer, and some are even talking as if the iPad in its current for is STILL that game changer despite its (considerable) current limitations.
I like the iPad, but TBH, I’m not sure I’m quite ready to dump ~$400/£400 on a device which is essentially a coffee table gadget. Whilst the economy is still in a poor state, I’m pretty sure I won’t be alone in that view.
Apple’s iPad is great, but I’m not sure it’s finished yet. As you say: these are the first steps on a long road to touch / gestural interfaces. Whether Apple will be revelling in big sales of iPad 1.0 is another question entirely
I completely agree with you. The iPad is ideal for casual-computing and client demos. This is just the beginning though. The 2nd, 3rd, 4th (etc) generations will be the inventions that everyone is wanting now. That will be down to the involvement of the development community.