Sit. Walk. Slouch. Communicate. Create. Consume. Why the iPad will be a hit.
Posted by Rishad Tobaccowala | March 3, 2010
The iPad will be a home run.
While it is unlikely to sell at the volumes of the iPod, iTouch and iPhone, due to its high price point, it will be a successful, industry-impacting product.
And the absence of a camera and flash and all the stuff the “gizmo-gadget-geek-hood” berate will be a significant reason for its success.
People around the world spend their waking hours in three spheres. These are:
a) working / creating in which the dominant posture is sitting,
b) communicating/travelling in which the dominant posture is walking or standing, and
c) consuming/relaxing where we slouch.
The computer is optimized for working/creating while you sit. The mobile phone is ideal for communicating/travelling. However in the area of consuming/slouching, there has been no dominant multi-purpose electronic device.
Yes one can watch television on the computer and read books on the phone, but these are tertiary benefits of the dominant role for each device, which are creating and communicating. They fall in a usage gap, as discussed here.
The iPad is optimized for consumption of electronic media, and for slouching. It is perfect to consume books and magazines and online video and Facebook and Twitter.
It is about a state of stature and a state of mind, not a state of technology.
In a slouching device, I do not want a stupid camera or anything (including buggy flash) to remind me of work or technology.
Forward understanding of human needs combined with design elegance is what makes Apple successful. Not creating Swiss army knife technologies that only the small fraction of us that read the tech crunches, gizmodos and mashables of the world lust for.
Technology usage has been freed from the geeks. (Though, happily technology creation still lives with them.)
We want the technology to go away so we can get on with creating, communicating and consuming.
And Apple understands this better than anyone else.
Once again Rishad hits the nail on the head with such poignancy an simple elegance. I could not agree more when it comes to Apple not making the swiss army knife. They don’t need to. They make products that are for, and function quite well at, a specific reason. As someone who creates, communicates and slouches, I would much rather have a device for each that does it exactly how I want it to rather than a product that does everything with mediocrity.
This puts into words the feeling I’ve had since the thing was announced. Since then – every time I “slouch” I’m reminded of my iPadless life. The wait over the next month is going to be a tough one.
To a point, I agree. The device will act more as a window into allowing us to do with content what we desire, be that communicating, creating or consuming.
However, I feel it’s necessary to note that, however buggy, or processor/resource intensive (mostly Apples fault btw), Apple feels Flash is, it is a web standard. Flash has a 99% penetration rate among internet enabled computers. Because of this, developers use, and feel free to use/implement bits of it into websites regularly. So if the goal is to allow users to “seamlessly consume content” in it’s intended manner, then a support for a web standard — de facto or not — is a must, whether they like that or not.
This of course is not mentioning the *real* reason why Flash isn’t on the iPhone, one: flash is a platform onto itself; and two (the primary reason): Adobe owns and controls flash, not Apple. In pretty much in every conceivable way, flash has the ability to subvert Apples efforts in controlling all of the tech that is used and presented on its systems.
They don’t want you using Hulu, they want you using the iTunes store; they don’t want you playing online games, they want you playing games from the app store. The loss of the other interactive experiences that flash alots are marked as minor losses to the overall user experience.
Yes, Apple is idealistic and wants a free and open web without proprietary tech. But Apple itself is also all about proprietary tech, and keep constraints and controls on everything that is sold and developed for their platforms. (see any of the recent App Store censorship tech articles)
So yes, I feel that Apple understands our natural desire to let technology go away and fade into the background, but the window through which we’re “consuming, communicating and creating” is directly tinted with their own biases.
Apple does not want us consuming, communicating and creating the way we want to, but the way *they* want us to. So yes, they’re providing us with a window, but a window heavily tinted and controlled by them.
To me, that is the biggest shame of all, because it just means we’re moving toward a locked down nature of tech, which will in-turn lock down and limit our ability, capacity and scope to engage in those three c’s the way we wish.
=Sterling Sanders
leave it to Rishad to make me a believer
Spot on Rishad, as I was explaining it to a coworker the other day my MacBook is my 9 to 5 computer, my iPhone is my 24/7 communicator and the iPad will be my 5 to 9 computer. Plus as I see it, it may be a game changer in certain professions like journalism. Keep up the great work and thanks for the A4 post.
I like the premise, but don’t quite agree that iPad is just for the “slouch”. See my post here – http://shyamster.posterous.com/the-ipad-is-not-just-for-the-couch-potatoor-w
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Rishad “gets it” – again. It’s all about innovating around human behaviors, not just products and services. http://irishboy9.blogspot.com/2010/02/ipad-innovation-by-design.html
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great blog thank you