While I don’t expect to be first in line to buy an Apple iPad, we’re likely to be getting one pretty quickly. There are a number of reasons for this and I thought it would be fun to write them down.
There are three perspectives at play here:
1) Media consumption in our home;
2) Business portfolio; and
3) Laptop “replacement” for Betsy.
We know we’re not the average household. We have 2 (rather old) MacBook Pro’s that hang out around the house. We have an Apple TV hooked up to our HDTV in the living room. And we already own an “iPad Nano” (I have an iPod Touch) so we’ve already experienced some of the possibilities the iPad promises when it comes to applications such as the Apple TV Remote and the basic apps like email and Safari.
Lets look at each of our planned uses for the “magical” iPad
Media Consumption
We’ve been waiting for this type of device to augment our living room media experience. We own and heavily use our Apple TV and I’m hoping that it won’t be too long before the two play together (more on this later). While we have Comcast cable, it’s not like what most people consider cable. We have the $13/month option that essentially gives us the “over the air” channels plus public access (a whopping 18 channels and only 8 of them are HD). This is a long-winded way of saying we don’t consume a lot of television. While it only tallies up to maybe an hour a day at best, video podcasts are an increasing part of television time — we prefer to watch EarthTouch and GeekBrief.tv in HD on our television. There are a fair number of video podcasts I’ve never seen on a computer screen — it wouldn’t even occur to me to try them that way.
I’m looking forward to having an interface that not only provides us with a nice web browser for looking up stuff during shows, but also something that integrates with the Apple TV. It would be great to have a nice console for browsing the Apple TV podcasts, searching YouTube, finding photos, etc. and “throwing” them up on the television as a way of sharing them in the room. (It’s a slight disappointment that the iPad doesn’t have an IR port to turn it into a remote control for the TV itself, but that’s admitted a bit of a kludge at best.)
Having something hanging around on the coffee table that lets us casually check email, twitter, browse the web, and control the Apple TV will be a most welcome addition to the household. I was slightly surprised that it didn’t have a camera — it would make a great iChat / Skype device — but such improvements are, perhaps, inevitable. The only downside is we can see is that, unlike the “iPad nano”, hiding it from the grandson will be much, much harder.
Business Portfolio
I maintain a portfolio in my “iPad Nano” (my iPod Touch). I have both photography and video portfolios along with examples of TurnHere style videos and family photographs. It is fantastic to have a high-quality and interactive portfolio in my pocket at all times. It comes out in a variety of social situations and always impresses people.
But in a planned business situation, calling on a potential customer or sitting with an existing customer, the 2×4 inch iPod/iPhone screen is simply too limiting to display and discuss my work and a laptop isn’t something that you easily can hand back and forth with a client. I fully expect that there will be custom applications for photographers and other media creators that will provide a great portfolio experience for both the photographer and their customers.
While the Safari browser on the iPod Touch and iPhone is pretty impressive, I still find it awkward to use for any type of interactive web sites (e.g., filling out forms, etc.) I’m expecting the iPad to be at least passable for that type of activity (not sure I’ll be writing long blog articles with it though). Coupled with the 3G wireless capability I can access forms and book gigs while at a client’s place of business or show them example videos in context of a similar business. The best way to sell video is with video.
Which brings me to why we’re currently planning to purchase the 3G version of the iPad. I currently pay Verizon $30/month for my data plan for my Blackberry. That’s a lot of money for not a lot of value (to me). While having email delivered to my pocket is handy, its not critical to my day-to-day life. Most of the time I’m near a Wi-Fi and my iPod Touch has a far better email app than my Blackberry (I should note that my Blackberry is easily 4 years old at this point). By converting my Verizon phone to just a plain cellphone I can potentially cut my monthly wireless data costs by half if I’m able to stay under the 250MB limit. Even if I end up with the $30/mo plan it’ll be a wash dollar-wise and I’ll get a significant improvement in its utility to my business. For those times when I need email on the road I’ll bring along the iPad (assuming I can get ahold of it — see the next section).
I’ll admit that my situation may be unique, but I think its an interesting sign of the times for how wireless providers are being transformed by Apple and Google into service providers not unlike ISPs. We plug whatever device we want into the wireless network and pay for the bandwidth. No 2-year contracts. Dollars for bits. And with the increasing density of Wi-Fi hotspots in restaurants, libraries, and other public areas the need for 3G access all the time keeps getting nibbled at.
Laptop Replacement
My wife, Betsy, has been waiting for the iPad for about 4 years. She uses a old hand-me-down 15″ G4 MacBook Pro. She reads email; plays Solitaire; writes the occasional letter/document; and occasionally surfs the web for shopping or booking a hotel room. She’s been bugging me for years for the 12″ MacBook Pro.
She also attends a bunch of meetings and having the email and documents in electronic form would be preferable to printing them. She occasionally takes notes at these meetings.
She hates lugging the laptop around and therefore it rarely leaves the house. It is way overkill for anything she does day-to-day. We’re anticipating that the iPad use model, perhaps paired with a Bluetooth keyboard once in a while, will take care of 80%+ of her daily computing needs.
I couldn’t part with my MacBook Pro. It is an integral part of my photographic workflow. Lightroom has burned a considerable amount of processor time the past few years and I occasionally use Final Cut Pro there too. There’s over 100 gigabytes of photos and video on the disk. I use Dropbox to sync numerous documents and files between my laptop and my office system.
There are millions of people like me. There are millions of people like Betsy. The iPad cannot replace a laptop, but there are plenty of people that have a laptop that really don’t need or even want one. I can’t say at this point whether there’s enough capability in the iPad to make Betsy’s MacBook laptop obsolete, but we’re going to give it a try.
Summary
In 1991 I read an article in Scientific American written by Mark Weiser in which he envisioned what pervasive (or ubiquitous) computing would look like in the 21st century. It made quite an impression on me. Weiser and his team at PARC created prototype pads, tabs, and boards — intelligent devices that were tailored to specific uses rather than trying to be general-purpose computing platforms.
We have tabs today in the form of active badges and keyless automobile access. The iPod Touch, if it was a lot cheaper, might be an early example of a something between a high-end tab (an intelligent post-it note) and a pad, a “scrap computer” that lies around the house ready to be used in a number of ways. The iPad will inch closer to the capabilities that were envisioned in that article, although there won’t be a bunch of them hanging around the house anytime soon. Boards exist mostly in corporate settings, but put a multitouch interface on the front of my HDTV and you’ll have a residential version of the PARC boards in the article. (Microsoft’s “Surface” can likely trace its pedigree to the PARC board prototypes.)
Ever since I read that article I’ve been waiting for that type of computing to become mainstream. My Palm Tungsten C, with its Wi-Fi capabilities, gave me my first taste of what Weiser’s dream might look like back in 2003. Sadly Mark Weiser passed away in 1999, a few years before his vision became practical, but now we’re into the second decade of the 21st century and with the iPad we’ll inch a bit closer to true pervasive computing. We’ll go along for the ride.
