I recently got my brother’s old iPad when he upgraded to the iPad 2. As someone who’s built my own computers for 35 years, used Windows (at home and work), Mac and things earlier, used to be a programmer who knows how to tinker with it all, there are times I just want to get things done which is why I love the iPad, and the Mac for that matter.
Ever since the first Mac rolled off the assembly line, Apple’s philosophy has been to tailor the user experience to the everyman. Whether it was Apple’s unique take on the desktop interface or the popular introduction of the mouse, Apple went out of its way to make the personal computer approachable to a general audience.
Of course, part of this tailoring involves hiding or disguising almost everything that makes a computer a computer. System files are concealed. Command-line terminals are buried in a Utilities folder. The guts are all tucked out of sight. In a pre-Internet era when people bought computers to understand them, or as a means to a specific end, the pretty metaphors of Apple’s OS were often seen as an unwelcome and unnecessary illusion.
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Today, the iPad succeeds for exactly the same reasons that early Macs were criticized. It is an exceptionally disguised computer. The formula works now because we have changed.The audience for computers now is the audience for the Internet, the audience for e-mail, the audience for…being a modern human being. To make a computer for this new audience, you can’t presume that people have the patience or capacity to understand a printer driver or a kernel exception. The number of people concerned about not having root access to their iPads pales in comparison with the number of people who would freak out if Angry Birds suddenly disappeared.
Like it or not, the iPad is arguably the most popular personal computer ever made. And as much as I’d like to credit our nation’s educational efforts in computer literacy and ’80s grade schools filled with computers running Oregon Trail, the reality is that the iPad is the first computer that successfully stoops to our level. Apple’s people could explain it to us, but instead they call it “magic,” and we’re seemingly OK with that.
# 60 I’m pretty sure you are the most amused of the pack. Thanks for letting me know, that way I will not be able to sleep tonight. I hope that you’re happy now.
What a turde!
Postscript: Apple’s iPad business now has twice the revenue of Dell’s entire consumer business.
A few people here complain about content consumption only devices. Whats the point? Good for you you have a unstoppable creative impulse. Content creation apps will come in a big way. The coolness of the many painting apps gives a hint of the possibilities. Touch screen UI has yet to be fully played out.
In technical colleges in England long before the lst war, we used to teach student car mechanics how to make spanners, they had to file them up from blanks, real crap they were too, didn’t last long. Now we teach more of the ‘how to use correctly, appropriately, to do the job. We let others, more specialised, make spanners. For many, being able to use, rather than originally make the tools to use, is shown to be more appropriate. Hence the growth of users and the (current) decline of programming employment. I presume the writer is a consumer of food rather than a chef? Also who cuts his/her hair? fixes the rotting teeth? Advises on excess speeding in the car? Looks after them in prison? Some skills are really not necessary to existence and they also waste much of the (limited) time you have on the planet. Life is really about sex, drugs, booze, avoiding the taxman, praying for the Taliban to get the bankers. Not learning about things with little relationship to usefulness, earning, or interest. Innit?
“Touch Screen” Apps = Finger Painting = KINDERGARTEN !!! I guess we can all REGRESS TO PRE-SCHOOL !!!
#65 JimD,
There’s ArtRage for iPad
http://www.artrage.com/artrage-ipad-main.html
#62 mac is to computing what hip-hop & Lady Gaga are to music.
#63 You contradict yourself. Is for content consumption, not creation. People are buying it to consume and they might feel creative in the same way users of the defunct MySpace can be labeled as “creative” by how they “customized” their pages.
Creative software has come in all flavors & all platforms for ages. The oy!pad is not responsible for nothing there.
If anything, mac is just a monopolistic turd that, whenever they see their monopoly in danger, they buy out software and/or hardware companies.
When they couldn’t control Digidesign’s plan to extend their market by making Protools & Avid available for PC’s, they jumped on Macromedia to keep Final Cut Pro a mac only tool. Of course, they pressured Digidesigns too but they thankfully strong enough.
So take your mac “creativity” and shove it.
And those painting apps are cooler on pads with a lot more digitizing resolution than that god awful oy!pad.
Now watch how mac goes after Nintendo after the announcement of the controller for the Wii U. Assassin’s Creed for the Wii U & 3Ds that were announced on E3 have been canceled and you’ll see them magically appear for mac’s oy!pad. Sure that’s coincidence.
Here’s the note on Ubisoft’ announcement of the Wii U cancelleation http://go.ign.com/mTpVX0
Here’s the note on the cancellation on 3Ds and their intention to develop on “pads” http://bit.ly/qRLjhc
No question, macfans are morons.
#64 Perfect description of a macfan. Kudos.
oy!pad
I didn’t know you were Jewish.
Norman Speight you sound as if the only tool you know how to use is your penis, and you can’t get that to piss straight.
I don’t expect a television to be open and programmable (though it could be), but for people to say they “use” an ipad implies that they are “doing” something with it.
I read / watch my iPhone, and use the calculator once in a while, but am hamstrung because Jobs doesn’t allow any form of programming with it, AFAIK.
The power I hold in my hands is greater than the sum total of all the computers available before, what, 1965? And yet, it is little more capable than a TV.
It just feels like a waste of potential energy.
Pedro nuts to you. I won’t bother debating your illogicalalities. Ipad really creative stuff will soon appear, utilising touch screen versus mouse. Do you not know the great user interface innovation of multi-finger gestures. I’ll give you a single digit gesture.
Macfans know the worth of a decent well designed UI. The solidity of the OS combining BSD unix is well known.
I turned turncoat and switched about seven years past, got a mini, what a revelation with a good sony display. Costly? I well remember the Windows XP disk purchase. The hardware Windows monopoly has long past