I have a message for all the early-adopters and influencers who are denouncing the Apple iPad. As an early-adopter and technology gadget-hound myself, this has been a hard realization to make, but it doesn’t make it any less true. The message: What we want and ask for in an Apple Tablet simply doesn’t matter.
Apple didn’t design the iPad to be for us. It’s not a “Netbook without a keyboard.” It’s not meant to be a multitasking, primary-use computer. You’re not meant to write novels on it, or use InDesign to design a newspaper, or edit a movie in iMovie. The iPad isn’t for us; it’s for everyone else.
Apple has clearly spent a lot of time on the iPhone OS user interface to allow it to lower the barrier of entry to computing to practically nothing. I can hand my 2-year-old son my iPhone and he figures out how to navigate the controls immediately. My mother, who can barely manage to turn on her iMac to compose an email is able to use my iPhone with little guidance. The iPhone was the first step in moving away from the desktop paradigm of computer use; the iPad is a second step. It’s ironic that Steve Jobs and Apple, who did so much to create and popularize and spread the desktop metaphor of computer use, are the same people working to overturn that metaphor and move the public to a new way of interacting with computers.
In ten years, we won’t even recognize the computers that we’ll be using. My son will be 12 years old, and he won’t be using a laptop or a desktop computer, except in some specialized uses. Mac OS X and Windows as we know them will be distant and obsolete technologies to him. His computing environment, ten years from now, will be some distant generation of the iPad. Speech recognition and multi-touch variants will be the primary ways of interacting with his digital devices. Technology evolves and improves rapidly. What we’re seeing with the iPhone and now the iPad is nothing more than the next generation of computing devices. It’s going to be exciting to see it evolve.
The iPad also lends itself to a global audience. Apple has already figured out a better way for Chinese language characters to be entered, using the multi-touch trackpad on their newest laptops. This kind of data entry, using your fingers to draw characters rather than a keyboard, will of course be ported to the iPad. Just because the most efficient way of data entry for an Arabic character-based language is via a physical keyboard doesn’t mean that that is true for a large chunk of the rest of the world.
So you can titter and joke all you want about the name and how it conjures up images of feminine hygiene products. Apple doesn’t care. People laughed at the iPod name also and look how big of a failure that was. Eventually the iPad will gain some multitasking functionality in a future iPad OS version and it’ll be more palatable to the geeks. But until then, Apple will be selling millions of these things to average users who simply don’t know and don’t care about the “missing” features about which you are whinging.
Apple is completely screwing over a significant portion of its most valued customers by making laptops with non-removable batteries.
At the school where I work, we’re planning to lease 1000+ Mac laptops for a 1:1 laptop program to start in August of 2010. Until yesterday’s keynote, we were thinking that Apple’s 13″ Unibody MacBook would fit our needs well. In case you hadn’t noticed, Apple changed their laptop lineup yesterday, converting their Unibody MacBook into an entry-level MacBook Pro and making the only MacBook in the lineup the white polycarbonate one.
The problem here is that the only laptop in their lineup now that has a removable battery is the older style white plastic one. The desirable durability improvements of the newer Unibody models make it a better choice for our students (4th – 12th grades) and faculty, but the non-removable battery invalidates this model from our decision-making process. With limited power in our rooms and on our campuses, we were planning to rely on banks of battery-charging stations to allow our students and faculty to get through the day by simply swapping out a drained battery for a charged one. This solution has successfully been deployed in many 1:1 schools. A non-removable battery renders this solution unworkable for the vast majority of 1:1 laptop programs around the country.
And let’s not forget about the legions of MacBook Pro-toting photographers and film industry professionals who rely on MacBook Pros and swappable batteries to get their work done while in the field
When Apple released the 17″ Unibody MacBook Pro with a non-removable battery, I wrote it off as an experiment by Apple in their product line. I should have seen the writing on the wall and foreseen that they’d move this “innovation” into the rest of the new product line. Apple claims that these non-removable batteries get a 7-hour charge, which may be true for a brand-new battery. But what would we do when we are two years into our three-year 1:1 lease and the batteries start to fail (as all rechargeable batteries do). Apple certainly wouldn’t replace the failing batteries, even under AppleCare. Nor would they pay for the extra labor involved in replacing 1000 non-removable batteries. A significant reason my school is considering the Apple platform is because our small technical staff can adequately administer 1000 Mac laptops. For our school to consider a Windows-based 1:1 laptop program, we’d have to double or even triple our technical staff, a showstopper. The laptop program simply wouldn’t happen.
I’ve been trying to figure out why Apple would make such a myopic decision with their popular line of laptops and keep coming up bewildered. Their official explanation offered at MWSF (ostensibly it provides a larger battery with a longer lifespan) just doesn’t hold any water with me. Everyone I know who needs a longer charge would rather buy another battery and swap it out whether on the plane, or in the field, or in a 1:1 classroom. It’s a stupid decision by Apple and it’s alienating some of their most important and valued customers.
Everyone makes their decisions based on their own circumstances and environment(s). For some, a non-removable battery isn’t a problem. For many more, it’s the problem. A $500 netbook running a Linux distro is starting to look much more attractive than I ever thought it would be. It’s half the cost of the decidedly non-durable white MacBook and yet can still do 90% of our planned technology integration. Apple, are you listening?
From a 1910 school book predicting technology in the Year 2000.
I put on my prognostication beanie and this is what it told me:
Apple is about to release a “media tablet”. It will run the about-to-be-released third version of the iPhone OS. It will have a 9″ or 10″ color screen and have the same type of onscreen keyboard that the iPhone has. You will also be able to connect Apple’s new, smaller, Bluetooth keyboard and use that. It will also have a single USB port so you may use a USB keyboard.
The new micro-payment features of iPhone OS 3.0 is perfectly suited for this new Apple “media tablet” to be a competitor for Amazon’s Kindle. Apple will begin selling digital version of e-books, magazines, newspapers, and even textbooks through the iTunes store. Want just one issue of something, just buy one. Want a monthly or yearly subscription? Not a problem.
Apple is poised to do for the printed media market what is has done for the music industry and (to a lesser extent) the film/tv industry. What’s been lacking is the existence of a well-designed tool and distribution system for the purchasing and consumption of electronic versions of printed media. Technically, it will be very easy for Apple to extend the iTunes Store to include electronic versions of printed media. The hurdle, as it was with both the music and film/tv industries, will be whether the content providers will embrace the inevitible shift to electronic consumption of their goods. It’s clear to me that those companies that do not are doomed to failure and extinction. The smartest and most forward-looking content providers are already figuring out ways to get their content on the iPhone and the Kindle. Apple’s new device will be the tipping point. Five years from now (perhaps even sooner!), students will think nothing of carrying around their textbooks, homework assignments, magazine subscriptions, and newspapers in something like Apple’s coming “media tablet.”
Develop and release game-changing, paradigm-shifting technology. It has become a simple but successful formula for Apple and I don’t see any reason why they would change their S.O.P. now. Everyone knows that the old media industry is dying. Newspapers are closing. Magazine subscriptions are in freefall. Its salvation lies with the difficult but necessary transition to electronic publishing. Many will not be able to adapt and will fail. Those that remain will emerge stronger.
Apple is about to save the printed media industry…at least those companies that are smart enough to get aboard the salvation train as it comes barrelling through the station. It’s coming. Are you ready?
I even have a pretty good idea for what they’ll call the device. It’s so simple and obvious, most people have overlooked the possibility. Let’s not forget that Apple already owns the name and trademark for “iBook.”
Rummaging around in my old computer boxes sometimes yields some interesting stuff. I found a promo CD from Apple from 1995 called “Stepping Into the Future: Robert’s Day with the Mac OS”. Of course I had to watch it!
It’s cheese-ball city, but if you can remember what computers were like in 1994 and 1995, you’ll realize exactly how far ahead Apple was. At this point in time, Microsoft’s best offering was Microsoft Bob. Shudder. What’s surprising is that a Google search for this Apple promo resulted in little info about it. Lest this gem pass into extinction, I used Snapz Pro to record it to a .mov file and put it up on YouTube for everyone to watch. Enjoy this piece of Apple History.
I have a message for all the early-adopters and influencers who are denouncing the Apple iPad. As an early-adopter and technology gadget-hound myself, this has been a hard realization to make, but it doesn’t make it any less true. The message: What we want and ask for in an Apple Tablet simply doesn’t matter.![[Bloglines]](http://appletechnician.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/bloglines.png)
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Apple is completely screwing over a significant portion of its most valued customers by making laptops with non-removable batteries.
Rummaging around in my old computer boxes sometimes yields some interesting stuff. I found a promo CD from Apple from 1995 called “Stepping Into the Future: Robert’s Day with the Mac OS”. Of course I had to watch it!