Is the iPad for dumb people?

http://calebelston.com/is-the-ipad-for-dumb-people

by dkasper • 16 years ago

51 79 16 years ago

dmn• 16 years ago

Probably the first post that has legitimately made me interested in what a Mac may have to offer. That said, the ergonomics of the iPad look haphazard to me.

drcode2• 16 years ago

I actually just bought a Mac two days ago for the first time (to do iPad development :-). I had always resisted because I thought "Windows and Linux were such an effort to learn, why would I want to learn another OS?"

Suffice to say, I haven't spent a second so far trying to figure something out in OSX that wasn't immediately obvious. Part of this is because I already have a background in other OSes, part of it is because it really is cleanly designed.

Bottom line, if you're a hacker and have been avoiding Macs because of the effort of learning another OS, I can tell you it'll be a piece of cake for you- Take the leap.

plinkplonk• 16 years ago

"if you're a hacker and have been avoiding Macs because of the effort of learning another OS .."

I doubt that the hackers who avoid OSX do so because they have to make an effort to learn a new OS!

ubernostrum• 16 years ago

I switched about four years ago because my employer issued me a MacBook Pro; for the previous six years I'd been using Linux full-time as my desktop OS. It took... well, hardly any time at all to get used to it.

Admittedly, I still spend most of my time in Terminal and a lot of what I knew transferred immediately (minus the quirks of going from GNU tools to BSD), but even in the GUI parts of the OS there wasn't anything that really surprised me. And once I'd learned the standard keyboard shortcuts I was rather pleased with how completely consistent even third-party applications are about implementing them (a situation which didn't, at the time, exist with most of the GNOME apps I'd been using).

ilamont2• 16 years ago

Agree with the author, but not yet willing to substitute it for my iPod touch (which fits into my pocket) or my laptop (which I believe is better for entering text, which is still my primary means of communication and work on the Web).

Curious to see what kind of apps and interfaces are built for the platform in the years to come. That could make me change my mind for future versions.

PStamatiou• 16 years ago

It's not a substitute - It's another device with different use cases. Reminds me of the part of the Stevenote where he was talking about the iPhone and MacBook and then talked about where the iPad fit in. For me it's for casual couch/bedside computing. I always tinker around with my iPhone, read HN, etc before going to bed, so the iPad would fit in perfectly there for me. (P.S. - hey ian!)

abstractbill3• 16 years ago

It's not a substitute - It's another device with different use cases.

Most people have a resistance to having to own too many devices though. If the iPad doesn't get at least one killer app that really doesn't work as well on an iPhone or a laptop, then it won't go anywhere.

ilamont2• 16 years ago

Hey Paul! I can see some new use cases, but the fact that Apple has made this compatible with most iPhone/iPod apps tells me there will be a lot of overlap. In my own case, I use my iTouch for couchtop browsing (and sometimes light email and Twitter) so the iPad doesn't hold as much of an attraction right now. If there's some other killer app(s) that come to the platform, I may change my mind.

nazgulnarsil2• 16 years ago

well sure. you can always phrase making something more accessible as "for dumb people". I doubt this kind of dim view of your customer base is highly correlated with successful business though.

drcode2• 16 years ago

you clearly didn't RTFA.

nazgulnarsil2• 16 years ago

yeah, i read the whole thing. I'm not phrasing the post as if it was a response to the author. i agree with him.

z_• 16 years ago

This is the first posting I've agreed with on the iPad however my issue is that the title is misleading. A better title would be,"The iPad is for people who know what they want."

It doesn't multitask. It doesn't let you install whatever you want. It doesn't do 1080p. It will potentially deliver a browsing, music and video experience that is good enough at 1.6lbs.

Of course this isn't everything, there is the crucial fact that it doesn't matter if you hate or love it, or if you are some world class tech blogger. People buy stuff they want.

dasil003• 16 years ago

The original title is definitely linkbait, but I disagree with your better title. The iPad may be for geeks who know what they want, but it's also for "the rest of us". I can think of so many family and friends who are still scared of computers and have only tepidly started using email and Facebook. The iPad will be an amazing device for all these people who still don't feel comfortable with computers after more than a decade of mainstream exposure.

fnid2• 16 years ago

it's just the beta version people! Eventually, it'll have a camera and multi-tasking. For crying out loud!

In a forum full of entrepreneurs, it seems no one has any empathy for a company releasing a new product without all the bells and whistles. There's a huge amount of hypocrisy here from a group that espouses "Release early, release often."

ynniv• 16 years ago

I would be even more critical of the HN crowd nay-saying the device. Its too soon to tell, but I think that Apple may have made Something That People Want. To say that it sucks because the highly specialized group people that we belong to thinks that it is "wrong" is to miss the point of entrepreneurship entirely. And really, any time that you say "I won't use one... but I might get one for my Mom" should set off The Bells And Whistles On High.

abstractbill3• 16 years ago

And really, any time that you say "I won't use one... but I might get one for my Mom" should set off The Bells And Whistles On High.

I think that's a little unfair. I would characterize most of the negative responses I've seen on HN as more like "I won't use one... if it had a camera at least I could get one for my Mom to use Skype on... maybe rev 2 will be better".

gamble5• 16 years ago

One can hope. The Apple TV is an obvious counter-example. Despite being on the market for nearly three years, Apple hardly updates it and has yet to add any truly compelling features like divx/xvid support or DVR functionality despite obvious demand.

The iPad may not suffer the same fate, if only because Apple seems more concerned about its success at the moment. I'll need to wait for iPhone OS 4.0 before making a call. Honestly, there's rarely been a modern Apple product that demanded waiting for the second generation more than the iPad.

jdietrich2• 16 years ago

Maybe it's hindsight, but the Apple TV seems more like a peripheral than a platform - the Airport Express streams music and the Apple TV streams video. I don't think it was ever intended to be a big hit, but an Applishly elegant solution to a specific problem. Viewed from that perspective, it wasn't really a failure - they sold plenty of units and have many happy customers. The fanboys may be let down that it didn't revolutionise television, but I don't think Apple had any such aspirations for the device.

I think the same gap in expectations applies to the iPad - we were expecting a conventional tablet and Apple delivered something that was tailored to a smaller, more specific set of tasks. Although as geeks we naturally prefer devices with lots of functionality, Apple prefer to deliver something that does one thing well. My mind is naturally drawn back to the Slashdot thread on the iPod - people criticised the lack of features, but the iPod came to dominate the market because it did one thing better than anything else could.

pyre7• 16 years ago

> Eventually, it'll have a camera and multi-tasking

Maybe the camera, but the multi-tasking might not happen. The reason they don't allow multi-tasking on the iPhone is due to battery life issues (or so they claim). I would assume that they might leave multi-tasking out in order to deliver longer battery life to their customers (or else allow it only on apps that have been vetted for their power usage during the AppStore approval process).

glhaynes6• 16 years ago

And it helps allow them to not use a virtual memory swapfile. This makes performance much more constant and predictable. One of the things you don't see nearly as much of on iPhone OS is beachballs/hourglasses and random interface-freezing lag. This not only improves the experience, it makes it easier to use: lag that makes the UI unresponsive can be really confusing to users. "Why didn't my button click do anything this time?"

jcromartie2• 16 years ago

I hope it doesn't get application multitasking.

We know by now that multitasking is a myth. Yes, your computer can do it very well, but you are not a computer. You are a human being, and you can't really multitask (even if you tell me that you can, I won't believe you).

Now, iPhone OS is actually perfectly capable of multitasking, and it does run many processes in the background, but the one-application-at-a-time choice is a UI experiment. It is the idea that people can only do one thing at a time applied. There are certainly cases for leaving running applications in the background, but those are mostly limited to power-users.

As a developer I need to be running a shell and a text editor and a database server all at the same time, but anybody can stop watching a YouTube video to write an email.

chime• 16 years ago

I am filling a web form on Safari/iPhone and I need to enter 3 emergency contact phone numbers (relative, friend1, friend2). I don't remember all the numbers but I have them in my phone's contact list. How can I do this on iPhone/iPad if it doesn't let me run two apps at once?

dagw2• 16 years ago

There a couple of tasks where multitasking makes a lot of sense for even non-power-users. The huge one being to play music in the background, either via my mp3 player or streaming via my webbrowser. The other one being skype and chat programs. Someone sends you a link on skype and you don't want to shut down your chat session to look at the page. Even if Apple won't go full multitasking, perhaps they will allow some sort of selective multitasking based on tasks where it makes sense.

flogic• 16 years ago

We tried life without multitasking. It sucked. It turns out there are a number of cases where multitasking helps especially when networked. I guess you can makes special cases for Email, Twitter, Instant Messaging, and Music however it starts to seem silly.

shade• 16 years ago

You know, I have to disagree. Without application multitasking, the iPad won't even replace the laptop that stays in my living room -- sure, I mostly surf the web, but I'm also running (multi-protocol) IM and IRC all the time and I want them to stay connected in the background.

I do realize that there's always BeeJive for the IM portion of my requirements, but I always thought that keeping your connection alive through a proxy server was an ugly hack that was only necessary due to the limitations in iPhone OS. That and I dislike sharing my login credentials with a third party server.

I also have to say (as an iPhone owner) that I really kind of hate the app switching experience as it stands now. I want an instantaneous switch -- more or less like alt-tab on Linux or Windows -- and waiting for the springboard to reappear and then for whatever new app to load kind of gets on my nerves, especially if I'm trying to bounce between reading an e-book in Stanza or reading a web page and a slow-moving IM conversation. This is one reason why I'm ditching my iPhone 3G for a Nexus One as soon as they're available on Verizon. It's also why I find the Android tablets that are in development, like the MSI Harmony, much more appealing than the iPad: Android multitasks.

But I do also recognize I'm not the iPad's target market.

On a somewhat unrelated note, I suspect a lot of the iPad hate, particularly regarding no multitasking, isn't so much the idea of making a device that normal people can use so much as it is the idea that this is the sum total of the future of computing: specialized devices that uni-task, attempt to lock us into specific content providers, lock up our data in apps rather than letting us have free access to the file system, and so on. In other words -- it's not so much about what it currently is, but rather the potential future it represents. I think those fears are a bit overblown, but I definitely empathize with them. I'd hate having a computer that (for example) forced me to use iPhoto or Aperture or Lightroom or Picasa to manage my photos rather than just keeping them in a nicely organized file structure that I created.

But at any rate, I think there's room enough in computing for both approaches and I don't understand why various groups on both sides seem so anxious to strip those choices away from everyone else. Which is to say: I don't think anyone who is confused by a file system or windowed multitasking is a drooling idiot who shouldn't be allowed to use the Internet, but I also don't appreciate the simplicity advocates telling me that I should get over it because I don't need the ability to multi-task or be able to see multiple programs at once anyway. There's room for both approaches and I suspect there'll always be a need for both.

mcantelon• 16 years ago

The need to preserving state alone necessitates multitasking. When you quit an app you lose your application state. Checking your email shouldn't require losing your application state.

Apart from preserving state, being able to do things like track where I'm going via GPS AND check my Tweets are things people benefit from.

njharman• 16 years ago

Multi-taksing is no myth. Maybe I can't multitask but while I'm doing something in the foreground I sure as hell want my computer to be multiasking the following in the background;

downloading something(s) in the background, checking on my alarms, grabbing new emails|tweets|im's|sms's|RSS, 5min back in time continuous video/audio record, looking up what I type and search ala Rememberance agent, streaming my GPS location (and one day heartrate, bloodpressure other vital stats) to my server, and many, many more things.

Quit being limited by your simple single task mind.

TrevorJ• 16 years ago

I guess I don't see the need to pay 400 bucks for a piece of 'beta' hardware.

I do see your point, and you are right, I think it will get better in V 2.0, but it's expensive and it is hardware so I think the example only goes so far.

DannoHung• 16 years ago

I don't even think they need full multitasking. What they really need is some sort of API that lets you run a tiny cooperative process that can do some simple things like keep a socket open or send a push notification to the GUI. Little stuff like that. And then a manager makes sure that none of those co-processes hog resources. Keep app startup times down, which people should be doing anyway, and the rest of the whinging about Multitasking goes away.

Supporting quick application shutdown and startup is a better way to make apps in any case.

jws• 16 years ago

Until the dollar and power cost of RAM is so low it doesn't matter. Then you can forget about those hoops.

Though one nice side effect of those hoops is that your app appears to survive a reboot.

Periodic2• 16 years ago

Simply having fast app startup times doesn't not solve the problem.

For example, very often I will want to quickly check my email or chat session while a page is loading, but if it stops loading that page when I switch applications I don't gain that benefit. I also like to have chat sessions open and get small notifications (usually a sound or on-screen indicator) when I have new messages even if I'm in the middle of reading a large article in my browser.

Without background applications, neither of these usage scenarios is viable. It is this sort of usage that sets it apart from a general-purpose computing device and makes it into an appliance for me.

pyre7• 16 years ago

> In a forum full of entrepreneurs, it seems no one has any empathy for a company releasing a new product without all the bells and whistles. There's a huge amount of hypocrisy here from a group that espouses "Release early, release often."

Part of the problem may be that Apple does not present it's products as half-done. They may improve certain features that you're looking for; they may not. You don't know. There's no roadmap for future development, and the only feedback that users get about what features that Apple is focusing on comes at these SteveNotes.

Even when they release a product that is half-done (e.g. the original iPhone; no MMS, no SDK, etc) they try to present it to the world as a complete and final product (i.e. "We don't need a SDK! You can make everything a webapp!"). It's little wonder that people get upset (i.e. With the original iPhone people were upset at the lack of a SDK and Apple/Steve trying to push the "all iPhone apps are webapps" angle didn't give people a solid clue that they would eventually release a SDK).

J3L2404• 16 years ago

Is the iPad for dumb people? Are automatic transmissions for dumb drivers? No, but you'll wish you had one in city traffic. That said, I'm glad I can drive a stick - even though I no longer own one.

moron4hire• 16 years ago

I have a manual in a 200hp compact sports car. Driving around downtown Philadelphia doesn't bother me at all.

abstractbill3• 16 years ago

I only drive manual transmissions, and I live in San Francisco - plenty of city traffic. The problem for me is that, if you know how to drive a manual well, you can't help noticing all the mistakes most automatics make (shifting at the wrong time, or into the wrong gear).

Most Apple products aren't like this. I ran nothing but Linux for nearly 10 years, but when I bought my first Powerbook, nearly everything was actually significantly better.

xenophanes• 16 years ago

Apple's design philosophy for OS X and iPhone OS is different. OS X is not comparable to automatic transmission, it's a full *nix that lets you shoot yourself in the foot plenty of ways. iPhone OS is a different style.

SMrF• 16 years ago

And when you switch from your Linux tablet to an Apple tablet that experience will be significantly better.

Your metaphor breaks down because there is no other tablet (worth talking about).

frossie• 16 years ago

The analogy with manual/automatic transmissions is quite interesting. There are some terrains/situations where a manual transmission is far superior to an automatic, but the majority of people will never experience them. So, the convenience of the automatic works great for most people.

The question I have with tablet computing is this: my computer usage is extremely multi-tasking - I have actually tried to pay some attention to this recently. I'll put the pasta to boil or something, and then I will hit the computer for 8 minutes. During those 8 minutes I might contribute to a few IM sessions, set off 4 or 5 tabs loading with the top HN stories and scan them, check my RSS feeds, check personal and work email and reply to anything that can be dealt quickly, check the state of my gentoo compile, tag some photos in digikam and set an upload to smugmug, and look up a recipe for tomorrow's dinner. The only reason I can do all that in 8 minutes is by aggressive keyboard shortcuts and desktop-switching.

I do have an iPhone and I do really like it, but it's not a multi-tasking device - not due to the OS, but due to the UI.

So the real question is - how rare am I in my computer usage? Am I analogous to the rare driver that tackles unpaved mountain roads, and so need my niche manual transmission while the rest of the world is happy with their automatics? Is the multi-tasking a geek thing, or do "regular" people do this?

dacracot• 16 years ago

Less is more.

JBiserkov• 16 years ago

Less is less

protomyth4• 16 years ago

a focused well thought out less is better then an ill thought out more (ultimate example: the marquee and blink tags in Netscape)

pyre7• 16 years ago

> Apple didn't set out to create a tablet as other companies had in the past, the same way they didn't set out to create a phone the same way every other company had in the past. They set out to fundamentally change the way we interact with our computers.

Most 'smartphone' prior to the iPhone did much the same thing, they just failed at it. Please don't act like Apple is the lone-wolf when it comes to 'trying new things.' They are just good at creating successful new things.

> Apple didn't set out to create a tablet as other companies had in the past

This part irks me most. Apple just created a larger iPhone. That's it. Sure they added features like iWork, but things like iWork just didn't make sense on the smaller form-factor of the iPhone. That's it. Sure they had a different approach to the problem (making a larger iPhone rather than making a smaller touchscreen desktop/laptop), but it's not like they created a new experience with the iPad. The iPad is just the iPhone experience with a larger screen and some extra apps.

protomyth4• 16 years ago

> This part irks me most. Apple just created a larger iPhone.

Actually, this meme is irking me. Look at the interface on the iPad, it is not just a big iPhone interface. It has its own unique elements that allow it to work. There is real thought going into this.

masterj3• 16 years ago

>The iPad is just the iPhone experience with a larger screen and some extra apps.

I think this will be important. It's an enrichment of the iPhone experience instead of a denigration of the laptop experience. A user comes to it familiar with an iPhone and finds it faster, more useful, etc. A user comes to a netbook and feels cramped because it's worse than what it's imitating.

masterj3• 16 years ago

>This part irks me most. Apple just created a larger iPhone. That's it. Sure they added features like iWork, but things like iWork just didn't make sense on the smaller form-factor of the iPhone. That's it. Sure they had a different approach to the problem (making a larger iPhone rather than making a smaller touchscreen desktop/laptop), but it's not like they created a new experience with the iPad. The iPad is just the iPhone experience with a larger screen and some extra apps.

I think you're getting it, but then skipping right over it. The change in form factor is the point. You can do things with the UI using the additional screen size on the iPad that wouldn't make any sense in the iPhone. They want to iPad to be the right form to browse the web, watch videos, consume content, etc.

A netbook is the same as a laptop, just scaled down. But that change in form factor is enough to make them frustrating to use, leading to initiatives like Ubuntu netbook remix, in an attempt to make sense of the change.

Whether scaling the iPhone up makes more sense from the human perspective than scaling the laptop down remains to be seen, but I'm hopeful and interested.

dagw2• 16 years ago

Apple just created a larger iPhone.

That 'just' bit is where Apple got it right and everybody else got it wrong. Everybody else started with a successful desktop computer and tried to shrink it to a tablet. Apple started with a successful smartphone and tried to grow it to a tablet. It may seen simple in hindsight, but it is a fundamentally different approach, and the approach which may just make the iPad a success.

glhaynes6• 16 years ago

Yes, and many of the iPad haters (OK, OK -- "skeptics") wanted them to just make a smaller Mac.

iPhone has been incredibly successful and its users are by and large delighted. People who can't stand computers love their iPhones. Why again is it a bad thing to reuse iPhone OS (and extend it in ways that make sense for a larger form-factor device)?

pyre7• 16 years ago

I'm not saying that it's a bad thing. I'm just saying that it's not like Apple created some whole new experience from the ground up. They had the idea to take the current user experience they had (the iPhone/iPhoneOS) and supplement it (larger screen/iWork), but I feel like people are praising Apple as if they had created something entirely new.

If Apple had created the iPad as something completely orthogonal to both the MacOS and the iPhoneOS yet still managed to make a compelling product, I could see them worthy of heavy praise. Other than that the iPad is maybe a good idea, an innovative idea even, but not some ground-breaking landmark thing. Maybe I'm completely wrong, but that's the way that I feel (i.e. people are giving Apple the same amount of praise for the iPad now as they would have, had Apple done something even more praise-worthy).

nearestneighbor• 16 years ago

I think it's dumb to have to hold your screen with one or both hands for an extended period of time.

protomyth4• 16 years ago

buy a dock

jsz0• 16 years ago

I view technology in a compartmentalized way. I'm always going to want a powerful desktop that has endless flexibility but I also want something simple that always works well. I don't really care if I can't run BitTorrent on my iPad. I can do that on my desktop.

kscaldef• 16 years ago

"It was during this time that I stopped worrying about the details of my computer and worried more about what I could accomplish with it: browsing the web, listening to music, doing email, and writing papers."

This is really the division. Not between smart people and dumb people, but between people for whom what they can (or want to) accomplish with a computer boils down to a list like that and the people whose computer-aided ambitions are larger. This is what Tim Bray and others mean when they say "For creative people, this device is nothing".

bitwize• 16 years ago

The iPad is for people who can't be arsed to deal with the cognitive load of a full-blown computer. Which, depending on the circumstances, is just about everybody.

There's a reason why the best programmers are switching en masse from Linux to Mac on their desktops[0]. Mac OS X is a no-compromises Unix: the power and flexibility of Unix when you need it, but when you don't it imposes virtually zero cognitive load. Turn it on, it just works. Even the geekiest hacker ever is going to run into times when they just want to read or surf, and not even have to deal with the interference of a keyboard. For those times, the iPad is perfect.

[0]Actually two reasons, the other being that they stand to make money developing Mac desktop software. Linux? Not a chance...

lukifer2• 16 years ago

People aren't dumb just because they aren't passionate about the same things you are. Lots of smart people drive cars without giving a crap about how they work. Most people don't want computers; they want information appliances that work reliably.

lacrossegm• 16 years ago

"The iPad isn't for dumb people, it is for people who don't want to think about their computer anymore."

These devices will eventually just become extensions of our ourselves as with other tools.

The Samurai didn't need to think about the inter-workings of his sword to make mincemeat of his enemies in battle.

Through training, the sword becomes a natural extension of one's self.

Why should our hand held computers be any different?

Soto• 16 years ago

Okay but a bunch of these comments are very narrow minded and look like typical windows users comments. If people think that the mac os is for simple minded people because it is easy to use and doing things the long way or more in depth way is for smrter people... Then throw away your calculators and break out your abacus. Stop hating

protomyth4• 16 years ago

thought experiment: walk around your workplace and see how many non-developers work in windows with all their windows maximized

Is the iPad for dumb people?

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