“One can’t help being struck by the volume and vehemence of apparently technologically sophisticated people inveighing against the iPad,” Fraser Speirs blogs. “What you’re seeing in the industry’s reaction to the iPad is nothing less than future shock.”
Speirs continues, “For years we’ve all held to the belief that computing had to be made simpler for the ‘average person’. I find it difficult to come to any conclusion other than that we have totally failed in this effort… Secretly, I suspect, we technologists quite liked the idea that Normals would be dependent on us for our technological shamanism,” Speirs writes. “Those incantations that only we can perform to heal their computers, those oracular proclamations that we make over the future and the blessings we bestow on purchasing choices.”
“I’m often saddened by the infantilising effect of high technology on adults,” Speirs writes. “From being in control of their world, they’re thrust back to a childish, mediaeval world in which gremlins appear to torment them and disappear at will and against which magic, spells, and the local witch doctor are their only refuges… With the iPhone OS as incarnated in the iPad, Apple proposes to do something about this, and I mean really do something about it instead of just talking about doing something about it, and the world is going mental.”
“Not the entire world, though. The people whose backs have been broken under the weight of technological complexity and failure immediately understand what’s happening here… The visigoths are at the gate of the city. They’re demanding access to software. they’re demanding to be in control of their own experience of information… They are the people we have claimed to serve for 30 years whilst screwing them over in innumerable ways,” Speirs writes. “There are also many, many more of them than us.”
“Think of the millions of hours of human effort spent on preventing and recovering from the problems caused by completely open computer systems. Think of the lengths that people have gone to in order to acquire skills that are orthogonal to their core interests and their job, just so they can get their job done,” Speirs writes. “If the iPad and its successor devices free these people to focus on what they do best, it will dramatically change people’s perceptions of computing from something to fear to something to engage enthusiastically with. I find it hard to believe that the loss of background processing isn’t a price worth paying to have a computer that isn’t frightening anymore.”
Speirs writes, “In the meantime, Adobe and Microsoft will continue to stamp their feet and whine.”
Please click through and read the excellent full article — it’s worth it; Speirs really gets it — here.
MacDailyNews Take: The Dark Ages of Personal Computing ushered in by the scheming, thieving, tasteless Bill Gates and Microsoft are finally, thankfully coming to an end.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Dow C.” for the heads up.]
@Digitus
The iPad’s main drawback, and the thing that will really limit its usefulness and adoption are its closed ecosystem. Sure, anyone can write apps for it, but interfacing those on the other end is where the problem will lie. For example, you suggest medical and hospital uses – but all of the systems used in this country are based on a non-Mac OS (most commonly Windows XP, with a VERY slow shift toward 7). And until someone can produce better security transfer processes and information management applications that interface on both ends (and run simultaneously while the viewing software is doing its thing), the iPad just won’t be able to participate like a netbook or laptop does.
You’re correct that the future lies there, but the success will come first on the Windows side, because that’s still where the market is. Much to my dismay and ongoing frustration, since its what I live with and what forces me to work in Windows 9 hours a day.
This Pandora thing really is a tedious joke now. I’d never heard of her before. Is it some kind of chat-line for whores? Wait till these Pandora Flashers keep seeing iPads everywhere they go. It will kill them. Can’t wait.
@bond co. stooge: How about “Pandomoaning?”
We need a specific verb or phrase for whining about Pandora… Something scathing and accurate…
Pandering.
Yeah, I know it’s a real word. But consider the definition:
pander |ˈpandər|
verb [ intrans. ] ( pander to)
gratify or indulge (an immoral or distasteful desire, need, or habit or a person with such a desire, etc.) : newspapers are pandering to people’s baser instincts.
@Grrrilla
It is Apple’s closed ecosystem that allows the company to offer a seamless, frictionless experience to the user. This is the one big advantage that nobody else can replicate.
But of course I agree with you that this closed ecosystem makes the iPad adoption problematic in some contexts. If the utility of the iPad appliance proves strong enough I think the changes will happen over time.
As far as use in clinics and hospitals go, this article about MacPractice was posted on MDN around about the same time I posted my comment: http://macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/comments/23876/
I know of a company that may just have the technology to address the issues that you raised, and where the terminal is something like an iPad.
@Digitus
You are so wrong. The doctors that I have dealt with in the last year all have iPhones that use their resources very well: scans, x-rays, pharmacology, patient records. Most of them tell me that they couldn’t go back to the time before the iPhone any more. It’s too valuable to them. So your supposed roadblock of Windows does not really seem to have slowed this adoption down. The iPad will just do it sooo much better.
A small proportion of society needs a computer, most need an appliance with hundreds of thousands of simple apps.
@cptnkirk
I am glad to be wrong!
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But to be accurate it was Grrrilla who posited Apple’s closed ecosystem as a roadblock. I said I didn’t know much about medical applications, but that if the roadblock exists then people will find ways to bust them down. I also posted the link to MDN’s article on MacPractice. I just visited their website and their iPhone app is awesome!
Not being able to stream Pandora is not the problem. Consider the following scenario.
You’re sitting on your couch, chatting with a friend in your chosen IM client on your new iPad. You’re friend says, “Hey, check out this new album of pictures I just posted from my vacation!” So you click the link to see it. Suddenly your IM client closes, logs you off and you are taken to Safari to view the page. You can no longer IM with your friend and discuss these pictures, nor can you get any followup IMs from your friend.
Having to tell your Skype/IM or whatever social client you chose friend you have to log off or leave chat so you can see content not available in the client is not acceptable. This goes completely against the idea of the iPad in the first place. Didn’t Job say it needed to be a better mobile platform that both a Laptop or a phone or it has no reason to exist??
And just so you folks understand. just because it has 3G data does NOT mean it can get push. Push requires a different connection than the 3G Data. This means no IM, no custom Email Applications, and no reminders from Task/Productivity applications. You will literally have to manually fetch everything by opening the application and looking for it.
This is what is upsetting to us “average” people when we are complaining that it has no multitasking.
Apple needs to solve this.
@Snafu
Which IM client are you using? I use BeejiveIM and it work just fine. After I login to MSN (fro example), I can dismiss the BeejiveIM and it will maintain my ‘connected’ status. And I still receive message notifications via push. If I start BeejiveIM again it pops back up with all my open chat sessions still active, and all messages are up to date. I believe ebuddy for the iPhone also offers similar functionality.
Cardsnap is a mediocre iPhone app for digitizing a business card into a contact list. While it isn’t a great program, it does work, it is accurate, and it may be a good model for background processing in the iPad and such devices: do the background processing on another machine.
Also, how do we know the iPad doesn’t multitask?
@ Grrrilla
Check this story out on doctors and medical use:
http://www.apple.com/iphone/business/profiles/memorial-hermann/
I’m still trying to find the one story about MRIs and what one doctor did to completely update multiple hospitals workflows.
If iPhones have caused this much change, the iPad will just accelerate it.
Ok I take back what I said about Flash being supported by third-party browsers. I just checked to be sure, and they don’t. No loss.
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@Digitus
If I recall, the article is about the “iPad.” Not the “iPhone.” The “iPad” does not have push and won’t. And I address other issues with the inability to allow certain applications to process information in the background. Regardless if Beejive leave you logged in, you will still be required to open the application and LOOK for your IM updates. I do use Beejive on my iPhone, and I find it, like most IM clients, to not be as reliable with IM delivery as it should be, esp if you exit the application and rely on push.
once again, the iPad in it’s current form does not and will not have push.
Please read the entire post before you comment.
@ Grrrilla
This doesn’t have iPhone specific info on it, but it shows what kind of Mac integration is out there and can be done in the medical field.
Bonus- Huge savings on cost.
http://www.apple.com/science/profiles/bakker/
@ Snafu
OS 3.0 added push notification to the iPod touch.
Please state where you got your fact that the iPad will not have push.
@Snafu
Well then my bad! I think it’s a valid assumption that if the iPad doesn’t have push now then it will in the not-too-distant future. Commonsense says so, unless you think that Apple has not thought through the blindingly obvious use cases for the iPad.
Sorry to hear about your reliability problems with BeejiveIM and push notification. I have 100% reliability where I live. But them again I’m not on AT&T;’s network.
NEXT…
Home media server…
So that iphoto library does not require storage on the iPad.
@Think
I stand corrected on Push for the iPod, however, oddly i have never had it working on my Touch and if the resource below is to be believed, it explains why.
http://appadvice.com/appnn/2009/06/developer-warns-push-apps-not-as-useful-on-ipod-touch/
The iPad’s specs offer no information about push whatsoever, and when asked in the hands on center for the iPad, my friend was told “no,” it does not currently have push.
I think it’s fair to assume that Apple has not overlooked this because they are being hard nosed about it. I think that they are working on a solution that will satisfy everyone’s needs for certain applications that make sense to have some background functionality. There is no use for you to have Pages and Need For Speed open at the same time. That makes no sense at all. But you might want to use Skype voice and a given game at the same time so you can play with your friend live. That is a scenario that push simply will not solve. I will also remind you that powering a Wifi radio antenna is much more battery intensive than allowing a simple daemon to run in the background that pops up reminders, event’s and alarms from 3rd party apps. Not to mention making all those developers have to run push servers and deliver those things back to you in hopes that you have a connection.
The fact is that for the iPad to be a mobile device that does things better than a laptop or a smart phone, Apple needs to find some middle ground when it comes to running background tasks that “make sense” to run there.
Take Alarm Clock Pro for example. It’s great if you leave the application open all night and the phone on a charger, and hope you don’t get a push message. Great application that is completely unreliable not because of the developer, but because of the limitations of the platform.
@Cascadians
“The screaming and naysaying will fade away in a few months” – yes I’m sure, as the product proves popular, market-rejuvenating, and life-saving; then the naysayers will feel foolish and fall silent
I think Snafu makes a very good point. What if someone sends me a link to their Pandora station and I click on it. Sure, I’ll listen to it for a few moments, but then I won’t be able to surf the Web. Then where will I be?
Let’s wait and see what’s in the rumored new iPhone OS (which will be out not long after the 3G enabled iPad if timetables match up) before we start whining about “multitasking” or lack of same? I’d like to be able to listen to one of my radio apps or MLB audio when I’m working in Pages, but it’s not a dealbreaker. It will still be nice to pull out my iPad when I want to do some writing or read a book on the bus, train or plane.
@bond co. stooge
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How about ‘Pandering’?
The design is boring and outdated. It’s just a large iPhone. The gorilla hand sized bezel is hard to get past (the thing looks like a JooJoo) and the outdated iphone OS gui just looks silly on such a large phone.
What they should have done was wait until the iPhone OS 4.0 was completed before they showed off the iPad. Because the OS really is based on the iPhone’s.
I’m sure if that was done the impact of the iPad debut would have been greater.
Why didn’t Steve wait?
So perhaps software will improve the interface soon enough.
But I’m sorry Jonny Ive, that unit design is ugly….UGLY!
@Olternaut
The purpose of the bezel has already been explained.
Most people agree, that the iPad is a great looking device.
You must be from a different planet.