I can't wait for the Apple iPad to arrive. It's not even available for ordering yet but I'm itching to get it, and it's going to be along 60 days.
I've tried to ignore all the lousy "commentary" from so many of the techobrats about how crappy it really is and remind myself of why I want it: the software.
I watched the full presentation when Apple posted it to their Web site, and my "a-ha!" moment came during a demo of the iPad version of Apple's productivity suite, iWork. With incredible ease, the presenter was using Keynote (Apple's version of PowerPoint) in the most intuitive way I've ever seen: using his fingers to move an image to a slide, create a new slide, and even enter some text.
This is why I want the iPad: it's a taste of things to come.
Apple often does not invent new things, like MP3 players or phones that can browse the Web. What they often do is to make those existing tools better by redefining how people use them: an elegant, straightforward interface. The iPod was ridiculed when it came out: now "podcasting" is as common and common place as "Kleenex" and "Xerox." Web browsers have existed on smartphones for some time, but it was the iPhone's browser, MobileSafari, that dispensed with "mobile versions" and put the actual Web page on your screen as you saw it on your desktop, readable because of the pinch-and-zoom gesture that is familiar to many.
Watching the demonstration of the presentation software opened my mind for a brief second to the possibilities of how we interact with software on a daily basis. Is is going to be the normal way of doing things forever and ever with a mouse and menu bar paradigm? Or are we going to extend what multi-touch screens offer us to a much more fuller expression? Watching the Keynote demo made me realize just how much potential there exists in the iPad and in future software.
I like to think of the iPad as an evolutionary device. And I'm amazed that so many of the technobrats are dismissing it in favor of netbooks, those miniature laptops that are by definition underpowered. I doubt most people will keep their netbooks past two years, but I can easily see having an iPad for a long time to come. And what's more, I'm puzzled as to why the technobrats desire to have a full-fledged operating system (either Windows or Mac OS X) on their portable devices as a natural thing: it's not! All that accomplishes is to replicate your desktop on devices that weren't meant to do that. How is that progress? In fact, the best way I can answer is that paraphrase what Apple designer Jonathan Ive said: why are you forcing yourself to work for the software when it should be the other way around?
I do not believe for one second that the iPad is The One. I fully expect Version 2 to have what this one lacks (notably a camera, an inexplicable barometer for success or failure). But what's exciting is the direction of how we interact with software: beyond using a mouse to point and click and to using your finger to tap and create. And for a Version 1 product, this is looking might, might promising.
