Guess what the busiest table in the Apple store was today, nearly two weeks after the launch?
Category Archives: Apple
The iPad? Well, it’s not exactly the Apple of my eye
This morning’s Observer column.
The essence of the iPad is that it's a good device for passive ‘consumption’ of preprepared multimedia content. That’s why the old media dinosaurs are salivating about it: it seems to offer them a way of regaining control of the customer – and of ensuring that s/he pays for content. And one can understand why they are so charmingly deluded about this: all apps have to come through the iTunes store and can be charged for. No wonder Murdoch & co love the device. They think it’ll rescue them from the wild west web, where people believe that content should be free. Yeah, and pigs will also fly in close formation.
It’s when one tries to use the iPad for generating content that its deficiencies become obvious. The biggest flaw is the absence of multitasking, so you have to close one app to open another, which is a bit like going back to the world of MS-DOS…
See also my diary of a week with the device.
Jobs: Great unwashed don’t need PCs
Hmmm… This from TechEye.
It is official: Steve Jobs no longer thinks that PCs are going to be that important.
Speaking at the D8 conference, the Apple supremo said the day is coming when only one out of "every few people" will need a traditional computer.
For evidence he said that when the US was an agrarian nation, all cars were trucks because that's what you needed on the farms.
"Cars became more popular as cities rose, and things like power steering and automatic transmission became popular," he said.
He thinks that PCs are going to be like trucks. They are still going to be around… but only "one out of x people will need them."
Of course x is an unknown figure so Jobs is hedging his bets a bit. He could mean that only one in ten people will need one or one in two. It is a moot point if very many people need one now, but whether or not they own one is another matter.
Jobs claimed that advances in chips and software will allow tablet devices like the iPad to do tasks that today are really only suited for a traditional computer, things like video editing and graphic arts work.
He said that the move will make many PC veterans uneasy, "because the PC has taken us a long way."
"We like to talk about the post-PC era, but when it really starts to happen, it's uncomfortable," he said.
Needless to say, Ray Ozzie doesn’t agree.
iPad redux
I’m three days into my iPad experiment (and writing The iPad Diaries as I go). Interesting to see that Jeff, with his characteristic decisiveness, has already acted.
Apple & Microsoft: the gap narrows
The parallels don’t stop here, either. It seems that the anti-trust guys in the Department of justice are beginning to take an interest in Mr Jobs’s plucky little company.
Apple: the little company that’s almost as big as Microsoft
Market cap figures today. Who’d have thought it when Steve Jobs returned to Cupertino?
What iPads did to one techie’s family
Apple has announced that the iPad will be on sale in the UK from May 28 and is enabling pre-ordering from next Monday (May 10). Already members of my family are eyeing me in a meaningful way. All of which makes this blog post by Chuck Hollis, Vice-President and Global Marketing CTO of EMC Corporation, such a sobering read. He relates how he bought an iPad and then left it at home for a week while he went away on a business trip.
I get home and there’s always a certain level of chaos at that time.
But there was a new theme this week.
“Who forgot to charge the iPad?”
“Hey, if you’re going to eat pizza and use the iPad, at least wipe it! How gross!”
“You already used the iPad this afternoon, it’s my turn!”.
“How do I print from this thing?” “Can we download some more games?”. “Check out this cool video”.
Tap, tap, tap.
All the PCs and laptops are basically not being used. All the Macs are not being used. All have been powered off.
Everyone in the family is waiting for their turn at the iPad.
My wife asserted her rightful place in the hierarchy later that evening, and took it upstairs to the bedroom to relax while watching TV. Tap, tap, tap. Occasionally, she showed me something interesting she found online. And smiling.
It All Flashed Through My Eyes
I don’t think I’ll be buying any more desktops going forward. I don’t think I’ll even be buying any more laptops going forward.
They’ve all been largely obsoleted (at least at my home) by a sleek $499 device that doesn’t really have any right to be called a ‘computer’ in the traditional sense.
Sure, there’s a handful of tasks that I still would prefer a real computer, but — amazingly — that list has now shrunk dramatically. In less than a week.
The members of my family immediately gravitated to the new shiny thing — no prompting, no encouragement, no migration, etc. They are drawn to it like a moth to flame.
I now have this strange love/hate relationship with Apple. And I think it won’t be long before I’m forced to make another trip back to the Apple store.
Hmmm…..
A computer for the PITS
Apropos the iPad, I came on Jeff Raskin’s 1979 “Design Considerations for an Anthropophilic Computer” in the Stanford archives. Here’s an excerpt:
This is an outline for a computer designed for the Person In The Street (or, to abbreviate: the PITS); one that will be truly pleasant to use, that will require the user to do nothing that will threaten his or her perverse delight in being able to say: "I don't know the first thing about computers," and one which will be profitable to sell, service and provide software for.
You might think that any number of computers have been designed with these criteria in mind, but not so. Any system which requires a user to ever see the interior, for any reason, does not meet these specifications. There must not be additional ROMS, RAMS, boards or accessories except those that can be understood by the PITS as a separate appliance. For example, an auxiliary printer can be sold, but a parallel interface cannot. As a rule of thumb, if an item does not stand on a table by itself, and if it does not have its own case, or if it does not look like a complete consumer item in [and] of itself, then it is taboo.
If the computer must be opened for any reason other than repair (for which our prospective user must be assumed incompetent) even at the dealer's, then it does not meet our requirements.
Seeing the guts is taboo. Things in sockets is taboo (unless to make servicing cheaper without imposing too large an initial cost). Billions of keys on the keyboard is taboo. Computerese is taboo. Large manuals, or many of them (large manuals are a sure sign of bad design) is taboo. Self- instructional programs are NOT taboo.
There must not be a plethora of configurations. It is better to offer a variety of case colors than to have variable amounts of memory. It is better to manufacture versions in Early American, Contemporary, and Louis XIV than to have any external wires beyond a power cord.
And you get ten points if you can eliminate the power cord.
Any differences between models that do not have to be documented in a user's manual are OK. Any other differences are not.
Steve Jobs: Thoughts on Flash
Wow! Who would have expected this essay? Thoughtful and well-argued too.
Apple has a long relationship with Adobe. In fact, we met Adobe’s founders when they were in their proverbial garage. Apple was their first big customer, adopting their Postscript language for our new Laserwriter printer. Apple invested in Adobe and owned around 20% of the company for many years. The two companies worked closely together to pioneer desktop publishing and there were many good times. Since that golden era, the companies have grown apart. Apple went through its near death experience, and Adobe was drawn to the corporate market with their Acrobat products. Today the two companies still work together to serve their joint creative customers – Mac users buy around half of Adobe’s Creative Suite products – but beyond that there are few joint interests.
I wanted to jot down some of our thoughts on Adobe’s Flash products so that customers and critics may better understand why we do not allow Flash on iPhones, iPods and iPads. Adobe has characterized our decision as being primarily business driven – they say we want to protect our App Store – but in reality it is based on technology issues. Adobe claims that we are a closed system, and that Flash is open, but in fact the opposite is true. Let me explain.
Worth reading in full. If yo’re busy, here’s his concludion:
Flash was created during the PC era – for PCs and mice. Flash is a successful business for Adobe, and we can understand why they want to push it beyond PCs. But the mobile era is about low power devices, touch interfaces and open web standards – all areas where Flash falls short.
The avalanche of media outlets offering their content for Apple’s mobile devices demonstrates that Flash is no longer necessary to watch video or consume any kind of web content. And the 200,000 apps on Apple’s App Store proves that Flash isn’t necessary for tens of thousands of developers to create graphically rich applications, including games.
New open standards created in the mobile era, such as HTML5, will win on mobile devices (and PCs too). Perhaps Adobe should focus more on creating great HTML5 tools for the future, and less on criticizing Apple for leaving the past behind.
Quote of the day
If the iPad were a British party leader would it be:
a. Nick Clegg, because it’s new
b. David Cameron, because it’s shiny
c. Gordon Brown, because it displays the symptoms of severe control-freakery?
Answer: d., all of the above.
From John Lanchester, who has just bought an iPad.