My Thoughts On the iPad
I’m sure by now, you’ve read enough about the iPad to think, “oh, come on, not another article about that thing.” Granted, the hype and rumors got completely out of hand. Contrary to the Windows zealots around me, they weren’t all fed by Apple. I can’t blame them too much, though. They don’t know the history of Apple and the community-fed rumor mill that precedes any and all product announcements. This time, however, it was so bad that even mainstream tech press and blogs got into the act. The rumors got so out of hand that the general consensus was that it would completely change computing, end hunger, cure cancer, and bring about world peace.
The “Vision” Thing
Predictably, the tech press and blogs (I’ll just file them under “pundits”) followed up the official announcement by nearly unanimously criticizing the iPad as a complete and utter disappointment. Granted, the expectations that this device was held up to were ones that no product could ever hope to satisfy. However, it’s not as simple as that. The punditry and typical commenters on sites such as C|Net and TechCrunch exhibited a severe lack of technological vision. It was like watching the Windows crowd (I was one of them at the time) getting all wrapped around the axle and hysterical when Apple released their original iMacs without legacy ports and ditching the floppy altogether.
I’m not saying that the silliness is going unanswered. For a thoughtful commentary, check out Sam Kington’s piece.
An Analogy
One of the loudest complaints about the iPad (and iPhone) is that it doesn’t support Flash. I was told by someone last Thursday that he wouldn’t buy it because it doesn’t have Flash. Well, to be honest, he wouldn’t buy it because it’s from Apple. Anyway, what a lot of people don’t understand is that on OS X, Flash is garbage. If OS X or Safari crashes, you can easily bet your lunch money that the cause was Flash. Apple even called out Adobe on this issue when they were demoing Snow Leopard and Safari 4’s plugin-level sandboxing. They were saying, “Adobe, we all know Flash is a steaming pile and this is what we’re doing to protect our customers.” A rogue Flash plugin would suck the iPhone (or iPad) battery dry in no time at all and crashes at the hands of Flash would wreck the user experience, leading to greater frustrations and customer revolts than they would have from not supporting Flash at all.
Since the release of the iPhone, Apple has been supporting the use of open standards in place of Flash. With greater effort nowadays being put into the development of HTML 5 and CSS 3, these standards are being given the blessing as the purest way to code for the web. The pundits and many in the IT world either don’t know about the issues of OS X and Flash or they don’t care. They don’t get it because they’re so far removed from the world of the average consumer. When told that HTML 5 is the way to go moving forward (especially for video), all they give you are blank stares followed with “but ‘everything’s’ in Flash!” The problem is, they don’t get the obvious analogy.
Flash is to the iPhone/iPad as the legacy ports were to the original iMac
In both cases, IT “pros” complained loudly that the dated and obsolete technology they’ve attached themselves to was given the executioner’s axe by Apple. Apple was the first manufacturer to ditch the legacy serial ports (they never supported parallel ports in Macs) for USB and they were the first to ditch the floppy.
When the HTML 5 spec is completed, Flash itself will no longer have any reason to exist as it does now. With AJAX, there’s no need to require a plugin to deliver interactivity. With H.264 and the <video> tag, there’s no need to require Flash for true cross-platform video support. I’m sure I’ll catch heat from Firefox fans (Firefox does not support H.264, but rather Theora), so here’s my reasoning:
- Of the participants in the development of the HTML standards, the Mozilla Foundation is joined by Apple and Google, among others. Microsoft just recently decided to start participating in the development of HTML 5. More on them in a bit.
- Apple and Google both use WebKit, an open source project managed by Apple. WebKit supports only H.264 with the <video> tag. Neither Apple, nor Google are doing anything to drop it by any means.
- Google reencoded all of the YouTube videos to H.264.
- H.264 is increasingly accepted as the standard of choice for mobile devices, spearheaded by Apple’s iPhone.
- YouTube and Vimeo, perhaps the two largest sources of user-created videos are now offering beta versions of their sites where H.264 video is provided without Flash.
- Though Microsoft owns VC-1, adoption has been scant, save for the few uses of Silverlight.
- Microsoft owns H.264-related patents and thus has stake in its success.
- Though Theora isn’t bad, per se, H.264 is more efficient.
The future of video does not look favorable for Flash, especially when there’ll be a choice between playback in the browser without a resource-hogging plugin and said plugin. For interactivity, it would be smart of Adobe to start positioning the product as a development tool of interactivity using HTML 5, CSS 3, and SVG. If they don’t somebody else will.
This is a stance that Apple is not budging from. Take the intra-Apple town hall meeting where Jobs said of Adobe, effectively:
They are lazy. They have all this potential to do interesting things, but they just refuse to do it. They don’t do anything with the approaches that Apple is taking, like Carbon. Apple does not support Flash because it is so buggy. Whenever a Mac crashes more often than not it’s because of Flash. No one will be using Flash. The world is moving to HTML5.
Also note the time (13:04) in the demo when Steve Jobs visited the New York Times web site and had a “missing plugin” icon where a Flash movie was supposed to be was no accident. This was quintessential Jobs. He was sending a message to Adobe. ”Your steaming pile (Flash) isn’t going to be allowed on this device.” The usual pundits and IT “pros” thought this was a funny gaffe exposing a fundamental flaw in the device. They apparently haven’t bothered to understand how Jobs works. Let’s take for example the announcement of the publishers that Apple partnered with in bringing the written word to the device. Jobs listed 5 major publishers. However, the one publisher (McGraw Hill) whose CEO announced on MSNBC the night before the reveal that they were working with Apple on the iPad was missing from that slide. This was no accident.
It’s Not Just A Bigger iPod Touch
Those who are claiming the iPad is nothing more than an oversized iPod Touch are just exposing themselves as unimaginative. How so? Well, let’s look at one announcement that commanded a good deal of time in the event: iWork. The Microsoft-devotees predictably laughed-off this portion of the event because they will not, under any circumstances, give iWork the amount of credit it deserves. It’s not Office, you know. However, what these “professionals” missed was the underlying message: Not only can you upsize iPhone apps for the iPad, you can write full-featured applications originally found only on the desktop for the iPad. In fact, I look forward to Bento for the iPad. Not only is iWork for the iPad a (seemingly) fully functional full-featured application, but it’s a technology demonstrator for those other development shops, large and small. Those developers and/or companies that realized this first will reap the earliest benefits. The pundits will be left scratching their heads, asking, “whoa, how did that happen?” when it comes to pass.
One common complaint, especially among the Windows fanbois was that they were disappointed that this device used the iPhone OS instead of the full version of OS X. A couple points here:
- iPhone OS is OS X
- The desktop OS is designed around precision pointing devices, not fingers
That second point is worth repeating. Desktop versions of OS X and Windows are not designed for use with fingers. Sure, Windows 7 has multitouch baked in. However, as was seen when Steve Ballmer fumbled with HP’s Slate, he had a difficult time using the smaller UI elements in Windows 7 with his finger. This is the reason why Apple went with the iPhone OS. You get the ability to write full-featured applications with a UI designed from the ground-up for use with fingers.
eBook Poseurs?
One all-to-common comment from the iPad-haters is that the iPad is not a “real” ebook device. Those who would read books on the iPad are just poseurs and wannabes. For books that are only text, I’m quite sure the Kindle is just fine and probably handles the task with aplomb. However, many of the books I read and have read include color illustrations: Edward Tufte’s books, Garr Reynolds’ books, and Nancy Duarte’s book come to mind immediately. This is a task that the Kindle fails at miserably because eInk does not support color. The developers of eInk are working on color, but so far, the quality is nowhere near where you would want it to be to view movies or play games, tasks that apple’s iPhone OS handles quite well.
What these wannabe elitists need to realize that their specific use case isn’t the one and only true and pure use case. In fact, to truly determine the worthiness of the iPad, you need to look at how this device could fit into your lifestyle, assuming it does at all. For my wife and myself, it’s a perfect fit. I get a color eBook reader that gives me the more powerful computing capabilities that only a more powerful device with a screen larger than the iPhone’s can give me. Netbooks lack the form factor that would ever be of any use to me.