The Game Changer

The iPad seemed like a disappointment on Wednesday. I readily joined the mob of iPad-bashers trending on Twitter, and I posted a cantankerous comment on my Tumblr blog.1 I was even ready to bet that the thing would go the way of the iPod Hi-Fi. Now I’ve changed my mind.

The iPad will change this game as radically as the Macintosh did.

That conclusion has very little to do with the hardware and software specifics of the iPad. Instead, it has to do with the philosophy behind multitouch technology and the iPhone OS. In other words, the revolution is not in the product, because that will change and improve, the revolution is in the idea behind the product.

The iPhone was the start of the revolution; the iPad is naturally extending its scope. The iPhone is a computer, but instead of a cursor and a mouse we use a multitouch display and our fingers to interact with it. Both because it’s a pocketable “phone” and because the interactions are so intuitive, we tend not to think about it as a radical new way of interacting with a computer. But it is. The iPhone also introduced a new type of operating system that eliminates or makes invisible to the user almost every complexity with which they previously had to contend, in favor of one main concept: apps. Want to do something with your phone? There’s an app for that.2 The iPad is taking the iPhone’s interaction models to the computer level. The jump in hardware is relatively small: a larger screen and more powerful underpinnings. The big jump is in software, and not what it looks like or how it works, but how we think about it. Suddenly, everything we do on our desktops and laptops, using a cursor and a mouse, we can do with just a screen and our fingers. And I’m willing to wager that most people who have ever used an iPhone or iPod touch would tell you that this way of interacting feels like magic compared to a mouse.3

You can understand this and still object to the iPad on the grounds that the iPhone OS is a closed and tightly controlled environment that limits a user’s freedom. There are two parts to this counterargument: first, that the only way of installing apps is through a channel controlled by Apple; second, that the iPhone OS lacks material functionality like the ability to run multiple apps at once or a sanctioned way to get under-the-hood. In answer to both points: Apple’s priority is the end-user’s experience. They want to perfect that experience, and the only way of doing that is by controlling everything. Apple definitely trades some openness for that control, but from their perspective, the trade is well worth the ability to guarantee the integrity of the experience. And rather plainly, the company’s sales numbers justify its obsession with control. Those numbers are what make developing for the platform both feasible and exciting.

Alex Payne calls the iPad a “digital consumption machine.” He’s wrong. Sure, some of Apple’s own apps for the iPad have a lot to do with selling you consumable content. But the iPad is, to quote Jeff Croft, “a sheet of glass. It’s a playing field and a ball. It’s up to app developers to invent a sport for it. We get to make the rules of what this thing is.” If we want to make the iPad into something we can use to create, we can. That’s the whole idea, and that’s what’s so exciting.

There’s nothing really scary about this. We don’t need to draw a distinction between the old way of doing things and the new way of doing things as if the new way were threatening the old way. I think Apple will continue to sell Macs as long as Macs can do things that would be impossible or infeasible on an iPad. But given the invariable march of technological progress, it seems likely that a multitouch computer will eventually be able to do anything a Mac can currently do, and it will probably do it better. So we are and will be in limbo for now, but that means we get the chance to innovate, too. Let’s give it a shot.

Notes (all of which incidentally pertain to copywriting)

  1. “Magical,” “revolutionary,” and “unbelievable” in a rhyming sentence? I mean, come on.
  2. That line, on the other hand, is pure genius.
  3. You got me. Magical.