iPad is Not a Toy. You Do the Math

Apple released iPad. Not too much surprise. It is a tablet and it is a lot like what the rumors said. Did I expect too much? Yes. Am I disappointed by iPad? Not really. Do I lose faith in iPad? Absolutely no! iPad is a great product. It is not just a big iPhone. It is not just a toy. It started changing how a computer should work for most of the things we use computers for.

During his presentation, Steve Jobs clearly defined the market of iPad - it is a "third category" mobile device between smart phones and laptops. This definition again brings back the question that everybody asked before - why do we need a third category mobile device? As for Steve Jobs' answer, the reason is that we need to do "key things" in a "far better" way. I totally buy this rationale. We really need this "third category". It covers the most important tasks, including reading emails, browsing the Web, listening to musics, watching videos, playing games and reading ebooks. It also covers a lot of scenarios where the first two categories are not good enough. These scenarios add up to a significant amount of time of using a computer. All these boil down to a simple math problem:

The reality is that "A" is becoming bigger and bigger and "C" is becoming smaller and smaller. Obviously, this leads to a more and more significant difference. So do the math, then you will realize that iPad is not just a toy, it is a serious and useful device for everybody.

One could certainly argue that even if the difference becomes bigger, I can still use either a smart phone or a laptop to cover it. Yes, of course you can, but iPad just makes it far better than a smart phone or a laptop. It is fast. It is convenient. It has a new human-computer interface, which matters the most.

The keyboard-mouse-monitor interface has not changed for decades. It has been working pretty well, but it is certainly not the ideal one. What iPad provides is a much better interface. In my opinion, the human-computer interface should be as similar as possible to what we do things in the real world, meanwhile leverage computing power to help us do things better. Take the photo app on iPad as an example. It makes photo piles and lets the user to spread/stack up a pile of photos. It is better than how iPhoto works. It is more natural and fun. In the meantime, it helps people share photos, make photo books, organize photos by tags, geographic information, faces and such, which traditional photo albums can not do. This is how a computer should work.

Many people think iPad is a content consumer. I don't think it is true. It is brilliant for Apple to port iWork to iPad, which makes iPad much more than a content consumer. iWork significantly enlarges the use case space of iPad. For example, think about high school students, or even college students. They can use iPad to take notes, read text books, write reports and make presentations. How cool is that?

Is iPad good enough for everything? One can easily come up with thousands of things that iPad can not do. It's true. I can come up with thousands of things that a laptop, or even a desktop can not do as well. Does it prevent me from buying a laptop instead of a super computer? No. Because a laptop is good enough for most tasks. The just unveiled iPad is not intended to replace everything. But for average computer users, it does most of their tasks in a much better way. As for the next generation, or the generation after... I think iPad will become the first thing to think about when somebody needs to buy a computer.

Thirty years ago, nobody could imagine that a computer can be put on a desk, until Apple released Apple II and soon IBM released 5150. Ten years ago, nobody believed that a laptop could be as powerful as a desktop. Today, most of my friends have only a laptop and a big monitor at home. It is way too early to conclude that iPad, tablets in general, won't be the next  mainstream personal computing device. Give it time, things will change. iPad has no doubt just started this change now.

What To Expect When You Are Expecting - Apple Tablet

As the rumored release date is coming, "Apple Tablet" (let's call it this for now) has stimulated heated discussion and a lot of speculation. It is just a lot of fun to think about what Apple will do.

Just like many other products, two fundamental keys of Apple Tablet are the price and the market. The biggest market problem of Apple Tablet is that it more or less overlaps with existing Apple product lines. The first question people will ask themselves is that if I already have a desktop and a smartphone, maybe also a laptop, why should I buy a tablet? When and where will I use it? Will it be very useful or just sort of useful? What price would I accept to buy a widget that is "sort of useful" or even just a fancy expensive toy? These are all valid questions. So what should we expect from Apple Tablet? Before we think about what to expect, let's start with what not to expect.

Apple Tablet will not be a traditional browser-only netbook. First of all, Apple's strength is not making Web browsers, although Safari is great. Apple's strength is design and user experience. So there must be awesome client applications besides a Web browser. Second of all, 99.99% of the current web sites are not touch-screen friendly. They are not designed for touch screens at all. Even in the future, I don't think websites can easily provide as good user experience as client applications can (note that I did not say desktop applications). I always prefer client applications even if most of the storage and computation is thrown to the cloud, with only a few exceptions of Google's great products, namely Gmail and Google Reader.

Apple Tablet will not be an e-reader. This is not only because Steve Jobs said "people don't read anymore", it just does not make sense for Apple to make a dedicated reading device, because it will need to make another device to provide more later.  Kindle is a great innovation and I have been hesitating between buy or not buy a kindle for a long long time. But what Kindle can do is just a small part of personal computing. Maybe Apple Tablet will not be as good as Kindle in terms of reading book, but it will be a reasonable e-reader plus a lot more.

Apple Tablet will not be a Macbook with a touch screen. Apple Tablet will be smaller, lighter and may provide less computing power. It will be easier to carry around. Maybe not much easier than Macbook, but let me give you one scenario for instance: using Macbook when you were in the restroom is awkward, but Apple Tablet will fit nicely. Apple Tablet will also be easier to use, and most importantly, thanks to new possibilities in interface design, it will be more fun!

What should we expect then? In my guess, Apple Tablet will be a revolution that changes the way how mainstream people use computers, including both desktops and laptops. Fortunately, Apple is a company that is capable to do such a thing.

I drew a picture of four main products lines in Apple. iPhone is irreplaceable, because it is the only one you can carry with you all the time. Apple Tablet is under "Fit In Pocket", together with Macbook and iMac, but it is way portable than iMac and better than Macbook. Apple Tablet is just cross the "Enough For Most User" line, which makes it capable to say no to both Macbook and iMac.

John Gruber thought Apple Tablet will be a kind of a replacement of Macbook. When people want to by a portable device from Apple, they will consider either a Macbook or an Apple Tablet, but not likely to get both. I agree with him, but I think Apple Tablet is more ambitious than this - most people will only need an Apple Tablet, maybe plus an iPhone.

First of all, why must we have a desktop and a laptop? For most people, the border between desktops and laptops is vague and there is no need to have both, because the mobile hardware is so advanced and more and more computation and storage is being moved to the cloud. You can store your documents on the cloud, your pictures, and even your musics and videos - remember that Apple has the best online streaming service for movies, TV shows and it recently acquired Lala to stream musics. So in my opinion, the next generation of personal computing should be always portable, even in a house, I want to move my computer wherever I want. High-performance desktop will be only needed for people who want to edit a movie or something.

Why must we use a keyboard and a mouse to talk with the computer? I feel sorry that my mom has to struggle with typing when she starts using computers. There must be some ways that are more natural and easier to interact with computers. This is actually the most exciting thing I would expect from Apple Tablet - a phenomenal brand new user interface. Imagine you could dance your finger on the screen to organize your pictures and emails. Imagine you could make a picture by "drawing" them with your hands. Imagine when you read a book, you could flip a page by sliding your figures on its corner, you could highlight/circle the interesting part by move your finger across them and you could write down your comments and even draw a sketch. Now this comes to what Apple is good at. Trust me, it will change everything.

Ok, talking the keyboard, a really big topic. Not sure if Apple Tablet will have a real keyboard, probably not. If there will be only an on-screen keyboard, I think Apple will make it resizable, so it can fit hands in different sizes. You can also move it to any place on the screen. Once you settle down at home, you can use a wireless keyboard or mouse if you want to. I think this would be enough, except for people who needs to type a lot a lot, like programmers or writers.

Talking about the screen. It will be multi-touch, no doubt. I hope it will be pressure-sensitive as well. In terms of size, 10 inches is the most accepted speculation. I don't care the size that much, since it won't fit into my pocket anyway. Kindle is too small to me. 10 inches is a nice size for reading, at least to me. One big question is how it will make reading books easier. People will definitely expect to use it for reading. I have tons of PDF books and I hate to read them on my laptop. Pixel Qi's multi-purpose screen seems to be a really good idea.

As for network, will Apple Tablet have only WiFi or support 3G, iPhone-like 3G or Kindle-like 3G? If it  supports wireless data plan, it must be optional, and probably more expensive than the iPhone plan. I highly doubt it though. AT&T is already struggling to support iPhone users. With Apple Tablet, it's like Hulu@iPhone, I don't think any providers will want to run that risk. How about peripherals? What if you really need a real keyboard and mouse, or a big screen monitor, or a printer? It's easy, you can plug the tablet into a station and most stuff won't even need a cable.

Finally, the price. Price, to be more specific, low price, is very important if Apple wants massive success of the new device. This goes back to the two keys I mentioned in the beginning, market and price. I want to use the "vitamin v.s. pain killer" metaphor, which my advisor often uses to judge research papers. If the product is a "pain killer", high price may be acceptable. But if it is just "vitamin", well, I won't buy it if it is too expensive. Although I believe Apple Tablet will be capable let most people just have one device, the reality is that many people already have laptops and/or desktops. To convince them to switch, the price should make them happy.

Enough is enough. I vividly remember the Macworld 2007 Keynote by Steve Jobs where he introduced iPhone, which absolutely redefined the smartphone industry. Apple Tablet will redefine the game again: personal computing should be like this. I can't wait to see it, can you?

Updates:

Jan. 18th: Apple issues invitation to a media event on the 27th.

Because of the colorful splatter paint in the post, people start thinking the new device will focus on art creating. Did I expect too much?