The iPad is genius
Are you excited about the iPad?
If not, you’ll tell me that it has no camera / USB port / GPS, etc. That it’s just a big (and not very good) iPhone.
How about I tell you that the iPad is a step on the way to fundamentally changing the way we interact with the web, the world and technology? How about I tell you that this is the biggest step forward in user interaction since the introduction of the mouse?
How about I describe the iPad not in terms of its parts but what it is: a netbook, slate, multimedia player, gameboy, iPhone and Wii combined – a device that will influence and fundamentally change the way we interact with technology; that will make clicking on a mouse and typing on a keyboard seem as old fashioned as a telex machine?
Sounds a bit more interesting, hey?
Let’s look at the state of the web and computing. There’s lots going on, to be sure. There’s cloud computing, Google wave (or Buzz now I guess), HTML 5, RIA, Android, Silverlight, etc., etc. As a developer it’s pretty much impossible to keep up with everything that’s going on. Billions of dollars of innovation and (wo)man hours are piled into the web with fantastic new technologies coming along seemingly every week.
But one thing that hasn’t changed since the invention of the mouse and Windows (not by accident by Apple back in 1984) is the way we interact with computers and, by extension, the web. Think about it! 1984! We are still using the exact same tools to interact with a computer as we did 26 years ago!
There are a few examples that I’d like to share to show you my thinking:
One is not particularly new: it’s the iPhone. Hand it to the drunkest, most ham-fisted, technophobic oil-rig worker you can find and they’ll figure it out very quickly. Not only that, but the chances they’ll enjoy figuring it out because it’s easy, quick and fun. You can shake the iPhone, swipe your fingers across the screen, squeeze them together, move them apart and the iPhone does things!
And Apple’s innovation in the way of doing things is not restricted to the iPhone. Pick up an iMac. See how nice it is to swipe and squeeze things with the mousepad?
Ok so let’s see how these kinds of interactions might work with the iPad itself:
I’m not even really a gamer but did you see the way he was controlling the game with the iPad? Tilting it, swiping it, intuitively touching buttons as soon as they come up? Are you not getting excited about this??
The iPad and the (future) web
Ok. One final thing. So the iPad is great and you can bet your life that by Christmas your life will not be worth living unless you’ve got large amounts of money to give the kids to spend at the iPad app store which, by then, will have millions of apps to download. But will it change the way that we interact with the web? (Which, in and of itself, is becoming, well, boring. I say this as a developer and web enthusiast). There are many things to consider when you design a site but one thing is for sure: you’ll have a menu bar, you’ll have buttons, blah, blah, blah. All of the navigational elements on the page have been put there with one goal in mind: to get you to click on them with a mouse. Can you interact with a web page or application in any other way than by clicking on something with a mouse or entering data via the keyboard? Clearly you can’t.
Once again, I believe that the iPad is set to revolutionise that and that is where it’s true genius lies.
Anyway! Onto another very interesting demo. Perhaps the future of the web and almost certainly the future of the web if the iPad has anything to do with it. This is Silverlight whose future is, I think, uncertain at best. But the interesting thing is the way that web applications can be designed to work with swiping, etc.
Swiping, squeezing, scraping, shaking and tilting your device to control your applications on the web…
Surely the best invention since the mouse.
About James
I'm all-round developer with a background in enterprise development using C++. I'm a client and server side web developer with a particular interest in making the web as interesting and usable as possible with seamless client / server interaction using jQuery and AJAX.3 Comments for this entry
Douglas Metcalfe
Actually watching the Windows 7 touch interaction is what seemed glacially slow to me. The iPad is optimized for the Apple A4 SoC and gives lightning response even while using far less powerful CPU/GPU combinations.
I’m sure that Window 7 video was shot with a very powerful laptop driving it. Running on a weak netbook would be unacceptably slow I’m sure.
Jamie
@James,
I don’t think the iPad is designed for Photoshop… it’s a consumption device, not a creation device.
However, simple, easy creation tasks (like writing an email, designing a Keynote), are pretty slick.
The more I see about the iPad, the more I am thinking the same as this author. The iPad is a true ‘appliance’, in the sense that once you have activated it in iTunes, you could theoretically never plug it in to anything again… just click on, use it, click off, place back onto coffee table.
I really think the iPad is going to be absolutely everywhere in 2 years time. Think I might buy some AAPL…
James
LOL. Watching that guy play that game was actually painful. So slow. You will have trouble replacing the keyboard and mouse or even a gamepad when it comes to gaming.
Touch screen is fun but lets be honest its not as quick. I can move my mouse from one side of the screen to the other with a wrist movement of about 5 cm. If I had to touch the screen to do this it would be 50cm.
Try convincing a graphic designer to use a touch screen the next time they load up photoshop…have you ever seen how quickly a photoshop pro zips around the screen?! A touchscreen would make it a sport!
The iPad is a joke. People will buy it and be happy with it but its completely revolutionary technically.