Apple’s Ipad Tablet PC does
most of what your laptop does, but not in the same way. Out
is browsing the Internet and visiting websites, in is
instant access to information with ever more apps, all
designed to give you the most enjoyable user experience as
possible, with the least hassle. The iPhone experience
supersized. If you want serious computing power for complex
tasks, get a PC. Apple’s tablet is for what most people do
with their laptops 90% of the time. And that’s just the
iPad in its tablet PC hat. It’s also a media player, a media
shop, a book along with an accompanying bookstore and even a
framed family photo. Apple’s iPad tablet is not a 100% of
anything but itself.
For months prior to the
iPad launch, rumors had been circulating about The Next Big
Thing from Apple, known only to be some kind of Tablet PC,
but rumored to be a ground-breaking breakthrough that will
make the previous revolutions instigated by Steve Jobs seem
like child’s play. Mind you, it’s still not fully grasped
how much of a change the iPod, iPhone, and even plain old
Macs are creating on the frontlines of the digital
evolution. But this was supposed to dwarf all prior
achievements.
When the iPad was finally
unveiled, a lot of people were surprised, many
disappointed. We were all looking forward to some
technological tour de force that will make the unfulfilled
science fiction dreams about a Tablet PC into a reality. But
the iPod is no Tablet PC. It doesn’t run Mac OSX as was
expected, it doesn’t do… well actually, it doesn’t do
anything more than your iPhone does. It even looks just
like an iPhone, only bigger. So a bigger iPhone is what is
going to change all our lives?
While tech oriented people
were initially underwhelmed and didn’t spare any smug shots
(iPass being my personal favorite), financial analysts
seemed completely unaffected, and in no way disenchanted,
offering rosy outlooks for Apple, and predicting s**t loads
of sales for Apple.
By the time the iPad tablet
finally reached stores, it was already clear that Jobs has
delivered yet another home run. Within a few days, the
financial analysts proved they were better at immediately
understanding new technology than many techies, and Apple
had already sold tons of its iPads, even having to delay the
launch of international sales due to insufficient supply.
The iPad does indeed offer
something new. No new hardware, hardly any new software, but
mainly a new way of using a computer. Enter the world of
Applications. The world is shifting to even more instant
gratification than before, “browsing is so 20th
century”. With smart cell phones (did anyone say iPhone?)
growing ever more popular, an interface that is dedicated to
gaining access to information with the least amount of
required clicking, scrolling, and typing has evolved. Apple
can even afford to leave such a key ingredient of the
Internet as Flash out of the iPad only because they do not
expect users to do too much browsing. That’s just not what
this machine is for.
I’ve heard Jobs referred to
as the present day Leonardo. If anything earns him such
acclaims it is his way of creating the most intuitive and
enjoyable human machine interaction. None of his revolutions
where technological per se. Starting with the original Apple
computers, it has always been about making machines that are
easy to talk to, and that can easily give you exactly what
it is you want without making a fuss. The process is not
just efficient, it is enjoyable, making people more than
happy to spend a lot of money, continually, in order to
continue enjoying using their funky devices for information,
connectivity, music, movies, books, and in more and more new
ways that are being crafted in some garage somewhere in the
world right now.
Others will follow quickly
and introduce machines that do more or less the same stuff,
only with more features and for lower prices. But if history
is any indication, no one will do it as well as Apple.
