Why Most iPad Reactions are Missing the Point(s)

I've let the concept of the iPad marinate in my head for 10 days, and let the waves of reactions flow over me.

As always, the volume and strength of arguments about several aspects of the iPad are completely out of proportion to the actual number of people that agree and disagree with them, so reading the what must be hundreds of thousands of media articles, blog posts, tweets and YouTube videos about iPad is not going to give a faithful picture of how it will fare in the wild. It's a safe bet that Apple will wield its formidable marketing muscle to ensure the iPad's commercial success. That's a given. Since Mac OS X, there hasn't been a single Apple product I can think of that didn't. Even Mobile Me has done better than .Mac ever did, despite being an utter cock-up.

A few articles that surfaced over the last 10 days have, amid the noise, brought a sharp clarity to the true vision behind the iPad, and even placed the iPhone and iPod into a much, much larger picture. I now believe that almost all reactions (both positive and negative) have missed the point.

iEverything

iPhone and iPad are just beginning to fulfil a very very old dream of a device that can morph into any device and be the perfect design for every task. The soft keyboard, the big touch screen, the lack of physical controls - all point to a singular philosophy: the hardware should get out of the way and let the software do its magic.

Every aspect of the hardware design of iPhone, iPad, and even iMac, reflects this philosophy. There is nothing to distract from the software. In fact, the software replaces the hardware wherever possible. Of course software needs hardware to exist, but iHardware is all about supporting the software, and nothing else.

Taking this philosophy to its logical conclusion, the iPhone and iPad will eventually evolve to have no recognisable physical controls at all, and when they run an app, they will look and feel exactly like the physical device normally used for that task. The hardware will vanish into the background as the software defines everything about the user experience.

Another implication of this philosophy is no background apps. Other than a few special cases, I really don't see the point of background apps. Most of the best iPhone apps I use are designed to remember what you were doing when you last quit, so when you bring them back up, there is no functional difference to having them running in the background. In light of the above philosophy, background apps would be a huge mistake. The whole idea is to make the device transform into something else - the device becomes anything, but not everything all at once.

iCloud

Apple is making titanic investments in online services. The iTunes Store and App Store have shown what it takes to perfect the micro-payments business. It's all about the user experience - again, it's all about software. I've never liked web apps. While Google is stretching the envelope further than anyone thought possible, the problem is that it's a stretch. Apple has shown that limiting business to web-based user experience is a waste of the true potential of the Internet. By building native apps that deliver a thoroughly pleasant interface on the front end, while using the Internet and huge farms of raw horsepower on the back end, they create the perfect user experience. The problem with web apps is that the client is too thin.

iPhone apps have shown that there is a happy medium between fat desktop client software and paper-thin web client software. You don't need more power than a mobile ARM processor to deliver a smooth user interface on a small screen, and when you couple that to a powerful online back-end you effectively have an iceberg, with the app as the tip.

The main limitation faced by iPhone apps is the size of the screen, which iPad addresses directly. The larger screen, with a muscular chunk of silicon to drive it, will make more things feasible on the front-end, but the concept is the same. The genius stroke is that thousands of iPhone app developers have now been through a forced lesson in user interface minimalism. The discipline of designing powerful apps on a small touch screen means that moving to the iPad is a new freedom, rather than a limitation as a 1024x768 screen would have been if there was no iPhone before iPad. But the transition to iceberg apps has already happened.

iType

Prior to the announcement of the iPad, like others, I wondered how text input would be handled on a tablet. This is one area I think Apple still hasn't quite figured out yet. (Nobody has.) The lack of physical buttons is a great freedom for the "magical morphing device" design philosophy, but let's face it - typing on the iPhone is not easy. I expect typing on the iPad will be even harder. I'll have to wait and see.

So one of the functions gushingly touted in the Apple promo videos was how great it is to do email on an iPad. Hmm… It looked great for reading email, but I will be surprised if it's any good for writing email.

Apple has obviously been forced to admit this limitation, because they introduced the keyboard dock right in the debut presentation. But since nobody has any better ideas, the race is on now to come up with a real solution.

iChat

The only real disappointment I have is the lack of a front-facing camera. If Apple had included one they could have had 2 killer apps: YouTube recording & upload, and video iChat/Skype. Coupled with 3G, these would have introduced a new form of communication, which is ultimately the only important thing that computers do. I think this really was a missed opportunity for Apple, and I hope they will introduce this in a future generation of iPad.

iCarry

Given that I won't be able to use the iPad for iChat/Skype with my family in Australia, I'm now wondering if I will ever take the thing out of my house. If not, the WiFi-only version will suffice, as there's no point in having GPS if it's always at home. Normally, I don't carry a bag anywhere, even on my commute, because everything I need is already on my iPhone. So carrying an iPad around by any means would automatically be a hassle. That said, if I ever do take it out somewhere, it will be a lot less useful without connectivity.

iWant

The iPad could have been more, but it would have to be a whole lot less for me to not buy one. One overwhelming trend I have seen in the blogosphere is people bashing the iPad, but saying they still plan to buy one. If that is anything to go by, then Apple is going to sell a lot of iPads. Even people who say they hate it, still can't help but want it!