Tough Waiting

Mar. 30th - Received the shipping notification from Apple.

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Mar. 31st - Found the package left from Shenzhen, China.

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Apr. 1st - The package arrived in the U.S.

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Apr. 2nd -  I do not want to ship it to my home, for some reason, so package is shipped to the building where my office is. Since the building is closed on Saturdays, I called UPS several times to make sure it will be delivered. I asked if the delivery person can call me once he comes by the building, the answer is that they do not carry phones. I asked if I can pick it up in local customer center, the answer is "we made special deal with Apple, we cannot change anything before the first attempt of delivery". So I decided to wait at the door for the UPS delivery tomorrow.

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Apr. 3rd 8:30 AM - Found on the UPS tracking page that the package arrived in Decatur at 5:45am, which is about one hour away from Urbana. Right on track!

Apr. 3rd 8:50AM - I went to the office and sit at the door of the building. It is nice that there is a power plug next to the door, so I can do some work while waiting.

Apr. 3rd 9:30 AM - Called UPS to check again. There is a voice message about iPad delivery, which says that all pre-ordered iPad packages will arrive by the end of the day. I talked with a representative, she told me that the normal Saturday delivery schedule, packages are delivered before noon, does not apply to iPad deliveries today. She can not help me locate or contact the delivery person, but she's sorry that I need to wait at the door.

Apr. 3rd 9:53 AM - Refreshed the UPS tracking page again, found the package actually has arrived in Urbana at 8AM. Nice!

Apr. 3rd 11:09 AM - It stopped raining. I got some work done. A big goose dropped by.

Apr. 3rd 11:30 AM - The status of the package still hasn't changed into "Out For Delivery", so I called UPS again to double check if they deliver packages to business addresses on Saturdays. This time I was told that they do not. So I decided to have lunch first. If the status changes to "Out For Delivery",  I will come back.

Apr. 3rd 11:50 AM - Left the office.

Apr. 3rd 12:50 PM - Found the status of the package became "12:03 AM - Exception: THE RECEIVER'S LOCATION WAS CLOSED ON THE 1ST DELIVERY ATTEMPT. A 2ND DELIVERY ATTEMPT WILL BE MADE". So I called a supervisor in UPS. He promised to contact the local UPS center and make the second attempt today, in about 2 hours.

Apr. 3rd 1:10PM - Went back to the building and sit at the door.

Apr. 3rd 1:40 PM - Got the iPad.

Although the waiting is not that pleasant, iPad is so awesome! She is so surprised.

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.