With rumours of the iPad 2 growing daily, I thought it timely to reflect on the impact of the iPad almost a year after it was first announced.
Meeting the hype?:
In many ways, I feel the iPad has exceeded its hype in practice. It was introduced as a game changer, and the rush of copy cat devices already on the market and the flood of others expected in 2011 I think shows it really has introduced the tablet form factor to the mass market and stimulated demand for a form factor that had been tried many times before but always to luke warm reception.
Why has Apple found a way to make this form factor work when others before had failed? Well, I think it's because they approached it backwards. Rather than seeing it as a scaled down laptop or desktop, the iPad was created as a scaled up mobile device. Apple did well initially with the UI of the iPhone, but they also had a few years experience of refining the design before looking to scale the form factor up. I'm sure everyone remembers how they were criticised initially for "forgetting" about simple things such as copy and paste with the iPhone - well, such omissions would have been unforgivable with a device the size and utility of the iPad where as it was just about accepted with the iPhone as less was expected to be done with it.
By all accounts, that period of evolution and development of the UI had the iPad in mind all along. According to one blog I read, Steve Jobs had the iPad form factor in mind when the iPhone was designed and the iPhone was a deliberate step to get the design improved and wait for the technology to be ready before launching the iPad. True or not, I certainly feel the detour via the smart phone has served the iPad UI well and is really why Apple have delivered a device that has captured the imagination where others failed.
Only good for content consumption?:
Early after the launch, most (including me) expressed the view that the iPad was all about content consumption rather than creation. I have to admit that this hasn't proven the case though. Yes, the iPad is excellent for consuming content, but thanks to the plethora of excellent apps that have emerged to exploit its strengths, it is also now an excellent content creation tool. The fact that I'm writing this using the iPad Blogpress app is testament to that :)
For me, the unexpected area that the iPad has excelled at is photo editing. Sure, there is no substitute for Photoshop/Lightroom on a "real" computer on a big monitor, but the intuitive manipulation of images for scaling, cropping has made the iPad my weapon of choice for initial image viewing as it allows me to quickly and naturally manipulate images as if they were physical prints - even better in many ways. The addition of apps like TouchRetouch which performs a basic version of the content aware fill/deletion and colour manipulation apps like ColorSplash and CinemaFX provide for immediate and relatively competent editing on the device.
I also find the iPad an excellent device to show off my photos to other people. The natural interface allows it to be passed around a group of people without having to explain how to manipulate the interface. The excellent screen makes the images look good and the ability to plug it into the 50" flat screen TV to really show them off to family and friends all work well. OK, I may be guilty of inflicting my photos on people like going back to the old stereotype of projector slide shows of years past, but at least with this technology, you can quickly skip through to the best images and read your audience better than having to switch all the lights off and have them doze off in the dark ;)
With creative apps for audio/music, video editing, blogging, databases AND mind mapping among many others, I now find myself only rarely feeling "hmm, I need a real computer for this". Even then, the remote desktop app usually leads me to use the iPad as the interface while using apps on a PC.
Security:
OK, firstly, no computer connected to the Internet is ever going to be 100% secure, but the iPad (any iOS device) isn't doing badly at resisting exploits. From the ground up, Apple have employed just about every type of security best practice, and for the most part their efforts seem to be paying off. Famous last words perhaps :)
This emphasis on security isn't without its drawbacks however. Because each app lives in its own walled garden, its taken some time for apps to be able to interoperate on files. Apple have now introduced a mechanism to "open this file in another app" which has helped a lot, but for the most part, apps need to rely on off device storage in the cloud to be able to interact.
Which leads me to another point...
Do we need the 3G version?:
Early on, I hadn't intended to get the 3G version as the pattern of use I expected would have been in areas almost always with WiFi coverage. I opted for the 3G version in the end as a "just in case" decision, and I am so glad I did.
Within a few days, I found myself using the iPad in a cafe and needing the 3G to be able to access almost anything useful.
What I realised is that this device had forced a paradigm shift on me - embracing the cloud for almost everything. This requires of course an "always connected" device to be practical.
This could be achieved using a MiFi or other tethered 3G => wifi smartphone type solution, but I prefer the single device elegance possible with the 3G version of the iPad (although the single point of failure does concern me).
I now feel that without buying in to this shift to the cloud, it's almost impossible to get the best from the iPad and I suspect this will be the case for any similar form factor device. Perhaps the abundance and ubiquity of such services is another reason why the time was right for the iPad where other devices had failed before?
So what are the issues?:
While I'm certainly an advocate for the iPad having been won over to the UI by having an iPhone first, I'm not blinded to it's many remaining short falls.
The lack of a standard USB port to be able to transfer files (or extend the storage) is a real pain. I suspect this will be one shortfall that will remain unsolved with the iPad 2 though despite much speculation to the contrary. The reason I think this is because Apple apply a premium to the larger storage capacity devices they sell, and allowing users to buy the lower spec device and then increase the storage using someone else's hardware would be anathema to their marketing ethos. I hope I'm wrong though.
No camera. While I doubt I'd ever want to use a device the size of an iPad as a camera, there are lots of apps which would benefit from having a built in camera. Augmented reality apps, google goggles, video conference (facetime) and document capture/scanning are all applications I can see immediate benefits for but there are undoubtedly many other doors this addition could open. The low cost/impact of adding this hardware to the design means this is something I'm certain (ish) to be in the iPad v2.
Screen issues. The screen on the iPad v1 is already very good, but it could be better. The aliphatic (?) coating on the screen makes removing smudges fairly easy, but it does get a lot of smudges from finger grease in the first place. I understand from some rumours that Apple have improved this coating and this would certainly be welcome.
The screen is also very bright and clear, but the introduction of the retina display in the iPhone 4 has shown that it could be even better. I'm probably 50/50 on if a retina screen will be included in an iPad v2 as it comes down to cost. Its not a "must have" upgrade, but if the cost is manageable, it probably will be included as it would look great on marketing materials for when compared with the competition. Personally, I'd rather see an improvement to make the screen more readable in direct sunlight and/or a move to thinner and lighter OLED technology (even better would be to make the whole form factor flexible to make it more pocket friendly, but I suspect that is 3-4 years away at least still)
Summary:
The landscape for the future of mobile computing certainly looks very different at the start of 2011 compared to 2010 thanks largely to the success of the iPad.
- Posted using BlogPress from mobile device
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