First, a brief summary of the net’s current (factual) criticisms:
- It still doesn’t allow you to run more than one application at a time (i.e. “no multitasking”).
- Mobile Safari web browser still doesn’t support Adobe Flash.
- No high-resolution (5MP) camera for photos.
- No front-facing camera for video conferencing.
- It can’t make phone calls.
- It doesn’t do anything one can’t do more completely with a different (often cheaper) device.
- It’s locked to the App Store in the same way that the iPhone is.
All of those things are true, and one should not underestimate how disappointed some people have been by that list. In lieu of a complicated editorial, with a lot of blue-sky predictions about what Apple (or developers) may or may not do with this thing in the future, I’ll present one statement and two lists.
The statement:
The Apple iPad is a new mobile computing platform, for a space whose past iterations have brought real money to exactly no one, in the entire history of the computing industry.
List #1, potential criticisms of any new mobile computing platform that no one (that I’ve heard) is making about the iPad:
- The battery life isn’t good enough.
- The processor isn’t fast enough.
- The wi-fi networking isn’t fast enough.
- The 3G networking is too expensive.
- The keyboard isn’t good enough for real blogging or business-class email.
- It’s unstable and insecure.
- The barrier to entry for native software development is too high.
List #2, things that I believe Apple believes about their business, and their mobile platform customer/developer bases:
- The first devices in this platform should attenuate the obvious risk we’re taking.
- Consistent behavior and performance inside each application is more important than the speed with which one can switch between applications, or use applications in concert with one another.
- Our customers have real cameras for real photos, and phones for shitty photos. We needn’t raise the risk and cost of our hardware to give them a “moderately shitty photo” option.
- Lack of video conferencing is not a deal breaker for anything that isn’t a “real” computer.
- We make and successfully market a touchscreen phone. Neither our customers nor our investors need an Apple-branded competitor in the phone space.
- Ongoing cost of 3G network access is a dominant component of lifetime mobile device cost, and (given competent marketing) can therefore be a dominant driver of device choice. We are competent at marketing.
- As long as our hardware is standardized and Android hardware is not, we will continue to kick Android’s ass.
The iPad may not ultimately be successful. But it is the product of strong, calculating leadership and business acumen. Whether it succeeds or fails, the market will learn things from this experiment that no other company could teach it.
Well said.
I think it’s going to be a huge win, and even though I’m the kind of guy who gets a cell phone 15 years after everyone else, I think that this is the beginning of a very exciting time in the tech world.
Nicely put, especially the list of complaints we have NOT heard. I find it interesting that Apple has not chosen to reveal basic facts about the hardware such as system RAM because it’s simply not important or relevant. That reminds me of how Rolls Royce lists the horsepower of its vehicles as “ample.”
“Enough” power + elegance to spare is typical Apple. Doing it at half the price of their low-end notebook is a big deal. Backwards compatibility with the App Store is the cherry on top and makes this into a fun thing the day it releases.
If it were released today, I would have already have bought one.
I was pretty disappointed in apple. I knew it wasn’t going to be some fantastically open and new device, but at the very least I was expecting some new hardware or killer application. Perhaps they are just testing the waters for v2 but you would have to be a fool to buy this thing at that cost when a netbook can be had for $200 and is way more flexible.
Jason-
Killer hardware? Perhaps you missed that part, or maybe it’s because Apple didn’t emphasize its importance enough. There is killer new hardware in there–it’s the A4 processor that from all hands-on accounts, blows doors off any other mobile processor. That is a killer technological advance, and if there is one thing everyone agrees on, it’s that the thing is blazingly fast.
I’m not too keen about a couple other missing pieces–most notably multi-tasking, but I expect this in some upcoming OS release (jeez, people (me included) want that on the iPhone). I hate Flash and keep it disabled until I need it–can’t wait for wider HTML5 adoption. But, Apple may face their own adoption problem if they don’t support Flash somehow (even though it is the worst resource hogging, crash-prone POS software in the mainstream today).
I’m glad you like your netbook. I gave mine up and just take my ThinkPad or Macbook where ever I go, because that was a frustrating painful experience. Sure it has a camera (whoopee) and runs Flash, but it’s the absolute worst user experience of any PC I’ve used since the early Windows days.
And I think that’s where this thing works–user experience (UI, speed). I don’t think it will replace netbooks for people who settle for that experience in a work machine, but I think I could definitely replace the netbook gap. And like a netbook, I don’t think it’s for everybody. In fact, it’s funny because it is getting slammed by us technology obsessed people, but that’s not whom it’s targeting.
With respect to killer/breakthrough hardware, I think Jason’s right. Apple’s A4 is important from a business perspective (insourcing an essential platform element for which almost everyone else in the computer industry depends on OEMs), but from a pure-tech perspective it’s “just” a nice ARM system-on-chip variant. It’s classy, like the 802.11n, the IPS display panel, and the design materials choices.
I’m not convinced that many $200 netbooks actually see consistent use. $350-$450 netbooks? Perhaps. That’s still cheaper (at least in acquisition-cost terms) and I’ll concede that some people really like them.
What I will not concede is that people (other than Richard Stallman, who is both a grandmaster of computer science and a lunatic) really like netbooks for their flexibility.
They’re cheap, small, light, and do a few things well that the user wants to do on the road. In particular: ssh, remote desktop, email/chat, web browsing, and light business document authorship/editing. To a good first approximation, the entire remaining corpus of user-land Windows and Linux computer software is of “benefit” in purely theoretical terms only.
1. The system management hassle of a netbook is as real as the management hassle of any other Windows or Linux machine.
2. Does anyone doubt that ssh, remote desktop, email, chat, web browsing, and light business document authorship will be available for the iPad within a month of launch?
Feralchimp, you are a master of understatement.
“1. The system management hassle of a netbook is as real as the management hassle of any other Windows or Linux machine.”
Especially on a low-end netbook, because of:
- cumbersome UI (the keyboard and trackpad of the eee PC, for example, is an exercise in frustration)
- slow performance
- storage constraints
And if one is running Windows, don’t get me started on the dangers of NOT keeping that up to date and protected from malware.
In contrast, the iPhone OS’s firmware is easily managed in iTunes and could stand alone for users without a host computer.
“2. Does anyone doubt that ssh, remote desktop, email, chat, web browsing, and light business document authorship will be available for the iPad within a month of launch?”
We already have a dozen each ssh, RDP, and chat options on the iPhone. The iPhone’s email and web browsing have already been proven as best in class. iWork was shown at the keynote and will likely be very affordable and appropriately scaled to the hardware.
It’s hard for me to see how someone could NOT want one of these things.