Thoughts on the iPad

Ever since the iPad was introduced on Wednesday, I've been chewing on it.  I've digested all the media I could find on the topic: I watched the keynote presentation, read the blogs, and checked out Apple's site.  I'm usually able to quickly make a decision on Apple products' prospects, but with the iPad, I'm still not sure.

While everyone remembers the blockbuster introduction of the iPhone, it's amazing how quickly we forget about Apple products that were universally panned by geniuses on the Internet, only to go on to become absolute sensations.

• The original iMac was largely criticized because it did not have a floppy drive, and dropped legacy ports like ADB (Apple Desktop Bus).  However, people wanted a simple, all-in-one computer that was attractive and easy to set up.  The iMac was an overnight success and saved Apple from bankruptcy.
• The original iPod was criticized because it was Mac only and cost more money for less storage than other MP3 players.  They sold like crazy and changed the entire music industry forever.  People were willing to trade storage capacity for an attractive, sleek product that was easy to use.  The other devices were nowhere near as easy to sync or use as the iPod.
• The iPod nano was introduced during the height of the success of the iPod mini.  Again, the smartypants on the Internet declared that people wouldn't pay the same amount of money for less storage.  The iPod nano quickly made people forget all about the iPod mini and became the best selling iPod of all time.  Sex sells and the sleek nano was much more attractive than the chubby mini -- and the flash storage as opposed to a mechanical hard drive was a great sell for runners and athletes.
• Heck, even the iPhone was panned for being too expensive, for lacking features like cut and paste, corporate email, and 3rd party applications.  The list of people predicting the iPhone would bomb is a mile and a half long. Today, Apple sells more mobile devices than any other company on the planet.  The iPhone is being used or piloted in 70 of the Fortune 100 largest corporations.  The iPhone App Store now boasts over 140,000 apps and over 3 billion downloads.  Somehow, all the Internet wiseguys had it wrong yet again.

Apple's track record, even since Steve Jobs' return is not perfect.  There have been some products that simply weren't successful like the iPod hi-fi or the PowerMac G4 Cube.  The problem with these products were either that they didn't improve on existing products (iPod hi-fi) or they didn't provide value for their cost (PowerMac G4 Cube).  The Cube was one of the most beautiful computers ever designed, but it just didn't provide enough power to justify the cost.  To this day, the Cube is proudly on display at the Smithsonian for being such a great design.  That doesn't change the fact that it didn't sell.

Looking at the track record in the past, it sure looks like Internet know-it-alls are rarely an accurate indicator of a new Apple product's success.  Will the iPad succeed in spite of the pundits or will they be right?  I can't predict the future, but I sure as heck wouldn't bet against Apple -- and I sure as heck wouldn't listen to what all the self-proclaimed Internet gurus or media pundits have to say either.  Those same pundits were saying Apple would price the device at $999, or that an IPS screen wouldn't last longer than 3 hours on a full charge (you can watch VIDEO for up to 10 hours straight on this thing).

Why do people pan, complain, and grouse about products that have consistently ended up being successful anyway?  I have a few theories.

For those who watch Apple's stock (AAPL) on a regular basis, there's an old mantra that says, "Buy on the rumor.  Sell before the announcement."  Swing on over to your favorite financial site if you don't believe me -- sure enough, Apple's stock peaked the day before the announcement and subsequently lost quite a bit of value after Wednesday.

The simple fact of that matter is that no product can ever live up to all the rumors and speculation that the Internet pumps out when it comes to Apple.  Before Apple announced the iPad, how much had they said about the product?  Zero.  Nothing.  Nada.  Not one word was ever released from Apple regarding the iPad until the day they announced it.

When people find out that the iPad is "missing" feature x, they incorrect assume that Apple "removed" it or "left it out".  Given that we have no ability to learn about the development process or the prototypes Apple creates, we don't know if that feature was ever planned for the product or not.  This doesn't stop folks from feeling a tremendous amount of disappointment that the iPad doesn't really contain a rumored feature.  Then they label the announcement a "disappointment", and Wall Street seems to react similarly. It's actually kind of ridiculous if you realize that America's financial system has an ebb and flow based on what is reported on MacRumors.com, but it does.

The rumors may not live up to expectations, but that's only a small part of the issue.  I think another part of the problem is that people can't see the future staring them in the face.  They can't get it.  They can't grasp it.  Just like people screaming bloody murder over a floppy drive!  In 2010, it seems absolutely absurd.  We really got that worked up over floppy drives?  Really?  Yes, people declared the iMac would fail because it didn't have a floppy drive.  That seems humorous today.

There's a third issue in play here too -- enthusiasts in almost any market have a hard time relating to and understanding people who aren't similarly enthusiastic about something.  This is true of almost anything -- home theater, automobiles, computers, even food.

• Food snobs can't understand why some people want meat and potatoes for every meal.
• Automobile snobs can't understand why anyone would want to drive an automatic transmission.
• Home Theater snobs can't understand why people think DVD looks "good enough" or worse, people who buy "full screen" DVDs.
• Mac snobs can't understand why people still buy PCs.
• People who build their own computers can't believe someone would buy a computer from ANY manufacturer.
• And so on...

Computer enthusiasts are declaring the iPad a dud because it doesn't meet their desires for complexity and customization.  The problem is that customization in some cases leads to complexity.

For example, when my mom used to have a Windows PC, she managed her photos through the file system by hand.  She created folders for different events, and dragged and dropped the photos into the appropriate place.  When she wanted to find a particular photo, she had to go through the PC's filesystem to locate the photo she wanted.  She could only search by the event title she had given or the filename of the image.  That's it -- and that's assuming there wasn't a single photo that wasn't categorized incorrectly.

She switched a Mac over a year ago now and uses iPhoto.  If I asked her where her photos live today on her Mac, she'd say, "They're in iPhoto."  She doesn't need to worry about where in a directory structure her photos are physically located on the Mac.  If she did care to find out, she'd find the iPhoto Library package is located in her photos directory.  The iPhoto Library package appears to the casual user as a single file, and that's all they need to care about.  Where are the photos?  They're in your iPhoto Library.

Now of course, it is possible to open up the iPhoto Library and find the individual JPEG files inside of it, but there's no point to doing this.  You see, with iPhoto, an entire layer of abstraction is removed from the user.  Instead, if you want to find photos on iPhoto, you look at them in much more natural ways:

• Who's in the photo?  (Faces)
• Where was the photo taken?  (Places)
• When was the photo taken?  (Events)

Some people have a hard time with this because they say, "Well, what if I need to find the individual JPEG file because I need to do something with it?"  Like what?

• Use it in iDVD, iMovie, or iWeb -- these programs support the iLife media chooser and you can just select the photo from the way your photos are arranged in iPhoto.  Again, the file system is abstracted away from the user.
• Upload it to Flickr/Facebook/MobileMe -- this functionality is built in to iPhoto, so you still don't need to see the original files to upload them to most popular photo sharing websites

If you really want to export the files, you still can and deal with them that way.  However, as much as possible, Apple has attempted to strip away levels of complexity from photo management on your Mac.  By doing this, it has because an entirely more natural way of thinking about and working with your photos -- by looking for them by Who/Where/When instead of "Florida Vacation 034.jpg".

iPhoto is certainly not perfect for all circumstances -- it's buggy, it's slow, and there are some situations in which you just need to export the files to JPEG to work with them.  However, I think the majority of the time, the tradeoff of complexity for ease-of-use is worthwhile.

What does all this have to do with the iPad?

The iPad represents a paradigm shift in computer design where more and more of the arcane intricacies of using a computer are being abstracted away.  This makes things simpler, but with a loss of customization.  John Gruber of DaringFireball.net used an excellent analogy where he compared it to a manual and automatic transmission.

For automobile enthusiasts who still want to have complete and direct control of the vehicle, including gear selection, the manual transmission is great.

For most people that just want to drive the car, and are willing to make some trade-offs like slightly decreased fuel economy, and less control over gear selection -- an automatic transmission abstracts away a level of complexity and makes the car more accessible and easier to use.

I think that's a great analogy with one exception -- the automatic transmission is more mechanically complicated and more difficult to repair and fix than a manual transmission.  Compared to a device like an iPhone or iPad that removes levels of complexity like a file system -- it actually makes the system more reliable, easier to maintain, and easier to fix.

I can think of several people who own iPhones who can barely use a computer, but are absolutely great with the iPhone -- downloading apps, sending pictures, emails, texting, and much more without ANY issues.  I am usually the go-to tech guy to ask questions about things, but I can honestly say I've never gotten a question about the iPhone, even by the most technologically challenged people -- with the exception being, "What are some good apps?"

That's what is going to be so great about the iPad -- where are your iWork documents?  They're in Pages.  They're in Keynote.  They're in Numbers.  You don't have to worry about where in the iPad's filesystem the documents are -- they're just there.

This isn't a perfect situation for everyone -- some people just want to be able to deal with things like this on an intricate level.  They want to see the filesystem.  They want to know what processes are running.  They want to be able to multitask (and I still suspect that's coming).

These are the same people who want to know what kind of hardware is in their computer because they selected every piece by hand.  Or the same people who want to drive a manual transmission because they like to control the car.  That's fine -- it's not like these options are going away.  There will always be an enthusiast market for things.  There will always be manual transmission cars.  There will always be self-built PCs.

The manual transmission was once the dominant kind of car, and now it's a small minority.  So too will this come to pass with computers.  The ability to deal with intricate stuff is going to go away, and systems like the iPad and the iPhone are the future.  Even the Mac as we know it today does not represent the future of computing.

Wow, that was a lot of ideology wasn't it?

In the end, the folks who will be buying this product will buy it if they like the functionality and the feel of the device, and those who feel it's too limited, won't.  I suspect that much like the iPod, and the iMac, the noisy minority who won't buy the product will be over-shadowed by the silent majority who will snap these things up.

I'm going to reserve judgment on the iPad until I have one in my hands.  I am able to separate rumor from reality, I'm able to see the future of computing, and I'm able to realize that enthusiasts in any market are a noisy minority.  I think the product can be a success now and into the future.

Make no mistake, it's not like this is the one and only iPad that Apple will ever release.  Apple has shown a propensity for slow but sure evolution of their products over time.  The iPhone OS and the iPhone hardware have received incremental updates every year in June / July and have eliminated most of the major nitpicks leveled against the iPhone when it was first introduced.  A device that was wholly inappropriate for corporate email upon first release is now being used in over 70% of the top 100 largest companies.

It will be this way with the iPad in the future.  Both the hardware itself, as well as the iPhone OS software will continue to be updated and grown over time.  Even if the device isn't exactly how Apple wants it today, it will be improved over time.  This isn't a product that Apple is releasing on a whim or just to dip a toe in the water -- this is the product that Apple thinks represents the future.

New features and functionality will come when they're ready, and not a second before.  Apple held off on releasing Cut & Paste for the iPhone OS until they had it JUST right, and now they have arguably the best implementation on any smartphone.  

I think Apple really needs to rename the iPhone OS to iPad OS.  It helps fuel the perception that the iPad is just an large iPhone / iPod touch given that it's running iPhone OS.  I think when you really sit down and think about it -- the iPad is the device Apple has been building toward all along.  Think about it!

Do you really think Apple spent all that time developing what is arguably the most sophisticated, advanced, stable, and secure mobile Operating System on the planet to just put it in a phone and an iPod?  Or that they developed one of the most easy-to-use and fully-featured Software Development Kits  around just for a phone?

A great example is the Twitter client called Tweetie.  Tweetie is without question, hands-down, the best Twitter application on the iPhone.  Tweetie has a great interface, great features, and is just a pleasure to use.

Tweetie is also available for the Mac OS, where it's also an excellent app.  However, Tweetie for the Mac is nowhere near as feature-filled or polished, or even as up-to-date as the iPhone app.  The iPhone app for Tweetie is light years beyond the Mac application.

That's just one example -- I could think of several other applications where the same is true in a heartbeat.  Many iPhone applications are better than their Mac equivalents!  That right there is why I'm so excited for the iPad.  I can't even comprehend how amazing a Tweetie app for iPad will be.  Developers are already making great apps for the iPhone, and I can't even imagine what great things they'll be able to do with a much faster CPU and bigger screen.

Sometimes when I'm sitting on the couch at night watching TV, I'll pull out my iPhone, check a few tweets, and read a few webpages.  I don't pull out my MacBook Pro because it's just more convenient to check a few quick things on the iPhone.  It's more intimate and quick.  That's a scenario where I can easily envision myself grabbing the iPad, reading a few tweets and browsing a few webpages -- very similar to what I do on my iPhone now, but with an even more enjoyable experience.

I love Safari on my iPhone, and if Safari on the iPad lives up to what I think it could be -- that right there will be a killer app.  It's just a very intimate and enjoyable experience using MobileSafari on the iPhone.  With more screen real estate and a faster CPU... it should be amazing.

I think Apple gets it -- they have to provide an experience that is better than what you can get on the smartphone or on the laptop.  If they deliver on that promise, I have no doubt the iPad will become a success.

Keep in mind that the original iPhone was not the one that became a sensation -- it was the iPhone 3G that made it huge.  The original iPod wasn't the huge hit either.  It wasn't until the 3rd and 4th generation iPods that things really started rolling.

Apple knows how to build a foundation for a product and build on it.  The iPhone and iPod are absolute juggernauts now, but you would never have known it for the original products in either product line.  It took until the 2nd or 3rd iterations until those products made it huge.  The same may or may not be true with the iPad, but it's something to keep in mind.

The iPad train is coming, and it will change the way we see computers, long-term.  I'd bet on it.