Impossible Dream=iPad

Yes, I am an Apple enthusiast. I’ve worked on a Mac since 1987 and am typing this on my 9th Macintosh computer. (All but two of the older ones still run and are in use at various tasks around the house.) I have bought/obtained five iPods, all of which still work. I even owned both versions of the Newton. About the only thing of Apple’s I don’t own is stock.

My enthusiasm about Apple products is not the reason for my being impressed with the iPad. Back in 1987 I attended a software development meeting at Electronic Arts. One of the things we were told again and again—it was something of a mantra—is that computers were going to become an appliance. They’d be as commonplace as a toaster, found all over the house. It was kind of the Star Trek/Jetsons vision of computers being everywhere.

While it’s true that we have computer chips in all of our appliances now, computers today don’t function the way appliances do. When you’re making toast, or heating water for tea, you don’t have the device asking you for input. You don’t have to be seated in front of it watching. With computers, you do.

There are two types of people who interact with computers: those who work on computers and those who work with them. Folks who work on computers actually do work that requires a computer. This means you’re doing heavy-duty data manipulation, like writing novels, designing graphics, programming of any stripe, setting up webpages. For folks who work on computers, little devices like netbooks and PDAs just don’t have the processing power to do our work. These little devices don’t have the ins and outs we need. Doing work on them is like trying to dig a tunnel using a spoon.

Folks who work with computers, on the other hand, could do their jobs without them. Most folks use their computers as typewriters, adding machines, flash-cards, mailboxes, stereos and televisions. They don’t need the horsepower of a laptop or a desktop unit. A computer may let them do things faster, but they could be done just fine without a computer.

The iPad, in my opinion, succeeds in making a computer an appliance. Yes, I dearly love the fact that Apple is opening up the ebook market. What impressed me more in watching the keynote introduction were two other pieces of software. The first was the mapping function. A map comes up, you put search terms into it, pins show up on the map noting the kind of places you’re looking for. Touch the pin, you get info about the place; hit another button and Google Streetview shows you what the storefront looks like. No man will ever have to ask directions again.

The other important demo was the app from MLB.com. At a touch you can get statistics, scores from any game being played, tactical breakdowns on the game, charts of the park and at a touch you can shift to any other game, bring up video, and have a choice of play-by-play from either the home or away announcer.

In essence, each of those apps brings you the world with footnotes.

In the iPad, Apple has made a device that serves up information with the ease of a toaster making toast. They have created an appliance for data. You can bet, over the next several years, many more devices will appear to exploit this same niche. And while the devices are not as transportable as a smartphone, they aren’t impossible to carry around. (My Sony E-reader is very manageable, and anyone whose ever carried a notepad in a portfolio cover knows exactly what hauling one of these things around will feel like.)

The device also looked very fast and has a 10 hour battery life.

Ultimately the iPad does exactly what Steve Jobs said Apple wanted it to do: it provides a clean, quick-functioning package to handle all the data we use most of the time. It is the info appliance, and I suspect it will go a lot further a lot faster than even the optimists will imagine.