Well done sir, you have harped on a particular piece of the puzzle that was starring at me the entire time.
The iPad isn’t the future of computing; it’s a replacement for computing. It’s the payoff to all the work done by multiple industries over the last 20–30 years. It’s the subtraction of 20lbs of textbooks in my son’s backpack, and the device I finally feel comfortable buying my parents. That’s why I was surprised by the reaction the iPad got the day it launched. Following along on Twitter I was seeing things like ‘underwhelming’, ‘meh’ , ’it’s not open’, ‘it’s just a big iPhone’, etc. And most of this stuff was coming from people who design and build interactive experiences. As designers, and technologists we’re very much aware that the interfaces we build are for people who are “not us,’ but we still haven’t made that leap about the concept of “computing.”
link: Mule Design Studio’s Blog: The Failure of Empathy
This device isn’t for me… This device is for my parents. This device is for the person that wants nothing to do with the complications of modern computing, rather would like the damn thing to just work.
They could honestly give a shit whether it’s a closed or open system. And, let’s be really honest, they probably care as much about DRM as they do about baseball players juicing; by which I mean not very much at all. They want things to work most of the time, and be easy to fix when they don’t. And if the process by which it happens is “magic” they are totally cool with that.
I was wrong in my initial assumption about the device. I can see this really taking off under these circumstances.
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Mark Cuban made a similar point, though he took the user age issue in the other direction. Your thoughts?
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35161216/ns/technology_and_science-tech_and_gadgets/
Mark Cuban always seems to be a bit off in certain things. I agree, this could be big with kids, but I think the simplicity was made for adults. Cuban also makes a horrible argument about flash integration in the iPad.
I take that as a big load of bullcrap. If it were for AT&T then why wouldn’t they offer flash only while on WiFi? Nope, the reason they don’t want flash is because flash sucks processor power, and routinely fails. The last thing apple wants is to have to answer questions regarding the quality of their product because of a third party application. No no, HTML 5 will take care of most of these problems, which the mobile version of Safari already handles.
Cuban also talks about the iPad pushing DVDs out the window… Really? I thought DVDs died 5 years ago. The only reason I use DVDs now is if something isn’t available as a stream already. With all of this said, the kid thing could be key. I know most of my students want an iPad, but I just attributed that to the fact they want anything made by apple.