iPad - What Is It Good For?

I was hesitant to write this post. After all, the last thing the world needs right now is yet another burnt offering to the Jesus Tablet by an Apple fanboy. But in all the praise, whining, worship and ennui that characterised last week's coverage of the iPad's launch - something was missing. In my view, the difference between whether the iPad becomes a genre changing device, or just a tech geek curio like the Apple TV or the Mac Book Air has little to do with hardware or design, and everything to do with how users end up doing with it. And that, quite frankly, is still very much a mystery. So selfishly, I'd like to propose five ways that Steve's new toy might change my life - or at the very least, improve my day.

1. Reducing the Infovore Chore
If you are reading this, you may well be an information addict. Information addicts, or 'infovores' as I like to call them - are curious creatures. Similar, actually to the largest members of the class Oligochaeta - or specifically, earthworms. Unlike most people I know, earthworms actually improve their environment through consumption. Dead leaves in one end, rich fertile soil out the other. Consuming content is like that too. Infovores spend most of their day reading, tagging, classifying, twittering, posting, blogging and sharing. They take isolated bits of content and through their act of processing it create metadata, structure and discoverability. Spending your days doing that kind of task is not only thankless, but hunched over a laptop - somewhat uncomfortable. And so the first thing I thought when I watched Jobs ease back in his armchair during his keynote, was the significance of posture. The ideal position for actively consuming content is not a lean forward to screen (PC) or a lean back at a screen (TV) but a lean back with a screen (Tablet). And preferably in an original Eames recliner.

2. The Third Screen
Anyone who has experienced the joy of using two screens simultaneously can never go back to a solitary display existence. With multiple displays you can have your work on one screen and Facebook distractions on the other, you can open lots of windows at once and scatter them carelessly around your workplace like clothes in a teenager's bedroom. And for some creative tasks, like editing photos and videos - it is almost impossible to do them without visual duality. In my view, the iPad represents the opportunity to add a third screen to the mix. The extra real estate, while nice, is not the point. Suddenly a contract arrives that needs your signature. Imagine being able to drag a document off your monitor and straight onto your pad, you sign it and then drag it onto a contact in your address book. It is emailed directly. A screen connected iPad would allow you to interact with content in a more visceral way - just like a graphics tablet for designers.

3. A Social Remote
I was at a party recently when I realised that the most useful thing on my iPhone was an application i barely used. Conversation at dinner had flagged, and the evening was fast accelerating into polite banality. Fortunately my iPhone was already paired to the host's wireless network, and with a few clicks I was able to access his iTunes music collection - select a new song, use Apple Genius to automatically complete the playlist and then turn up the volume to a boredom banishing decibel level. Party fixed. The iPad should be able to take this one step further. You should be able to use it like a social remote. Leave an iPad on your coffee table and people can pick it up and select upcoming songs like in a Karoke bar, or access their cloud based music collections from home, or simply program some videos and images to appear on the panel display in the living room. If nothing else, it will bring new meaning to the concept of fighting over the remote.

4. The Prestige
In one of my favourite films about magic, Michael Caine's character explains that it's not enough just to trick people, you need to disorient their very sense of reality. And that's why every magic trick has a third act, the hardest part, the part he calls "The Prestige". When you give speeches for a living, 'The Prestige' is something you also think about. How do you wow people using technology in a way that's not a gimmick but upends their sensory awareness? Using your iPhone to change Keynote slides is not cool. Using your iPad to interact in real time with data, shapes, images and simulations could be. Presentation slides are static things. I'd love to be able to use a tablet to bring life to my visual back drops.

5. Show and Tell
In a similar but more intimate vein, a tablet computer is the perfect tool for impromptu pitch sessions. If you are photographer with a portfolio, a scientist with a 3D simulation of a DNA strand, an architect with a blueprint, a producer with a film idea or even a entrepreneur with a business model - being able to walk into a room with a flat screen that allows for dynamic interaction and play - is far more involving than a standard presentation on a laptop. As the Hollywood scriptwriters say - show don't tell. Elevators rides will never be the same again.

Well, that's my wishlist. Let's see by the end of the year whether those little application developer elves bring me a little Tablet inspired happiness or I just end up on Santa's naughty list again. Anyway, enough about me. What do you want the iPad to do? Click here to comment.

Comments

[Gareth Powell]

Mike,
Interesting that you should come at this way. There are other angles.
For me it quite simply is a major turning point in a major revolution. It started with the iPod Touch of which we now have four and into which we are busily scanning in our entire library. We will never, of course, totally give up on books which we love even if we only have them as decoration. Bt the iPod Touch, which we all saw as a first stage, has changed, literally, our lives. If only because you can read in bed as you have built in light and you can choose the type -- Verdana is very legible.
(For those who want a LARGE library the 64G model will hold about 60,000 books. Read a book a day and you have about enough reading for 150 years.)
I have a rip-off of the new machine and it is but another step in a major revolution. I can have a keypad -- two ways of attaching it -- so that I can write as I travel. And then file the copy as soon as I am in a WiFi zone.
This new machine will not totally kill the book or the newspaper or the magazine. But they are already mostly in a serious strife and this will add to the pressure.
A final point.
If you are taking a degree in, day, literature one of the major problems when you go to borrow an even faintly rare book -- To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf -- it has been fanged from the library by another student.
Now, on the first day of term, the lecturer says this is your reading list, please download it from your WiFi. (For the record this is already happening in a minor way.) This is, in its way as major a revolution as when Gutenberg invented moveable metal type in Mainz. In a sense it has already changed the world. Soon it will be part of this major technical change we are going through and we will be different people.

Gareth Powell

[Davidwfox]

Mike - a well reasoned editorial as always! My first iPad will be a dashboard and control center for my newly restored "Green Anne" Victorian in San Francisco. Given notebooks and smartphones its not quite as revolutionary as my first 128k Mac was in 1985 but it absolutely points the way to a new platform. Convenient, comfortable and cute. I'll enjoy comparing it to upcoming Android/Chrome tablets...

[Andrew Calvin]

The "Third Screen" comment is a good one (I've been using two screens since about 1995), but sadly the iPad doesn't appear to have the handwriting functionality you'd like. I've been toying with a third screen, whether traditional, a Win 7 tablet, or a 7" email monitor, but we're not quite there yet. Traditional Wacom style drawing tablets are a bit of a pain, so perhaps a Windows 7 tablet might get us there. Cheers

[Ben]

http://blog.freshweb.com.au/ipad-alternate-reality-homepage

[Bigyahu]

Good thinking Mike, I particularly liked the Infovore, Prestige and Show and Tell applications.

Though I'd like to see a presenter capable of being engaging while talking and managing a projector screen and an iPad — most of us are fully stretched keeping just those first two plates spinning.

I think the Show and Tell application is particularly interesting, because the iPad has no 'up' — you can hand it to someone and if they grab the top edge they don't have to flip it around before they view the screen — that top will become the bottom as soon as they tilt the iPad past horizontal. An iPad can easily be passed through a daisy-chain of hands without having to be reoriented, as might happen in a classroom or boardroom.

That new LED+IPS screen adds viewing angle radius that will compensate for the size and distance from more than one viewer too, so this should be something that two people can view together without having to get uncomfortably close.

I already travel on business with my iPhone and no laptop sometimes, and with the optional keyboard, the iPad may tip the balance towards storing all my data in the cloud (rather than my backups and my social media.) The MacBook Air was meant to do that and failed, but this time, I think Apple may have nailed it.

Can't wait to see...

[Anon]

While I plan to use the iPad sitting back in a chair like you suggest, I am more eager to use it in my favorite position: flat on my back in bed. Tried that once with my Macbook Air, and never tried again, but the iPad should do the trick.

Say goodbye to everything now cluttering my nightstand: books, magazines, papers, booklight, alarm clock...

Say hello, iPad.

[Chris Simon]

The biggest turning point for me was the local media and ad-rags calling it an iTablet;) It’s a bit like B&B Mike, Broadband is not actually Beyond yet and you might as well have stayed for Bed and Breakfast…No matter how fast,luxurious or fat any network or connection is locally; buffering type streaming and server-out-in- probs still just get on my nerves. Forever. And this has nothing to do with iPad, other than the fact that it is a reference to video and I’m keen to know the hybrid ramifications of what the iPad might do for a new kind of late night entertainment by Kindle-Light, but with video…A kind of videomic or novelette….A cross between the lean forward and lie back in bed and watch my movie and change it a bit here and there…Because it’s not cast in stone, but is ‘the tablet experience’ with a screenplay…I’m a tad bored of hearing all about repurposing existing content into an e-read…I’m more interested in brand new purposely made lightweight ten commandments…(Actually ur book is a premier example-being a visual feast. On iPad could you not go beyond your site and give a coffee-tablet experience?)… I’m really interested if any of your readers know about what lies ahead in the hybrid-video-read iPad stakes, ‘cos we are Apping as we speak and thou shalt show not tell as you so absolutely rightly pointed out. So anyone know? Could iPad provide an absolutely brand new App that “was a book” but fully integrated video as part of the ‘entertainment read’? In French?

[Erwin Mursky]

i will use my ipad as a kitchen computer - music and recipes at the kitchen sink - hope the screen is wipeable - sometimes i will have flour or maybe butter on my hands...

[Praz]

Excellent post here Mike, "whether the iPad becomes a genre changing device, or just a tech geek curio like the Apple TV or the Mac Book Air" nails it bang on.

Without knowing too much about it (I saw the iPad preview at the Oscars yesterday though (http://www.socialwizz.com/2010/03/first-ipad-commercial-airs-during.html). I see the iPad more as a "entertainment" portal than a "business" one (though lines are blurring in some ways for these). It seems to leaning towards the "digital book" wave, as well as having a "bigger than iPhone" entertainment portal angle.

Is Flash now working with the new iPad? I think using Flash (specially for things like HULU) is going to be critical in some ways.

Love this " Using your iPhone to change Keynote slides is not cool. Using your iPad to interact in real time with data, shapes, images and simulations could be. Presentation slides are static things. I'd love to be able to use a tablet to bring life to my visual back drops" and also THE PRESTIGE analogy.

Also, the question is, how many glitches will the first iPad come with, and like the iPhone, are we better off buying additional releases of the product rather than the main one?

Also what's going to be the main competition for the ipad?