iPad: Real Technology Leadership
A lot of people have asked me if I think the iPad is going to be that big of a deal.
In short, my answer has been “No, I don’t think that the iPad is going to be a big deal. I know it’s going to be a big deal.”
Apple has always been the source of innovation in personal computing
Consider: Apple may not have invented the GUI and mouse concept, but they embraced it, championed it, and made it all their own. The standards for desktop computing that everyone has known for the last 26 years are all derivative works of the original Macintosh.
Apple defined the desktop interaction model as we know it. Everyone else has just been copying them. Although there have been minor enhancements here and there, the basic idea has really not seen any major changes since its inception. A recent comment from Andy Ihnatko summarized my own feelings very well:
“I’m suddenly wondering if any other company is as committed to invention as Apple. Has any other company ever demonstrated a restlessness to stray from the safe and proven, and actually invent things?”
We are witnessing the birth of a new computing industry
Now the innovator has innovated again. I know that Apple has spent years working on this, getting things as perfect as possible for an initial release. Like the iPhone, which rolled out features like copy and paste in subsequent releases of the operating system, I am sure that many improvements will come to the iPad. I’m sure that we’ll look at this initial release as incredibly impoverished three or four years for now.
But for today, this is the first. Apple has redefined not just tablet computers, but the industry standard for user interface design. This is going to change the face of computing, and everyone else will be struggling to keep up. Again.
iPad is a necessary step in the evolution of the user interface
As a software engineer, part of me has always been a little depressed by the interfaces presented in movies like Avatar and Minority Report, because I realized that there was a crucial missing link between the state of computing today and the technologies these films portray.
I’m not referring to the virtual, 3D screens floating in the air and responding to human gestures. The problem, that anyone that has ever used a tablet PC should recognize, is that, to date, all existing touch screen computers have been laptops with the keyboards removed.
Developing a system that was interacted with purely by touch would require a deep redesign of the entire user interface. Otherwise it would never, ever be as good as Apple’s old champion, the keyboard and mouse. Without some substantiative change to the interaction model, I realized that I personally would become too frustrated to use any system derived directly from contemporary technology.
The iPad is the crucial missing link between the computers of last year and the slick virtual consoles presented in these films. Although we are interacting directly with physical hardware, Apple is dealing with and triumphing over the same challenges we would ultimately have to face with the sci fi interfaces of tomorrow. The step of moving from the iPad to a virtual terminal running iPhone OS is much simpler than the step from any previously existing tablet implementation to the iPad.
These are extraordinarily exciting times and I am utterly thrilled to be a witness to them
