There have been a host of complaints about the iPad – it doesn’t do this, it doesn’t have that, why can’t it, I wish it would, it’s closed … Even Hitler was disappointed.
But the iPad represents a fundamental shift in the metaphors and language of “computing.” Or rather it extends that shift that was tested first in our pockets with the iPhone, and brings it to our desks, our coffee tables … everywhere else. The iPad is a huge change.
We have lived for the past twenty + years in an engineer’s universe of computing, where layers of implicit understanding – about file structures, multiple programs, menu idiosyncrasies, nomenclature – are required to figure out how to make your computer do what you want it to do. To many of us, these metaphors are completely embedded in our brains. So we can’t understand how someone like, say, my mother, can’t figure out how to use her scanner software. XKDC captures exactly our frustration, with this flowchart to be printed out and given to our less technically astute family members:
To most of “us” this flowchart says: “It’s easy to figure out computers, you just play around until they work.”
But for people like my mother, asking her to play around with her computer until it works kind of like asking me to play around with a German dictionary until I speak German. It can probably be done, but it’s not going to happen. My mother, like 99% of computer users, wants her computer to help her do some basic things: send email, write a document, scan a file. And yet look, for instance at Excel – a veritable locomotive of an application — powerful, robust, mature, flexible. But in fact most of us just need to add and subtract a few numbers, and multiply or divide the results. That’s not to say that there is anything wrong with Excel, but, as with most software, there is so much flexibility that in fact it is difficult for some people to use. Further, that flexibility ends up causing all sorts of problems when unwanted options or formats or behviours suddenly inject themselves into what you are doing.
Apple’s OSX is cheered for its simplicity and intuitiveness, but it is still built on the same engineering-based metaphors, natural metaphors to many of us, but baffling to a huge number of people.
The iPhone was a revelation though. Because space is so constrained on a mobile device, all those things that we expect from our computers – the options and the features and the controls – either disappeared, or were so removed from the user as to be irrelevant.
iPhone apps were forced by the constraints of the platform to do something revolutionary: to do one thing well.
When that thing is something people want to do, the apps are successful.
Extending this design principle beyond a small phone to a larger device will alter the way we think about software, our relationship with “computers” – and the network. Some – many – will decry our loss of control with the iPad, but I can assure you: my mother doesn’t want to control her computer, she wants her computer to help her do what she wants to do. Controlling a computer is the last thing on her mind. As for me, while I like controlling my computer, there are many more interesting and useful things I would prefer to do with my time.
As Fraser Speirs says:
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. [more...]
I don’t know if the iPad will be commercially successful, but I believe it represents a fundamental shift in the metaphors of computing, as significant as the move from text to graphical interfaces.
[PS: numerous conversations about the iphone shaped these thoughts, especially a delightful conversation in Ludlow with Chris Hughes, about his computer-hating father who loves his iPhone.
PPS: The iPad is not going to save publishing. A few more percentage points (OK, a lot more) on sales, a more flexible agency pricing model, and crucially another big player to compete for publishers against Amazon is going to help, yes. But it is not going to change structural problems of the business. The fundamental value publishers provide is connecting readers to writers. Digital shifts the balance of power (choice, availability, competition) towards the reader. The publishers who win will be those who embrace the reader enthusiastically. And a fancy device isn't going to do that for them.]
18 Comments
Much like the Kindle, sure, I admire and lust after the iPad because it’s sexy technology. I agree that the move from point-and-click to touch-based interfaces is important and good. Yet, much like the Kindle, I can’t condone Apple’s proprietary computing model. “Apple apps” are ominous.
I don’t deny that app-based platforms like the iPad are simpler and therefore easier to use for non-tech-savvy individuals. Nevertheless, that simplicity has been purchased at the price of freedom. If you purchase an iPad, it isn’t yours. You can use the device, but you never really own it. And this goes beyond simply “controlling a computer.” Apple has the final say on what apps you can install, which limits what and how you can use the computer. You haven’t just lost control of the computer; you’ve lost control over how you can use the computer.
There are alternatives. More open marketplaces do not necessarily led to chaos and computers that non-tech-savvy people fear for their overt complexity. At the end of the day, maybe there has to be a trade-off between security/simplicity and freedom/options. But that trade-off should be a continuum, and one always subject to revision or revocation, not a static dichotomy as pioneered by Apple.
The iPad doesn’t represent my vision of a beneficial “fundamental shift in the metaphors of computing.” Just a more restrictive one. And more’s the pity, because it is a wonderful piece of technology. I just wish its connotations were as wonderful.
I completely agree. And every time I read somewhere that the iPad needs flash, it reminds me of when the iMac was launched, with no floppy drive (horror of horrors) and USB only (new printer required). Flash is going the way of the floppy, and I, for one, will not be mourning.
Can I also claim to have blogged on this theme, in advance? It scarcely makes me a prophet, but I had a feeling that we were going this way: http://www.lookagain.me.uk/2009/09/05/the-future-is-mobile/
Excellent post. Check out Alan Pritt’s post too:
http://go2.wordpress.com/?id=725X1342&site=ebooktest.wordpress.com&url=http%3A%2F%2Falanpritt.com%2Fblog%2F2010%2F01%2F31%2Fa-new-angle-on-the-ipad%2F
@ben: we trade freedom and control for usefulness all the time, but discussing whether or not that is a good thing is very different from discussing whether or not it is going to happen. I am supportive of alternatives, and open marketplaces. Though: for all the complaints about Apple’s closed appshop, there are some 140,000 apps that have been downloaded a *billion* times … prior to the iphone appshop – there were *no* mobile app shops. So you can look at the app shop as being closed compared with the internet or radically open compared to the rest of the marketplace for mobile apps. Apple invented the open market for mobile apps. Now maybe Android will be more powerful and more successful because it is more open. History will tell that story.
But I’m not arguing here whether or not the iPad represents a beneficial shift for society; I’m arguing that it represents a fundamental shift in how we interact with information machines.
Who wins in the long term will be a function of who can deliver the best value to people. I’ll bet on Apple for the next 5 years, and we can revisit after that.
@chris, I really should have credited you with some of these ideas ;-) we talked about this at the teashop in Ludlow Castle … see the new PS!
@mike thanks … here’s another great one: http://speirs.org/blog/2010/1/29/future-shock.html
I think there’s a lot of truth to this post. I think that also explains the success of the Kindle. It divorced ebooks from computers; you didn’t even need to own one, let alone know how to use it.
The iPad is doing something similar. Smart phones (the iPhone included) already divorced several functions (web browsing, email) from computers. The iPad will just make for a more amicable divorce.
The lines are blurring.
@karen: I don’t think it’s so much divorcing function from computers, as redefining “what a computer is.” On that point, we’ve been dying for a new name for these beasts for a decade at least. I mean, how much computing do you do on your computer? I can tell you I don’t do very much. It’s kind of like calling a car a fossil-fuel converter.
Hugh, you nailed it with the German dictionary bit:
But for people like my mother, asking her to play around with her computer
until it works kind of like asking me to play around with a German dictionary
until I speak German. It can probably be done, but it’s not going to happen.
Right. You won’t get German until you spend enough time in a place where people speak German all the time.
So what’s the analogy with computing?
The point is, we have to create a culture of computing, just like we had to create a culture of reading. It takes time, and it’s rough going at times. Reading took hundreds of years before you could assume that “yr mom” was a functionally literate as you.
The problem with Apple’s strategy is that it works against this literacy which we so desperately need in the 21st century. Closing down the options for the sake of wider uptake forestalls on the wider learning process which we as a society probably need.
The political implications are huge. Think of print literacy. Think of the reformation. This is the same kind of shift. Betting on a fancy-ass stained-glass company—for 5 years or 500 years—does not help us get the word.
Android… bring it on. I want to be able to WRITE in my iBooks, thanks.
While I’m at it, this bit from Speirs:
….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….
How quickly we—even Canadians—forget Marshall McLuhan!
The idea that the problems to be solved pre-exist and are somehow independent of the media/technology in which we encounter them is totally myopic. The way we frame the questions, the problems to be solved, the issues that matter, is entirely conditioned by the way media shape them. Our real work is not our parents’ real work. Media matter; technologies matter; we do not operate outside of them.
@John: I’m all for open & android & writing on iBooks. Indeed, bring it on. In the mean time, Apple has just transformed what “computer” means.
And I’m not convinced that the power of computers is in mastering computers: it’s in what you can do with them. Blogging software was *amazing* because suddenly I could publish to the web, for free, without having to: a) know html b) buy a domain name c) host a domain. It was a revelation, and it was precisely that I didn’t have to know anything that made it so exciting. The thing I wanted to do was publish words people could read, not learn html and css and how to buy domain names and how to host domains. I started out with Blogger – presto! I was publishing words. I was giving up not one ounce of freedom, because I went from not being able to publish words for the world read … to suddenly being able to publish words for the world to read.
And then I migrated to a hosted wordpress blog, because I liked the flexibility (and opensourceness) of Wordpress better than Blogger.
And then I migrated to hosting my own blog – because I wanted the flexibility and control.
And then I started hosting a bunch of other blogs, to make it easy for a few friends of mine to blog as well.
But the transformative event was my ability to publish words to the web, not my mastery of the technology required to do it.
Would the world be a better place if many more people published words *and* knew html *and* knew css *and* knew how to buy and host domain names? Sure.
But the interesting thing is the publishing of the words, not the rest.
Technologists who complain about Apple being easy to use, at the expense of freedom, remind me of publishers who complain about writers being able to publish, without going through the gates of a good editor; newspapermen who complain about bloggers; etc.
It’s true your method may be better, but it is not more useful for the majority of people.
@john: re: mcluhan etc. … that’s really the point: computers, because of their engineering-design, exclude millions, billions of people from being comfortable with them. They are designed and mastered by the engineering-minded, and are inaccessible to the rest of the world. So, yes: “Media matter; technologies matter; we do not operate outside of them…” It’s just that some of us – you and me – comfortably operate with these machines, while many many more are uncomfortable with them, and hence can do many fewer things than you and I can do (though they may well be better at other things, like sewing and building cabinetry and singing gospel songs).
There are a few different ways to solve this “problem:” one way is to teach everyone to be like you and me; another way is to try to design and build machines that help people do the things they want to do without having to spend time learning how to be like you and me.
Probably there are other routes as well.
But as I said to Ben above, I’m not at all making a moral argument about whether Apple’s move is good or bad. I’m making a predictive argument that they have just transformed what computers mean to us (something they already did with the iPhone, in fact).
Nice responses, Hugh… and the details you include here tell me that you and I are on the same page, practically speaking.
The McLuhan point still resonates though… surely it’s not an either-or, between raw Linux vs the friendly iPod OS? Surely there are points along this continuum that allow us to evolve our computing environments out of their 1970s origins (definitely overdue) while still remaining free and open-ended? The story you tell of Wordpress above is an awesome example of this.
Last jab: recall that what we all loved about the iPhone was how much more radically *open* it was compared to other phones.
What worries me about Apple is that they’re seem to be moving farther and farther away from this. They’re drawing us way over to the closed end of the spectrum (way farther than even the original Mac did; and positively on another planet compared to the relatively elegant openness of OS X).
I believe we who see the broader implications have some kind of responsibility to try holding the doors open a little longer, to champion open alternatives where they exist, and to not too quickly jump to celebrate this ‘new’ definition of computing as the real deal.
I share the concerns. I’m not being a fanboy. I think in the long run, open is better. I think Apple does lots of “bad” things. But really I’m not arguing any of that.
I’m arguing that this is a fundamental change from:
-computers are complicated machines that we master in order to get things done
to:
-”computers” are machines that help us get things done
I’m agnostic, leaning to open, on which is a “better” route to #2, which is where I think we are going, and I do think that’s a good thing.
But again, the relevant point is that Apple has just shifted what “computer” means. They happen to have done it in a closed system that they control (tho think about it: is the Apple App store, with 150k apps, really all that closed?) Still, it’s up to the rest of the world – Google is the only contender, I think – to offer an alternative open platform. I hope they do. I’ll support it.
Not that Google doesn’t have heaps of problems. I mean, with all the data they have, Google knew I was going to write that sentence before I did.
Re: 150k apps…
When there’s a bittorrent client in the app store, I’ll say it’s open.
:-)
why does the ipad matter?
maybe because it provokes over a dozen comments
on a blog article in one day. compare that to posts
on other topics here. apple sure gets our attention.
-bowerbird
p.s. the name you’re looking for is “internet appliance”.
Hugh, I would argue Apple _isn’t_ making that shift. What we need is a computing revolution, not a device revolution (which the iPad is).
You’re identifying the problem correctly: computers are difficult for people to learn how to use. However, the solution isn’t to make computers simpler. Instead, we need to make computers _smarter_.
Computers are dumb. Their understanding of context, nuance, and language is still rudimentary at best. And that’s why interacting with a computer is such a chore. A good example of the problem is text-speech functionality. That’s an area where computers have been very weak–there’s just such a broad range of human voices that programs can’t always understand what someone is saying. It’s been improving steadily of late, but it still isn’t perfect. How can we expect a computer to work with us if it can’t even understand us?
We aren’t going to see a true computing revolution, a true fundamental shift from “mastering the computer” to “just using the computer” until computers themselves become smart enough to understand data in context. This will be a revolution because it’s going to apply everywhere, not just to mobile computing or Internet computing. And this will be the revolution that will make current interfaces (even the slick touchscreens like the iPad) feel like they’re ancient in comparison.
The Apple iPad looks nice, and yes, it might be fun and easy to use. But it’s the same approach to computing wrapped in different hardware: it forces users to use it on _its_ terms, just like computers do today; it’s only the terms that have changed. The iPad revolution is a hollow revolution.
@Ben the even bigger shift will happen when all we have to do is *think* something and the machine will do it for us.
In the mean time, the iPhone is the most significant change in how we interact with information in a decade. Certainly it has been for me (in a pretty busy decade of changes, mark).
The iPad extends that changed experience to a separate sphere of what we call computers – and I think it represents a massive shift. Again, I think it is analgous to the change from text commands –> GUI.
Of course there are bigger shifts to come. But this is a big one.
If what we’re seeing is a shift on how we interact with computers, is it really Apple who started it? There have been other attempts at “easy” computers and/or operating systems. The Litl Webbook, Moblin, to name a couple. Yes, Apple knows how to create user interfaces, and they do it well. But they also do marketing very well, and I think this is what’s pushing the change, not the iPad itself.
@Nico, I’m not saying Apple started it, I’m saying they just shifted the marketplace in “personal computing” …marketing is as important as innovation, if what you are measuring is: “impact on how people do things.”