Industrial design can be interpreted in many ways.
Seems Apple threw a bone to itself by creating another very well designed, simple product. The iPad Case.
But let’s be honest here. The iPad needed the case from the beginning. Is Apple beginning the policy of selling components?
My gripe:
• Apple, you just missed on the design or cut of the case-top.
Another few millimeters around the edges and you would have nailed it.
Otherwise, an excellent answer to the bare iPad’s predicament.
Apple's iPad
After 24 hours with Apple’s new iPad, I’m convinced of two things.
First, the iPad is a game-changer. It will change our relationship to information and education technology. It will change game playing. And, it may possibly bring gaming and educational technologies closer together.
Second, it has some significant evolution ahead.
After a relatively short period of time experimenting and playing with the iPad, it’s clear that in positioning the iPad in the seemingly narrow niche between the laptop computer and the mobile phone device, Apple may have hit the sweet spot of where most folks use personal computer technology. That is, most folks use personal computer technology to: send/receive email, browse the web, engage in social networking (e.g., Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube), acquire and listen to music, share photos/videos, and manage tasks and schedules. Most people mostly do these things, and most of them want a way to do it without hassling with file structures and device drivers and compatibility issues. The iPad mostly does this.
Whereas the more versatile and powerful laptop computer allows the user to be both a consumer and producer/publisher of web content, there’s no question that the iPad returns to the more TV-like approach of the user being primarily a consumer of multimedia web content. While the iPad certainly offers the ability to produce content, it is in a decidedly limited way. In as much as creating email, commenting to blog posts, and social networking interaction can be thought of as content-producing activities, the iPad has you covered. However, if you want to create, edit, and produce video or audio content, or even produce multimedia documents (e.g., PDFs or blog posts with graphics or audio or video content), you may find the iPad (in its present incarnation) quite limiting.
The iPad is a content delivery and presentation device more than a content producing device. And as such, I think Apple has identified a huge market.
Now for my gripes:
- The iPad cannot be charged by many slightly older computer’s USB ports
- Most of the iPhone/iTouch apps don’t translate well to the iPad
- The industrial design of the iPad is alarmingly poor. It doesn’t feel comfortable in your hands. (Perhaps Apple was throwing a bone to third party skin designers?)
- Seems that there needs to be some general interface guidelines agreed upon by all of the developers in order to make apps intuitive to users
- Camera. Hello? Third party or built in, it needs to be there.
- Apple, please reveal just exactly what kinds of input and output are possible with the USB/Power port and the Audio/Visual output port!
Overall, I am pleased with the iPad, and will continue to explore. I am pleased with battery life, impressive screen resolution, impressive sound quality from tiny speakers, and good processing speed. The screen rotation lock toggle is a good idea. I would like to see the Dragon speech-recognition technology integrated into all apps. And, Apple, please continue to explore and develop the eBook potential!
For more info about Apple’s iPad, go here: Apple’s iPad
The iPad? Really, Steve?
That is one epically bad choice of names. I over-heard one female colleague suggest that it may be the first pad that most males won’t feel ashamed to purchase. I’m not sure that I’m convinced…
Apple is making a bold statement about the viability of micro-niches with the iPad. Wedging open the position between the iPhone and the MacBook, Apple seems to want to take on the NetBook and Kindle markets in one fell swoop. One elegant and well-thought-out swoop.
The iPad hits most of the major sweet spots for such a device. It has the horse-power, the graphics capabilities, the form-factor, the user-interface, the extant 150K+ apps ready to go, the iBook Store, the provocative price-points, and Apple’s legendarily elegant industrial design and marketing prowess.
One would have to be a fool to bet against the iPad’s game-changing success.
Only one thing has irked my ire in regard to the iPad:
- 3-month wait
Oh, well, maybe also the name. Steve, call me next time you need to brainstorm product names, ok?
I’ve been playing with a new piece of software for the last few days. I’m quite excited about it.
The software is called Dictate, by the folks at MacSpeech. Dictate is voice recognition software for the Mac. I must admit, I’ve played with voice recognition software in the past and have never been very impressed with the performance. I had been reading fairly good reviews of dictate over the last several months, but I still came to it with the expectation that I would be disappointed.
The installation of Dictate was a snap. Once installed, the software takes you through a five-minute reading session to train the software to recognize your voice. Once you’ve done this you are good to go.
My first test was reading a few paragraphs from a book into Microsoft Word. I spoke with my normal voice and at a normal pace. Dictate wrote the words flawlessly. MacSpeech claims that dictate will work with pretty much any software. So my next test was to open Pages and speak stream of consciousness for a dozen or so sentences. Again, Dictate performed without a flaw. I am a hopelessly slow typist, so I was becoming excited about the possibilities .
Next, I opened iChat and began chatting with one of my friends. I was able to bury my friend with several sentences of words in a matter of seconds. My friend was certain that I had overdone on the cappuccinos.
I must say that I am pleasantly impressed with Dictate’s performance. I’m excited to think about all the ways I can use Dictate. As I speak, I am in WordPress and writing (speaking) this blog post. I will even be exploring the possibility of using Dictate as a way to caption movies. To really use the full power of Dictate, it’s necessary to learn a few dozen commands for things like text editing and movement, capitalization, and punctuation.
As I’m speaking and seeing what is written, it makes me think about the differences between how we think when we are writing on a keyboard versus how we think when we are speaking. I’m experiencing some real differences in my thought processes as I speak aloud the words I wish written. I wonder if Dictate will give my writing style a more conversational tone. That might be a good thing.
The software comes bundled with a Plantronics headset with mic, and sells for about $200.
The Magic Mouse
Maybe it’s not magic. But it’s well-designed and cool.
First, I have to say that it took me awhile to get over thinking I was pushing around a very hard and high tech Madeleine (as in the pastry). I suppose that had something to do with me drinking coffee at the time of my first magic mouse experience.
But once I had the short-cake metaphor out of my head, I found Apple’s new mouse to be quite efficient and easy to use.
The top of this mouse is basically one shiny touch-pad that responds quite well to all finger movements and clicks. You can program the behavior of this surface quite easily with the Mouse System Preference pane. I especially like the Scroll with momentum feature which lets you scroll in any direction with a natural slowing-down effect.
The Magic Mouse Preference Pane
My primary complaint about wireless mice in the past has been poor battery life. And I was skeptical about Apple’s claim that this mouse would last on average 4 months on two AA batteries with normal use. I noticed that the mouse automatically turns itself off at shutdown, and seems to go into a sleep mode after a period of inactivity. While I’ve only had it for 3 weeks now, my battery life is still at 95%, so I’m optimistic.
The $69 price tag seemed a bit steep for me, but I’m starting to understand that excellent design and quality come at a price. If you’re completely happy with your current mouse and don’t think that these new features will add much to your computing experience, then save your money. But, if you are looking for a better way, or maybe just curious about new technology, I’d suggest test-driving one of these puppies down at your local Apple store.
You might be pleasantly surprised.
