I commented on a previous post that I wouldn't read another iPad article, because all the ones I had read were tripe that bludgeoned the device for ideological reasons, or praised it because it's shiny.
However, I respect Joe Hewitt's iPhone work and other writings, so I checked out his article, and I finally got some real insight. This is certainly the best iPad article I've read so far. The idea that we need to re-imagine all of our current software with the capabilities of a large, responsive touchscreen is a good take on the release.
The only thing that worries me is the risk... what's the chance people don't buy these things? Apple has had a flop or two in its past, and even though I develop iPhone apps, I'm a bit leery of developing iPad apps.
During the keynote, they presented the iPad as "magical and revolutionary". Of course, this is marketing, but I was thinking about it to try to see what could be so magical and revolutionary about it.
For the magical part, sure it's a wild hyperbole. But I suppose you could say that, in that it feels like it's the real beginning of the kind of interfaces that have been imagined and dreamt of for many years on TV, in movies… and considering the size of it, it is pretty amazing.
As far as revolutionary, my first impression was "how is that revolutionary since everything it does an iPod Touch has been doing for a couple of years on a smaller screen?". But I came to a similar conclusion as Joe Hewitt, in that it's revolutionary (though it's also hyperbolic) because it shifts the paradigms of computing and the way we think about computers. Yes, the iPhone/iPod Touch are similar technically but the apps were still apps for an advanced mobile phone and the size of the screen was in fact very limiting.
In a way, I feel that the iPad is what computers should have been from the start if it had been possible at the time. For example, take the mouse. It was a great invention to interact "directly" with what's on the screen, but if it had been possible to have touchscreens then, I doubt mice would have been used. Applications have always been a bunch of files in the filesystem and we got used to that, but really that's something we don't really need to know and something that Apple has been removing for quite some time on the Mac even, with app bundles.
So, of course, we'll see what happens. But I think it's an interesting step.
I still think that for most office uses, a mouse is better than a touch screen. If I'm spending a lot of time entering data, a all-in-one touch screen device is miles behind a monitor at eye level several feet away, a good tactile keyboard flat on my desk, and a mouse a few inches away. Maybe I'm constrained by what I already know, but I can't picture a touch device being better.
By getting in early you have a chance to get to know the device early, you get to have apps out there with less competition, you have the chance to pioneer something and the buzz that comes with it, et. etc.
That weighs against the risks: noone will buy it, something big will change between v1 & v1.1, etc. etc.
Now, some people will buy it and the app store will not have fewer than 1000 apps when it launches, so neither the risk nor the reward are huge. You need to work out which way it leans.
However, I respect Joe Hewitt's iPhone work and other writings, so I checked out his article, and I finally got some real insight. This is certainly the best iPad article I've read so far. The idea that we need to re-imagine all of our current software with the capabilities of a large, responsive touchscreen is a good take on the release.
The only thing that worries me is the risk... what's the chance people don't buy these things? Apple has had a flop or two in its past, and even though I develop iPhone apps, I'm a bit leery of developing iPad apps.