The Tablet: Part III
I’ve been through a roller coaster of feelings about the iPad.
- Weeks before the announcement I couldn’t imagine something to get excited about. The rumours pointed to a netbook competitor — yuck.
- As hype reached fever pitch there was more talk of a Kindle competitor, an iPod for books if you will, that interested me a great deal.
- The iPad was announced and it seemed to be exactly what I feared at first, a stupid netbook, something no one wants or needs in an area I thought Apple wouldn’t compete in. It seemed great for travel and not much else.
- The more I read the further my eyes are opened to the potential of the iPad as a revolutionary device. And that’s where I stand now.
Traditional netbooks, tablets, etc. suck because they’re the same old thing shoved into a different package. The Windows and Linux UIs are not made for a 10” screen, not made for touch interaction and no one likes miniature keyboards. Apple saw the opportunity for a device that does it properly.
My position as a relative computer expert initially skewed my views on exactly what the iPad is good for. I forget that the huge majority of computer users are little more than consumers in the literal sense. For them a computer is for getting information on the internet. The little more is a small, finite set of tasks: uploading photos, posting to a blog, Twitter or Facebook.
The modern computer — Windows, Mac OS, desktop Linux operating systems — offers a staggeringly large amount more than what the common user requires or wants. All that stuff is confusing and gets in the way of the tiny subset people actually want to do. Remember when Google asked people what is a web browser? Filesystems, networking and even double clicking is less understood. Given our technological advances it’s ridiculous that personal computers are so difficult to use and understand for so many people.
The iPad changes that. Every non-professional computer user in my life could ditch their current computer for an iPad and not miss a thing. All those complicated concepts and configurations they don’t understand are abstracted away, hidden forever. Even most non-computing students who spend a great deal of time working on a computer could get by with an iPad, the entire iWork suite will be available in the app store.
It may be a significant size downgrade for many but when your only computing is recreational consuming, portability and flexibility trumps screen size. The trend has been towards laptops, even as desktops, for years now, the iPad is an extension.
I doubt its going to be an iPhone-equse instant success, I think it’ll take time for people to break the shackles of the current computing mindset and embrace a device that does less.
Flash Bang
The fallout from the iPad announcement is that like the iPhone, it doesn’t support Flash. Daring Fireball has been doing a great job covering the opinion from both sides and in his latest piece makes a great point:
Used to be you could argue that Flash, whatever its merits, delivered content to the entire audience you cared about. That’s no longer true, and Adobe’s Flash penetration is shrinking with each iPhone OS device Apple sells.
Often web development is a series of compromises until you reach the lowest common denominator of features that are supported across the widest range of platforms. Flash used to be part of that lowest common denominator.
Our unofficial rule at work is that we stop actively supporting IE6 when usage drops below 1%. If users without Flash installed increases (and it’s only going to increase) to something like the 6% they’re seeing at Lifehacker we can’t justify delivering anything solely in Flash. This is great news. For everyone but Adobe.