I like the iPad. The iPhone is a ground breaking work of art and science. The iPad obviously builds on that and I welcome it wholeheartedly.
However, when it gets down to the serious nuts and bolts and people starting asking me if they should buy one for their particular requirements, I keep finding myself saying no.
Why am I posting this? So I can hear peoples’ considered opinions if they think there are reasons why I should start saying yes. I am open minded and what to understand. I actively seek out contrary opinions in the hope of learning more. Of course I am not interested in fanboy rants about why everything from Apple is great (no body is apart from the fanboys), I am looking for real answers to the needs of real people.
My questions are not theoretical. My day job is running an IT help company focused on the home user market, which means my engineers and I get asked this sort of question an awful lot. To illustrate the problem I will give you three real life examples (we have many others) of people who have asked if they should get an iPad after hearing the announcement. I will give you the reasons we said no and invite you to comment. I think it will make for an interesting debate. Here we go:
iPhone boy
The first person to ask me if he should get an iPad got an iPhone about a year ago, plugged it into his PC to activate it and download the music, then never used the PC again. He was mobile, the phone had everything he needed and there was no need for anything else. He is now getting to the point of needing to update the firmware on the phone, load more music, take the 3,000 photos he has taken in the last year off etc. The PC is ready for the dump, being a venerable 9 years old. Watching him use a normal laptop is painful, he keeps prodding the screen and wondering why nothing happens, he has to be coached to use the mouse. Surly he is a perfect match for an iPad?
Except I cannot find any reference to the iPad running iTunes and being able to activate an iPhone or act as its central repository for music, photos, firmware etc. He has to get a Mac or PC and once he has done that he has spent his budget. Nothing left for an iPad. There are other touch screen machines around, but nothing else that would match his budget.
The Technical Household
My own wife saw the iPad announcement and asked if we could have one. At first I thought it was a great idea. Reading from a laptop whilst someone else is watching TV seems nerdy and anti-social, reading a magazine much less so. Looking at the iPad is more like a magazine, I would be more comfortable with that. Also, I particularly like the look of an email client that is designed with a touch screen in mind, rather than a mouse based client being used with touch, which will not work as well.
The problem comes in the unit lack of flexibility with media formats. We use Windows Media Centre to record TV, which it does very well. We can grab any TV or computer in the house and access any media we like. They give us huge leeway in terms of formats and codecs. The iPhone and the Apple TV and I am sure the iPad are the most fussy of devices when it comes to such things. Which illustrates an important point: the iPad is a closed world, technology is moving at an enormous speed our requirements change. More open platforms can keep up with that. Is it important that the iPad cannot play Windows Media Center files? Not a bit, completely irrelevant. But what it illustrates is a problem with flexibility. This device will soon be competing with devices like the HP Slate. Both devices will have their pros and cons, but the Slate will have flexibility. If we recommend the Slate it is much less likely that people will come back to is in the future asking how to do some new thing and we will have to reply that the facility is not available in some form. Producing a device that is a full general purpose computer greatly increases what it can do. The problem the PC makers will have is getting to the same price level as the iPad, if they can, it will be an interesting fight.
The Cruiser
A little old lady sees the video of the iPad and likes the look of how easy it is to use. Her hobby is going on ocean cruises and she has heard from her friend that there are lots of bargains to be had on the web. Would this be the device for her?
Probably not, Adobe Flash is used extensively on travel sites. Sure mostly it is used to make things look pretty, but can we guarantee that its absence on the iPad will not stop her booking that killer deal? No we can’t.
If she is buying a device to surf the web it needs to access most of the web and most of the web uses Flash. I heard Steve Job’s reported comments about the stability of Flash and the world moving to HTML 5, all of which I agree with. The problem is that today, huge parts of the web are written in Flash and that is not going to change any time soon.
Three examples. We are getting more all the time. Each one we consider carefully with the users particular needs in mind, each time the iPad draws a blank.
I want to be able to recommend this device. I am sold on all of the positive points in the material put out by Apple and in this forum. The devil is in the detail, when people start describing what they need, it just does not quite match what this machine will do.
I am not suggesting the product will fail to sell. Lots of folks with iPhones and iPod will buy it because of the positive experience they have had with their existing product. What I am saying is that if you try and match what they actually want to do with the devices capabilities before hand, things do not add up.
So go on, convince me that there is another way of looking at this. Do not start your endeavours by telling me all of the good points of the device. I already understand and accept those. Tell me how I can go the last half mile to address the needs of a normal person who like the look of this device. Perhaps if you have real life examples (not theoretical) of people you have given an unqualified recommendation to, that would be very interesting to share.
However, when it gets down to the serious nuts and bolts and people starting asking me if they should buy one for their particular requirements, I keep finding myself saying no.
Why am I posting this? So I can hear peoples’ considered opinions if they think there are reasons why I should start saying yes. I am open minded and what to understand. I actively seek out contrary opinions in the hope of learning more. Of course I am not interested in fanboy rants about why everything from Apple is great (no body is apart from the fanboys), I am looking for real answers to the needs of real people.
My questions are not theoretical. My day job is running an IT help company focused on the home user market, which means my engineers and I get asked this sort of question an awful lot. To illustrate the problem I will give you three real life examples (we have many others) of people who have asked if they should get an iPad after hearing the announcement. I will give you the reasons we said no and invite you to comment. I think it will make for an interesting debate. Here we go:
iPhone boy
The first person to ask me if he should get an iPad got an iPhone about a year ago, plugged it into his PC to activate it and download the music, then never used the PC again. He was mobile, the phone had everything he needed and there was no need for anything else. He is now getting to the point of needing to update the firmware on the phone, load more music, take the 3,000 photos he has taken in the last year off etc. The PC is ready for the dump, being a venerable 9 years old. Watching him use a normal laptop is painful, he keeps prodding the screen and wondering why nothing happens, he has to be coached to use the mouse. Surly he is a perfect match for an iPad?
Except I cannot find any reference to the iPad running iTunes and being able to activate an iPhone or act as its central repository for music, photos, firmware etc. He has to get a Mac or PC and once he has done that he has spent his budget. Nothing left for an iPad. There are other touch screen machines around, but nothing else that would match his budget.
The Technical Household
My own wife saw the iPad announcement and asked if we could have one. At first I thought it was a great idea. Reading from a laptop whilst someone else is watching TV seems nerdy and anti-social, reading a magazine much less so. Looking at the iPad is more like a magazine, I would be more comfortable with that. Also, I particularly like the look of an email client that is designed with a touch screen in mind, rather than a mouse based client being used with touch, which will not work as well.
The problem comes in the unit lack of flexibility with media formats. We use Windows Media Centre to record TV, which it does very well. We can grab any TV or computer in the house and access any media we like. They give us huge leeway in terms of formats and codecs. The iPhone and the Apple TV and I am sure the iPad are the most fussy of devices when it comes to such things. Which illustrates an important point: the iPad is a closed world, technology is moving at an enormous speed our requirements change. More open platforms can keep up with that. Is it important that the iPad cannot play Windows Media Center files? Not a bit, completely irrelevant. But what it illustrates is a problem with flexibility. This device will soon be competing with devices like the HP Slate. Both devices will have their pros and cons, but the Slate will have flexibility. If we recommend the Slate it is much less likely that people will come back to is in the future asking how to do some new thing and we will have to reply that the facility is not available in some form. Producing a device that is a full general purpose computer greatly increases what it can do. The problem the PC makers will have is getting to the same price level as the iPad, if they can, it will be an interesting fight.
The Cruiser
A little old lady sees the video of the iPad and likes the look of how easy it is to use. Her hobby is going on ocean cruises and she has heard from her friend that there are lots of bargains to be had on the web. Would this be the device for her?
Probably not, Adobe Flash is used extensively on travel sites. Sure mostly it is used to make things look pretty, but can we guarantee that its absence on the iPad will not stop her booking that killer deal? No we can’t.
If she is buying a device to surf the web it needs to access most of the web and most of the web uses Flash. I heard Steve Job’s reported comments about the stability of Flash and the world moving to HTML 5, all of which I agree with. The problem is that today, huge parts of the web are written in Flash and that is not going to change any time soon.
Three examples. We are getting more all the time. Each one we consider carefully with the users particular needs in mind, each time the iPad draws a blank.
I want to be able to recommend this device. I am sold on all of the positive points in the material put out by Apple and in this forum. The devil is in the detail, when people start describing what they need, it just does not quite match what this machine will do.
I am not suggesting the product will fail to sell. Lots of folks with iPhones and iPod will buy it because of the positive experience they have had with their existing product. What I am saying is that if you try and match what they actually want to do with the devices capabilities before hand, things do not add up.
So go on, convince me that there is another way of looking at this. Do not start your endeavours by telling me all of the good points of the device. I already understand and accept those. Tell me how I can go the last half mile to address the needs of a normal person who like the look of this device. Perhaps if you have real life examples (not theoretical) of people you have given an unqualified recommendation to, that would be very interesting to share.