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January 27 2010

Because a lot of people have asked.. here’s a little blip i wrote on a tech blog about my thoughts on the iPad. ______ Anyone remember when the iPod first came out? Remember all the complaints then? How’s that working out for Apple now? The way I see it.. apple just created a new “space” and an new device to put in that space.. and eeveryone is being so shortsighted and trying to fit this iPad into an already existing space (ie, an ebook reader, or netbook, or UMPC) Its NONE of those… its an entirely new thing and as such, it will take time for people to learn what to do with it. Now I’m no apple-crazed blind apologist (like them and most of what they do though), but I probably won’t be buying one of these puppies anytime soon.. but you’d have to be a fool to think Apple doesnt know what they’re doing. Even outside of the iPod and iPhone they’ve got many other examples of how they made their mark on the tech industry and I think this new iPad is another example. What I think they are trying to do is shift the way people use mobile tech intro a much more intuitive and natural way. First lets all agree that anyone reading this [ this refers to people on the site which i originally posted this ] is probably in the 3% or less of people in the world who are tech savvy and actually care enough to hop online and write about this stuff. We are not apple’s prime market and we have to all be able to step back and at least entertain the idea of looking at this with a bigger lens. Apple is one of the hottest tech companies in existence right now and they just found out a way to generate close to 14 billion dollars last quarter, more than they have ever generated, and in an economy in America thats almost as worst as it’s ever been since Apple’s inception…. so they are doing something right. Thats like being a country music fan and flaming Lady Gaga for releasing Bad Romance. It sounds like crap to you. YOU see no point in its drivel. But somehow or another…Lady Gaga still sells millions of records in crazy small amounts of time and has a track record (albeit a small one) of doing this not for 4 or so singles now… yet you flame her next new single as being just a longer version of Bad Romance. Surely she (or her producers and label) know what they are doing. She’s sleek, sexy, catchy, poppy, shiny.. whatever adjectives you want to throw on there… and like her or not.. thats what America, and most of the civilized world enjoys. Sure her concert tickets are insanely more expensive than going to see some indie artist at the Neighborhood Theatre, and the indie artist might be an arguably better musician… but the numbers don’t lie. People Pay up. They buy up her iTunes singles and sell out her shows. Gaga is like Apple in this regard. And with apple devices being among the most sought after in the consumer space… along with their 40 something billion dollars sitting in the bank… we should all agree that THEY KNOW WHAT THE HECK THEY’RE DOING by now. Ok? OK!So you can’t see a current, personal, reason to buy an iPad. Ok so dont buy it. I don’t see it justifiable for myself (yet) either. But lets look at the iPod/iPhone for a track record indicator. They both started at insanely high prices and did relatively less things than their closest consumer counterparts. The first iPhone couldnt even use anything but the 12 or so apple apps that came on it. The email was inferior than a blackberry, the maps didnt have gps,  the iPod was less capable than the Nomad Jukebox and costed waaaay more… but what’s got them to where they are now? People just like the experience. Period. And there isnt a tech sheet list, or price point that’s going to change that. People will save up. The iPhone/iPod both gained functionality and dropped in price over the next year. More people bought. No one imagined using the iphone as a device to hover over a business card snap a pic and have the card’s info directly input into their phone, up to this thing called a cloud, and back to their home computer in under 30 secs! No one saw it as a universal remote control. No one though it could play games in a more convenient way than at DS or PSP…. but viola… 3 years and hundreds of imaginative brains later.. and here we now have what the iPhone is today. Think people.Whats to say schools won’t start giving an iPad (more like building it into the tuition costs) to all their incoming freshmen so that they can just rent their semesters worth of books from the iBook store versus buying them? HMM? If someone told me I could buy a device that presumably could last my entire college run’s worth of classes and just rent the books for each class as i needed it… and all i had to do was pay for this device … aka one semester’s worth of books in cost… i’d be all on it. Especially if i could use it to give presentations, listen to music, surf the net, etc etc. Then you enhance the iPad 2.0 with a webcam and standard 3G or LTE or whatever, and you allow for collaboration with your classmates and teachers thru the device. Then you add in RFID to the book knows what class you’re in and it streams the notes/lesson/previous homework whatever from the iCloud… theeen we start to see where things can head. Whats to say hospitals and doctors offices cant supply one of these to their staff so that they can download a patient profile (being green, saving printed paper, and looking way cooler in the process) as they arrive at the room. They can show the patent stats about whatever in live/real time and always make sure everything is synced up with the hospital server at all times. Then we start to see where things can head!Parents have a traveling kiddie television that doubles as a giant GPS an email on the go machine and an “oops, i forgot to turn the A/C down before I left the house, let me just use the iPad to change that right quick” machine. Lets all just take 10 minutes an think about whatever you do in life, whether youre a student, or teacher, or analyst, or doctor, or bum, or repair guy, or whatever. And think to yourself… “if i controlled all the tech in the world… what would I personally want this to do for me.” i’m sure you can come up with at least 5 really cool things that you’d want it to do. Think hard. …. got it? Now THAT’s in theory what this device *can* do. Maybe not in its current form.. but it’ll get there. I have a laptop. Its pretty powerful.. whatever. Now if i really was honest about what I did on my computer when i am NOT doing work… i’d be narrowing it down to basically everything everyone else would be narrowing it down to. I email. check youtube and vimeo (both of which now will playback on this device via HTML5.. and in HD). Facebook. a few blogs here and there. Hulu any shows i missed. and repeat. All while listening to music, sorting thru photos, watchin a video or 2 on my machine, checking out what i’ve gotta do the next day and basically, thats it. So why is it not a good idea for me to ditch the expensive and relatively heavy laptop (compared to this iPad) get a nice blazing fast desktop to do all my work on … then when its play time or travel time… I have a device thats 1lb instead of 5. I have one that’s got 10 hours of battery instead of about 4. I have one that fits in a smaller bag of mine (or if i was a girl.. my purse) instead of having to carry an extra laptop bag. I have something that costs less, at least than my laptop, and would be less of a big deal if it were stolen or broken. I have something that has 3G built in and i can access the net from about anywhere. And it does all the things i need to do (excluding work, but not really since it does have iWork which i know won’t replace real MS office or real iWork but i’m betting it will do more than you think) nicer or just as nice as my laptop does. Why is this a bad idea again?I’m starting to think its not so bad after all. At first rumors of this I was all like, meh what the heck do i need a tablet for…. but then I THOUGHT about it. One could even say I “imagined” about it. That’s what stevie J probably did. We’ve all gotta start thinking bigger people. Steve Jobs didn’t get to where he is today by sitting in his garage thinking “man look at that crazy Xerox machine. Its so freakin expensive. Who’s gonna want thaaat?”

Because a lot of people have asked.. here’s a little blip i wrote on a tech blog about my thoughts on the iPad.

______

Anyone remember when the iPod first came out? Remember all the complaints then? How’s that working out for Apple now? 

The way I see it.. apple just created a new “space” and an new device to put in that space.. and eeveryone is being so shortsighted and trying to fit this iPad into an already existing space (ie, an ebook reader, or netbook, or UMPC) Its NONE of those… its an entirely new thing and as such, it will take time for people to learn what to do with it. 

Now I’m no apple-crazed blind apologist (like them and most of what they do though), but I probably won’t be buying one of these puppies anytime soon.. but you’d have to be a fool to think Apple doesnt know what they’re doing. Even outside of the iPod and iPhone they’ve got many other examples of how they made their mark on the tech industry and I think this new iPad is another example. What I think they are trying to do is shift the way people use mobile tech intro a much more intuitive and natural way. 

First lets all agree that anyone reading this [ this refers to people on the site which i originally posted this ] is probably in the 3% or less of people in the world who are tech savvy and actually care enough to hop online and write about this stuff. We are not apple’s prime market and we have to all be able to step back and at least entertain the idea of looking at this with a bigger lens. Apple is one of the hottest tech companies in existence right now and they just found out a way to generate close to 14 billion dollars last quarter, more than they have ever generated, and in an economy in America thats almost as worst as it’s ever been since Apple’s inception…. so they are doing something right. 

Thats like being a country music fan and flaming Lady Gaga for releasing Bad Romance. It sounds like crap to you. YOU see no point in its drivel. But somehow or another…Lady Gaga still sells millions of records in crazy small amounts of time and has a track record (albeit a small one) of doing this not for 4 or so singles now… yet you flame her next new single as being just a longer version of Bad Romance. Surely she (or her producers and label) know what they are doing. She’s sleek, sexy, catchy, poppy, shiny.. whatever adjectives you want to throw on there… and like her or not.. thats what America, and most of the civilized world enjoys. Sure her concert tickets are insanely more expensive than going to see some indie artist at the Neighborhood Theatre, and the indie artist might be an arguably better musician… but the numbers don’t lie. People Pay up. They buy up her iTunes singles and sell out her shows. Gaga is like Apple in this regard. And with apple devices being among the most sought after in the consumer space… along with their 40 something billion dollars sitting in the bank… we should all agree that THEY KNOW WHAT THE HECK THEY’RE DOING by now. Ok? OK!

So you can’t see a current, personal, reason to buy an iPad. Ok so dont buy it. I don’t see it justifiable for myself (yet) either. But lets look at the iPod/iPhone for a track record indicator. They both started at insanely high prices and did relatively less things than their closest consumer counterparts. The first iPhone couldnt even use anything but the 12 or so apple apps that came on it. The email was inferior than a blackberry, the maps didnt have gps,  the iPod was less capable than the Nomad Jukebox and costed waaaay more… but what’s got them to where they are now? People just like the experience. Period. And there isnt a tech sheet list, or price point that’s going to change that. People will save up. The iPhone/iPod both gained functionality and dropped in price over the next year. More people bought. No one imagined using the iphone as a device to hover over a business card snap a pic and have the card’s info directly input into their phone, up to this thing called a cloud, and back to their home computer in under 30 secs! No one saw it as a universal remote control. No one though it could play games in a more convenient way than at DS or PSP…. but viola… 3 years and hundreds of imaginative brains later.. and here we now have what the iPhone is today. Think people.

Whats to say schools won’t start giving an iPad (more like building it into the tuition costs) to all their incoming freshmen so that they can just rent their semesters worth of books from the iBook store versus buying them? HMM? If someone told me I could buy a device that presumably could last my entire college run’s worth of classes and just rent the books for each class as i needed it… and all i had to do was pay for this device … aka one semester’s worth of books in cost… i’d be all on it. Especially if i could use it to give presentations, listen to music, surf the net, etc etc. Then you enhance the iPad 2.0 with a webcam and standard 3G or LTE or whatever, and you allow for collaboration with your classmates and teachers thru the device. Then you add in RFID to the book knows what class you’re in and it streams the notes/lesson/previous homework whatever from the iCloud… theeen we start to see where things can head. 

Whats to say hospitals and doctors offices cant supply one of these to their staff so that they can download a patient profile (being green, saving printed paper, and looking way cooler in the process) as they arrive at the room. They can show the patent stats about whatever in live/real time and always make sure everything is synced up with the hospital server at all times. Then we start to see where things can head!

Parents have a traveling kiddie television that doubles as a giant GPS an email on the go machine and an “oops, i forgot to turn the A/C down before I left the house, let me just use the iPad to change that right quick” machine. 

Lets all just take 10 minutes an think about whatever you do in life, whether youre a student, or teacher, or analyst, or doctor, or bum, or repair guy, or whatever. And think to yourself… “if i controlled all the tech in the world… what would I personally want this to do for me.” i’m sure you can come up with at least 5 really cool things that you’d want it to do. Think hard. …. got it? Now THAT’s in theory what this device *can* do. Maybe not in its current form.. but it’ll get there. 

I have a laptop. Its pretty powerful.. whatever. Now if i really was honest about what I did on my computer when i am NOT doing work… i’d be narrowing it down to basically everything everyone else would be narrowing it down to. I email. check youtube and vimeo (both of which now will playback on this device via HTML5.. and in HD). Facebook. a few blogs here and there. Hulu any shows i missed. and repeat. All while listening to music, sorting thru photos, watchin a video or 2 on my machine, checking out what i’ve gotta do the next day and basically, thats it. So why is it not a good idea for me to ditch the expensive and relatively heavy laptop (compared to this iPad) get a nice blazing fast desktop to do all my work on … then when its play time or travel time… I have a device thats 1lb instead of 5. I have one that’s got 10 hours of battery instead of about 4. I have one that fits in a smaller bag of mine (or if i was a girl.. my purse) instead of having to carry an extra laptop bag. I have something that costs less, at least than my laptop, and would be less of a big deal if it were stolen or broken. I have something that has 3G built in and i can access the net from about anywhere. And it does all the things i need to do (excluding work, but not really since it does have iWork which i know won’t replace real MS office or real iWork but i’m betting it will do more than you think) nicer or just as nice as my laptop does. Why is this a bad idea again?

I’m starting to think its not so bad after all. At first rumors of this I was all like, meh what the heck do i need a tablet for…. but then I THOUGHT about it. One could even say I “imagined” about it. That’s what stevie J probably did. We’ve all gotta start thinking bigger people. Steve Jobs didn’t get to where he is today by sitting in his garage thinking “man look at that crazy Xerox machine. Its so freakin expensive. Who’s gonna want thaaat?”