Apple debuted its new iPad tablet computer this week, and the Internet is already wondering “who will buy it?”. Look around and you’ll see article after article decrying the lack of multitasking, the iPhone OS, the bezels around the edge of the display (c’mon, seriously?) and more.
But look a little harder, and you’ll find some very influential people talking about the iPad in a very positive, almost reverent way. Technology guru Leo Laporte believes that the iPad represents an entirely new class of computing device – one where the technology fades into the background and enables the user to interact with the content. A quick poll of my own associates reveals something interesting – the technologically-adept ones are cautiously interested, whereas the technophobes are swooning over the device.
The iPad, following the iPod and iPhone, is the third Apple device intended to appeal to the general public, and not to hardcore technology geeks. The iPod was designed to allow you to touch your music. The iPhone brought similar capabilities to your voice communications. The iPad is the next logical step: an all-in-one general computing device that can be an ebook reader one minute, a web browser the next, and a multimedia player after that.
The internet is wondering “who’s going to buy one of these things?”. Let me give you some examples:
The Student
If you’re a student (as I was recently), you’re all too aware of the weight of the textbooks you have to lug around campus each semester, not to mention their associated cost. While completing my physics degree, I had nearly 20 lbs of textbooks in my backpack, one of which cost me over $240. So when ereaders came on the scene, I became very interested. Here was a device that weighed less than a pound, could store all my textbooks, and had a gorgeous eInk screen. What more could I want?
Image courtesy Matt Buchanan (Flickr)
Plenty, it turns out. The first problem I ran into was with the display. Yes, eInk was much easier on my eyes than a backlit LCD, but there was a drawback. In science textbooks, color is often used to convey additional information. Take a look at the periodic table for instance – most textbooks use color to indicate which group an element belongs in. Viewed on a greyscale eInk display like a Kindle or Sony Reader, the information is lost.
Next, both the Kindle and Sony ereaders are horrible at displaying PDF files. Sure, you can reflow the text, or view the files in their native formats. But the former throws any referenced figures/graphics out of place, and the latter results in text too small to be read. Panning and zooming is equally painful due to the slow refresh rates of eInk displays.
So what about a netbook? Well, they’re definitely better at rendering PDF files but their wide screens are the wrong aspect ratio for viewing a textbook page – you end up either viewing a very small segment of your PDF, or zooming out until its illegible. If the video driver supports it, you can try rotating the display 90 degrees – but then interacting with the keyboard becomes awkward if not impossible.
A Kindle DX (the only Kindle remotely suitable for textbook reading) costs $489, and comes with 4 GB of storage and a greyscale eInk display. For $10 more, an entry level iPad includes WiFi (useful on university campuses), 16 GB of storage and a full-color display. Beyond ebook reader functionality, you can also browse the web, send/receive email, access your pre-existing iTunes music and video, and use almost any iPhone app available.
When you look at it like that, why wouldn’t a student buy an iPad over a Kindle? (well, you English majors might be able to get away with reading on a Kindle as there aren’t many color diagrams in Chaucer).
The Parents
My parents are both 76 years old and use their computer to send email, and view photos and videos of their grandkids. They really don’t need a 20″ iMac to do all of that, but it was the easiest computer for them to use.
But you know, they could do everything they need with an iPad. My dad doesn’t touch-type, so the lack of a physical keyboard isn’t a stumbling block (although should he desire to learn, he can always use a bluetooth keyboard or a dock). The iPad can handle photos and videos with aplomb, and when my Mom shows the photos of her grandkids to visitors, they don’t all have to crowd into Dad’s office, they can just pass the iPad around.
There’s also the matter of family tech support. There’s much less to go wrong with a dedicated device like the iPad than with a full desktop or laptop computer. And that means that I get my evenings and weekends to myself, as opposed to spending them troubleshooting my parents’ computer.
Summary
There are many other potential markets and applications for an easy-to-use tablet device like the iPad. Until now, tablet computers have been nothing more than crippled laptops, so it didn’t make sense for people to buy them. The iPad is a very different device, with very different use cases than a traditional PC. It’s the first general purpose computer that is going to appeal to non-techies, and that’s a huge thing.
Who’s going to buy one? Lots of people – if not for themselves, then they’re going to buy them for their friends and family – just as I plan to do.
Mike is a former sysadmin and embedded developer, who worked on several prototype tablet devices way back in the dot-com era. He's also a non-practicing physicist and a big fan of anything resembling a tablet computer (or a telescope).
Hi there, I love the concept behind the iPad, however, suppose you give one to your parents
and the thing freezes, as often happens with any computing device,and you have no other
device; how do you restore the thing?? will it be restored via wifi? or will you have to take it
to a service center(read your son, nephew, cousin etc.)
My wife would love one as she only browses, watches pictures I send her ,reads email and
plays Texas Holdem on it. But she has me to repair , restore etc. I see this a a major drawback
unless you have a USB drive with the restore info that you can update via wifi and use as an external
file server.
Enrique:
I’m planning to give an iPad to my parents specifically because (based on my experiences with the iPhone) the odds of the iPad breaking down / freezing and requiring advanced technical support are much lower than a standard desktop / laptop.
I was thinking about iPhones and iPads the other day and something occurred to me: the iPhone is literally the one electronic device that I have never been asked to fix or support. I’m “that guy” – you know, the son / brother / cousin that’s “good with computers”. The one that everyone calls on when they get a virus, or when they need help installing a driver, etc. (it also doesn’t help that I was a professional system administrator and a physicist – when there’s a family tech problem, I can’t play dumb!) I’ve fixed my family & friends’ PCs, Macs, printers, scanners, joysticks, keyboards, mice, you name it.
Except the iPhone.
Almost everyone I know has one. But nobody has ever called me up to complain that their iPhone was dead, or behaving strangely, etc. The tech just works.
So, given that the iPad is based upon the same operating system, I’m willing to bet it will have the same degree of stability. That’s exactly why I want to give one to my parents, who live 4,500 km away from me.
Why is the iPhone so stable compared to other computing devices? Well why do other computing devices lock up in the first place? Usually, when it comes to desktop PCs, you’re looking at 3 common causes:
Poorly-written applications
Running out of resources due to too many applications running
Bad hardware
Poorly-written applications are handled by Apple’s app store approval process. Yes, it’s true that by buying an iPhone or iPad you are buying into a platform that restricts the software that you can run on it. But it also means that the software is vetted for poor performance and malicious code. As for running out of resources, the iPhone limits multitasking to a select set of Apple applications. You can’t multitask 3rd party apps, which is a deficiency in some regards, but also ensures that each application gets full use of the machine’s resources. (I do hope Apple adds some sort of multitasking support down the road, but it’s not a show-stopper for me).
Finally, if it’s bad hardware, you’ll have to go to a service center anyway.
Now, I can’t claim that a device like an iPhone or iPad will never freeze, but in my experience it happens so rarely that it’s not a concern. In the 2 years that I’ve owned an iPhone, it’s only locked up once, and powering it off and back on fixed the problem (the other thing about the iPhone OS is that applications are separated into “sandboxes” – a poorly behaving app can’t interfere with another app’s files).
If the iPad did for some reason go completely south and needed to be reloaded, then you’d need a PC or Mac running iTunes. The “restore” process is simple and doesn’t require any sort of technical experience – basically just plug the device in, click “Restore” and you’re done.
So to sum it all up, I can’t be 100% certain that the iPad is going to be a rock-solid device – but given what I’ve experienced with my iPhone (and the lack of support calls from my friends and family), it’s my believe that the iPad will be a low-maintenance device that’s suitable for the non-techies among us. Hope that helps.