iPad


Gotta love that free market
I've been holding off writing or linking to articles about Apple's iPad.

Let me say this upfront, recently I did a design job at cost with free labor for a non-profit (something I probably won't repeat too often), one of their "angels" is giving me an iPad. So yes, I am waiting. It may not make it to my part of the desert by the 3rd, but it should make it sometime next week.

Apple has been a game changer since it bought NEXT and Steve Jobs agreed to advise the Board of Directors.

Remember the floppy? Neither does anyone else.

Do you like your USB connectors? Do you remember what came before?

Do you remember when you could have your computer in any color you wanted as long as it was beige?

Even back when it was Apple Computer and the only product was the Apple ][ and a floppy drive, Apple has always been about the computer as an appliance. You plugged it in, and it just worked. No, it's not original with Apple, and it certainly didn't apply to every product. But that is where Apple has had it's biggest successes..

I confess, I like sticking to things that work. I was still using AppleWorks for formatting and the occasional spreadsheet. Heck, I'm using iBlog to write this post and the version I have goes back to 2005. I was using 10.4 of OS X up until a couple of weeks ago, even though I've had the upgrade DVD for almost a year. The next upgrade means that MaKai will no longer be my main Mac, but that will wait some. I needed 10.5.8 to link to a iPad.

And while I was at it, I loaded iWork '09.

Bloody blue blazes, Pages is the page layout program that I would have killed for in college. I am probably one of the last American generation that typed it's term papers. Yes, typed. On a Sears electric typewriter in my case, I wasn't completely in the dark. I knew my way around an IBM Selectric too, those type balls were cool. I've barely had a chance to look at Numbers and Keynote, but they look just as impressive.

Then a few days ago, Apple put up the iPad demonstration videos.

And I am out of exclamations that aren't pornographic. I believe the word is geekasm, only for maybe the first time, it's not about the technology. I know technology, but at heart I'm the guy who likes taking the pieces apart and putting them back together. I am a designer geek, an art geek, and only a tech geek by necessity.

Look, iTunes was impressive. But it didn't do all that much that it's competitors at the time didn't do. I'm talking about the OS 9 version of iTunes. And even though iTunes got incredibly customer centered, it didn't convince me that Apple was on the right track.

You could do creative things on a Macintosh, but you still had to spend time being a geek and doing the occasional tweaks.

Then I saw Garage Band and iMovie and iDVD. No, they weren't anything radically new, but they all worked together and with all the other Macintosh programs. What it meant was that for the first time, a computer out of the box did 70% of the grunt work that I used to do in production and design. Smoothly, easily. It let people concentrate on the ideas behind the stuff, not making sure that it worked on your computer.

You probably don't know this, but there used to be three main video tape formats. Half inch started as consumer grade (VHS). Three-quarter inch was aimed at institutions and rapidly became used in news gathering as well. High end television broadcast used one inch. There were actually more formats than that, but when I got my television production training, that is what we used. You could reuse video tape. Printing film was expensive, editing film was even more so. I worked with Sony and Panasonic video editing suites and the spring loaded wheels controls that could give you frame by frame control for precise editing.

All of the sudden, here was a laptop that could do that, just by turning it on and feeding in the footage. And you could compose and record the music that went along with it.

Apple wasn't aiming at the "industry standards."

Apple was teaching people creativity. Or rather, it was taking the drudge work out of creativity.

Now there are still programs I love. Dramatica Pro does more to teach creative writing than almost every teacher and professor I ever had. Does great for story theory too. It helped me realize that Abby on NCIS is actually modeled on a large friendly dog. No, I am not saying that to be offensive. I think fourfeets are people too, just of another sort. That's just her personality, and it helps that show from being just another police procedural. Dramatica Pro was the very first program I ever saw that was aimed at the creative process rather than the finished product. For a long time, it was my most expensive software purchase. Twice actually, considering I bought the OS 9 version and later the OS X one.

Apple aimed at the process. You don't have to know music theory to use GarageBand, but it helps. Just listening and experimenting with the clips teaches composition and music styles. And if you get too good for GarageBand, Apple will sell you Logic Studio. And so on.

With Apple iWorks, they do the same thing for page layout and presentation. Get it, they are making the routine part of creativity easy. For someone who still relies on the Eyeball Mark I for visual design, it's nearly absolutely perfect.

But you know what's best about the whole thing, at least from my viewpoint?

Apple gave me my living room chair back.

Back when I still read a newspaper, I would lean back in my chair and read it section by section. I'd pay extra special attention to the funnies. When I got a book, there was nothing I liked better than reading it in comfort. Yes, I experimented with ebooks on my Palm, but the screen is not big enough for a speed reader. It was nice in places I couldn't normally take a book, but it wasn't really a book replacement.

I'm going to read most of my news and columns and blogposts in my living room without having to break out my laptop. the iPad will be linked to my legal identity, which right now is only an administrative account on my iMac MaKai. I'll answer most of my email there. And then I will adjourn to the sanctum where I do the esoteric and creative stuff on MaKai. When I replace my Palm with an iPod touch, that will be linked to my NeoWayland account on this computer. But the iPad will be the living room computer. Eventually I expect to control my television and house with it.

Even before it hits the customer hands, the web and the publishing industries are changing. Craig Mod has several good points about Books in the Age of the iPad. I just love his opening. Emphasis in original.

As the publishing industry wobbles and Kindle sales jump, book romanticists cry themselves to sleep. But really, what are we shedding tears over?

We’re losing the throwaway paperback.
The airport paperback.
The beachside paperback.

We’re losing the dregs of the publishing world: disposable books. The book printed without consideration of form or sustainability or longevity. The book produced to be consumed once and then tossed. The book you bin when you’re moving and you need to clean out the closet.

These are the first books to go. And I say it again, good riddance.

Once we dump this weight we can prune our increasingly obsolete network of distribution. As physicality disappears, so too does the need to fly dead trees around the world.

You already know the potential gains: edgier, riskier books in digital form, born from a lower barrier-to-entry to publish. New modes of storytelling. Less environmental impact. A rise in importance of editors. And, yes — paradoxically — a marked increase in the quality of things that do get printed.

Now I am a bibliophile of the first order. I'd sleep on a pile of books if it were comfortable. I'd have sex while buried in them if only to feel the ideas stimulate my brain while a willing lady and I stimulated each other's bodies. I drool over first editions. I talk to books when they get me thinking. But most books aren't worth the paper they're printed on.

Craig Mod has a point. Several of them. And if publishers and writers pay attention, physical books can become the pieces of fine craftsmanship that they SHOULD BE.

This Gizmodo article explains how the web is changing.

It's interesting, to say the least, that a device promising to be the best browsing experience--cue Scott Forestall crazy eyes-- is in fact reshaping the internet. You could argue it's for the better, moving sites away from proprietary formats and heavy, resource-sucking designs to more open standards, and more efficient layouts that are easier to use ( as many have , convincingly). And it's not like Apple hasn't been remaking the web already--they've been hugely involved in web standards with their work on the WebKit rendering engine, which powers Safari, Chrome, and most every decent mobile browser around. In fact, you could argue, vis-a-vis WebKit Apple's essentially defined the standards for mobile browsing.

There's not much of a choice for site designers to follow this, either. As John Gruber points out , if you care about people on iPhone OS devices--to be clear, that includes the iPad--being able to use your site, you're going to redesign it, and "if you don't think people using iPhone OS devices are an important segment of your intended audience, you're probably wrong."

The reason the iPad could have a more pronounced effect on the internet than the iPhone actually really is simply because it's bigger. The challenge of best displaying your content on the iPhone wasn't simply making sure you had a Flash-less site--it was fitting it all into a 3.5-inch screen, reducing it to the utter essentials to fit the way people use their phones, a task that might've gone beyond a mobile-optimized site in many cases. With the iPad, two of the biggest restrictions--the tighter screen, those smaller windows of time--aren't there, so content producers very well might not need an app to fit their content onto the iPad. In other words, they really can just build a site instead of an app, which is why the iPad might have a more profound effect on the internet than the iPhone.

The world is changing. Apple has created a worldwide paradigm shift before selling a single iPad.

I know of no other company that has done that.

And it happened without a law passed in Congress. It happened without a Presidential proclamation. It happened without legal threats to unauthorized users.

It happened without coercion.

It happened because individuals wanted something.

Free to choose.

That's the free market in action.

One more link & quote. One of my favorite famous people, Stephen Fry (Gordon Gordon LIVES!), did a great write-up in Time. Emphasis in original.

I suggest there's a bit more to it than that; surely Apple stands at the intersection of liberal arts, technology and commerce? "Sure, what we do has to make commercial sense," Jobs concedes, "but it's never the starting point. We start with the product and the user experience. You seen an iBook yet?" His pleasure in showing me the Winnie the Pooh iBook bundled with every iPad is unaffected and engaging. He demonstrates how the case can be used as a lectern and as a stand. "I think the experience of using an iPad is going to be profound for many people," he says. "I really do. Genuinely profound." That rings a bell. "I've heard it said that this is the device for you," I reply. "The one that will change everything." "When people see how immersive the experience is," Jobs says, "how directly you engage with it ... the only word is magical."

Okay, you got me. The cayenne color is my addition.

Based on a Scientific American article, Cult of Mac speculates on what Apple might be working on next.

I've spent six hours over four days writing this piece. It still doesn't say everything I want. But I don't have an iPad yet. My biggest thrill is not that Apple has done it again. I know that the door is just opening. In five years, the first iPads will be considered quaint antiques. There will be many products that do more and do it better. That's okay, I don't care if Apple "wins," although I think they will. The competition to make things better so people have a choice tomorrow, that's the exciting bit.

And it's the one thing that will never come from government.

Gotta love that free market.

— NeoWayland

Posted: Thu - April 1, 2010 at 12:24 PM  Tag


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