Future Shock
Friday, January 29, 2010 at 10:39AM I'll have more to say on the iPad later but one can't help being struck by the volume and vehemence of apparently technologically sophisticated people inveighing against the iPad.
Some are trying to dismiss these ravings by comparing them to certain comments made after the launch of the iPod in 2001: "No wireless. Les space than a Nomad. Lame.". I fear this January-26th thinking misses the point.
What you're seeing in the industry's reaction to the iPad is nothing less than future shock.
For years we've all held to the belief that computing had to be made simpler for the 'average person'. I find it difficult to come to any conclusion other than that we have totally failed in this effort.
Secretly, I suspect, we technologists quite liked the idea that Normals would be dependent on us for our technological shamanism. Those incantations that only we can perform to heal their computers, those oracular proclamations that we make over the future and the blessings we bestow on purchasing choices.
Ask yourself this: in what other walk of life do grown adults depend on other people to help them buy something? Women often turn to men to help them purchase a car but that's because of the obnoxious misogyny of car dealers, not because ladies worry that the car they buy won't work on their local roads. (Sorry computer/car analogy. My bad.)
I'm often saddened by the infantilising effect of high technology on adults. From being in control of their world, they're thrust back to a childish, mediaeval world in which gremlins appear to torment them and disappear at will and against which magic, spells, and the local witch doctor are their only refuges.
With the iPhone OS as incarnated in the iPad, Apple proposes to do something about this, and I mean really do something about it instead of just talking about doing something about it, and the world is going mental.
Not the entire world, though. The people whose backs have been broken under the weight of technological complexity and failure immediately understand what's happening here. Those of us who patiently, day after day, explain to a child or colleague that the reason there's no Print item in the File menu is because, although the Pages document is filling the screen, Finder is actually the frontmost application and it doesn't have any windows open, understand what's happening here.
The visigoths are at the gate of the city. They're demanding access to software. they're demanding to be in control of their own experience of information. They may not like our high art and culture, they may be really into OpenGL boob-jiggling apps and they may not always share our sense of aesthetics, but they are the people we have claimed to serve for 30 years whilst screwing them over in innumerable ways. There are also many, many more of them than us.
People talk about Steve Jobs' reality distortion field, and I don't disagree that the man has a quasi-hypnotic ability to convince. There's another reality distortion field at work, though, and everyone that makes a living from the tech industry is within its tractor-beam. That RDF tells us that computers are awesome, they work great and only those too stupid to live can't work them.
The tech industry will be in paroxysms of future shock for some time to come. Many will cling to their January-26th notions of what it takes to get "real work" done; cling to the idea that the computer-based part of it is the "real work".
It's not. The Real Work is not formatting the margins, installing the printer driver, uploading the document, finishing the PowerPoint slides, running the software update or reinstalling the OS.
The Real Work is teaching the child, healing the patient, selling the house, logging the road defects, fixing the car at the roadside, capturing the table's order, designing the house and organising the party.
Think of the millions of hours of human effort spent on preventing and recovering from the problems caused by completely open computer systems. Think of the lengths that people have gone to in order to acquire skills that are orthogonal to their core interests and their job, just so they can get their job done.
If the iPad and its successor devices free these people to focus on what they do best, it will dramatically change people's perceptions of computing from something to fear to something to engage enthusiastically with. I find it hard to believe that the loss of background processing isn't a price worth paying to have a computer that isn't frightening anymore.
In the meantime, Adobe and Microsoft will continue to stamp their feet and whine.
Reader Comments (286)
It is the recreation of the computer for the rest of us, very pleasing to see too. The focus on specifications and features detracts from the real purpose of owning a computer, which is to get something done. Just like the small shift in cameras recently as the Canon G11 putting less focus on pixel count.
Scrivener made me realize that I wanted to write a book, not faff about with file systems. Abstraction of complexity is a good thing.
Hi Fraser,
I totally agree. We witnessed on the 27th a step up to the next computing platform for the masses (albeit some may want to state an infant step, personally I think the step is much larger). Over the next 10-20 years we will see computing evolution based on this single event I'm sure.
Just like Feb 5 and 6 2008 is known as Super Tuesday for the tornado outbreak that was observed in the Southern States of the US, perhaps Jan 27 2010 will be seen as Super Thursday in mobile computing circles ... a tornado has wreaked havoc across Apple's competition.
Well said Fraser! I agree that there are many of us in the tech industry that shake our head in disgust when an average person can't figure out what app they are in or where they stuck a document. As good as Snow Leopard is—it's still not what most people should have to deal with just to have access to their email and Facebook pages. The iPad is the start of useable computing.
Amen to that.
I was also surprised by the number of tech-savvy people who it all wrong about the iPad; and these people are the one I most respect when tech stuff is concerned. I guess the shock theory offers a good explanation.
I worked at Aldus around the time of the DTP revolution. I'll never forget the european md being frustrated that incremental releases of PageMaker had more and more menus and palletes. To his mind incremental releases should have had less than the previous versions until eventually you poured in your content and presses a single button that said 'make this look great'
Not so dumb as if sounds.
I'm hoping iPad encourages this kind of sw development thinking.
Great post Fraser. One issue I've wondered about though is that people will still have to hook this up to a Mac (or PC running iTunes presumably) to do software updates, backup etc. I wonder if Apple will take steps to minimise or remove the need for this?
I know it's intended to be a third kind of device in between a phone and a laptop / desktop but I can see the potential for people who want to use this as their only device. I wonder how easily will people be able to use this as their only device and never have to use a computer using a regular operating system with all the issues and 'shamanism' required to run one?
There will still be computers and laptops but we will return to a time when they are bought by programmers, hobbyists and tinkerers.
Everyone else will buy a 'computing device' of some sort and be all the happier for it.
Well said. What amazes me is the # of people who seemed to have missed the slide in the video where Jobs listed the tasks that the iPad is meant to make better. Those are day to day consumption of media tasks, not power computing tasks. It's clearly aligned like the iPhone was - take away the complexity and make it just work.
Superb post Fraser - the Muse is with you!
The more of the iPad hate-fest I read on the web the more I'm laughing at it. Obviously the derision is fuelled by a horror so great to some people that they're in complete denial of what the iPad's potential really is - and it is awesome. Have these people learned nothing from the iPod/iPhone/iTunes/iMac?
In fact I do predict that the iPad will be a dismal, crashing embarrassing failure... in the same way the iPod & iPhone were ;-)
Finally, welcome to the 21st Century workplace.
Cheers.
I agree that the iPad is a great device, but it does have multitasking and background processing. The multitasking is reserved to audio output, and background processing is probably not available to third party apps because even though it has benefits (no more waiting for the NYTimes to load articles when you open the app), Apple has not yet figured out a way to make it available in way that third party apps have no chance of impairing the responsiveness of the foreground app. It will probably come once they have figured this out.
The defininig characteristic is the loss of window management, and for small screens with fast flash memory for fast app load times, that works very well, being conceptually easier, completely removing the close app and the load/save document tasks. This only one app visible at a time concept will not change, and if you need more space, why not buy a few more iPads, using WiFi to copy information between the devices, once Apple has added support for a shared clipboard?
I've been saying to people around me for years that computers are just not ready for daily use by ordinary people; they are not reliable or secure or even easy enough to understand. It has been very interesting to watch the iPhone progress and see it actually become the best way to achieve certain ends, even if you already own a laptop of some kind. I think you've expressed this thinking really well, thanks for writing this up.
Brilliant writing! After watching Steve talk, and how the iPad works and feels, I agree. I got swayed by all the negativity out there, but your post and others have me understanding the purpose of the iPad class of devices. It's truly something I believe my 71 year old father with Parkinson's is going to be able to use, and not be afraid of it.
Spot on. 50 years ago you needed a degree in mechanics to own and drive a car. You needed to know all the inner workings just to get it to work. Today, 99.9% of car owners know know the first thing about the inner workings - because they don't need to. It just works. I've driven 150,000 miles in mine and all I've done is changed the tyres.
The iPad is the computer my mum will finally be able to use. It might not please 10,000 geeks, but it will please 100 million normal people.
Very well said!
Change is happening and it will take a bit of time for people to adjust.
I don't have anything particular against device itself, but what worries me is that it's so closed system controlled by one company. I agree that computers/computing have to become easier to use and this trend is still going, maybe not as fast as many would like to.
Apple is known from being control freak so there's no chance of really innovating on the device. It's like having really easy to use Ford car, but being required to buy gas from Ford, have all oil exchanges done by Ford and having to listen only Ford approved music in the car stereo. Only hope is that others will reimplement same idea but will be more open (Android or Chrome OS?).
I could not possibly agree more with what you've posted here. The vast majority of the whining about supposed shortcomings of the iPad since (and really, even before) its introduction come squarely from people who have a *different* idea from Apple on what they wanted this mythical creature to be.
I think the iPad needs to be judged solely on the merits of what it's supposed to do, not what others *think* it's supposed to do. And to that end, Apple has squarely planted the iPad's flag in the realm of consumer electronics - as an appliance to make Web surfing, e-mail, video, music and photo viewing easier. Not as a new general purpose computer that's likely to bewilder or terrify neophyte users.
Exactly what I've been thinking. And nicely written too. You have the style and the ideas, Fraser. And I think we share the same belief: let's do something with our computers/ipads/iphones/whatever and less time doing something to them.
@lucas:
your analogy is flawed in reference to apple as a closed system...
First, for the analogy to be correct, Ford would own the gas station, but anyone could sell their gas through the station as long as it was approved for use with your engine. Which, if you think about it, is in some ways no different than real life - have you ever tried to insert a diesel nozzle into an unleaded gas tank? You can't.
Second, the reason Apple *can* build such a great user experience is because they control all aspects of the design - from hardware to software - which allows for seamless integration without the problems notorious in the windows world of 3rd party drivers trying to work with both the OS and whatever hardware you're running it on.
Although calling Apple a "control freak" may sound clever, it's just flawed reasoning.
While I do agree with most of what you see, there are still two serious problems with the iPad. The first one is the App Store, if we take the iPad to be a "the computer for the rest of us" then the future is looking really gloom. The App Store basically forces developers to charge for their apps since you have to pay $99 a year just to be able to test your application on the iPad. Then, even if you actually want to charge for your app, just as in the iPhone store, you'll be practically forced to pick a low price point for you app, which might work for developers with popular apps since the volume of sales makes up for the low price point, but really screws developers of unpopular apps.
The second problem is the lack or multitasking. There are some applications that simply don't make sense without multitasking, the prime example of this is an IM client. An IM client does not work as a foreground app, you want to be able to talk to your contacts or to at least stay connected while in other applications. And you might say that on the iPhone you can do just that, but that's just another case of the developer taking the blow for the user since they have to set up their own proxy servers to be able to provide a decent IM app.
The bottom line is that Apple seems to be saying: "Let's make things easier for the user, let's screw the developers, and let's squeeze as much money as we can out of both of them".
It is almost worth the cost simply to buy my mother one. I'm comfortable with my servers and laptops, but my mom needs a way to look at pictures of her granddaughter that doesn't involve calling me for help. It infuriates me that my mother, someone who helps special needs kids and has worked in the public school system since the Apple II, needs to constantly slog against her own intuition just to understand an email program or web browser.
Maybe I will. Maybe I will just buy this for my mom.
"less space" is the least of it's problems. It's an extremely limited, locked up gimmick for selling apps, nothing more. Apps are a fantastic (if rather extremely controlled) addition to great devices like phones.
Stand alone it just gives you a device with no real added use. Especially when the higher end models costs as much as great notebooks.
Most of the complaints I have heard of the device have been against Apple's continued endorsement of closed platforms and the ever more omnipresent pushing of DRM encumbered devices. These may not be the complaints you are referring to specifically in this article, but if they are, and you see this opposition as nothing more than "future shock," you are essentially painting open platform advocates with the same brush as the neanderthal IT curmudgeons your article derides. If this is your intent than so be it, otherwise I think your post needs some clarification.
Why oh why do all the fanboys feel they have to write up a blog article about the iPad?
It's not groundbreaking, there have been many tablets before it. It's a giant iPhone. Period. It's not revolutionary. Get over it, you're all disappointed that even some of the old fanboys have written of their disappointment.
I don’t know, Steve. Do those “many tablets” work as well or as enjoyably as the iPad? Why not wait till it comes out then publish an honest comparison?
“I’ve seen all the parts before” is not an argument against the sum of those parts.
why be independent? the King's govt is easy to use. its a govt for the "rest of us". we don't have time to think about freedom, nor do we care, indeed sitting around worrying about our rights is just pointless, "your mom" likes the redcoats. they're polite. the King has such a nice navy. its about the experience of being a subject of the King. he really gets the experience of feudalism right