I recently got my brother’s old iPad when he upgraded to the iPad 2. As someone who’s built my own computers for 35 years, used Windows (at home and work), Mac and things earlier, used to be a programmer who knows how to tinker with it all, there are times I just want to get things done which is why I love the iPad, and the Mac for that matter.
Ever since the first Mac rolled off the assembly line, Apple’s philosophy has been to tailor the user experience to the everyman. Whether it was Apple’s unique take on the desktop interface or the popular introduction of the mouse, Apple went out of its way to make the personal computer approachable to a general audience.
Of course, part of this tailoring involves hiding or disguising almost everything that makes a computer a computer. System files are concealed. Command-line terminals are buried in a Utilities folder. The guts are all tucked out of sight. In a pre-Internet era when people bought computers to understand them, or as a means to a specific end, the pretty metaphors of Apple’s OS were often seen as an unwelcome and unnecessary illusion.
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Today, the iPad succeeds for exactly the same reasons that early Macs were criticized. It is an exceptionally disguised computer. The formula works now because we have changed.The audience for computers now is the audience for the Internet, the audience for e-mail, the audience for…being a modern human being. To make a computer for this new audience, you can’t presume that people have the patience or capacity to understand a printer driver or a kernel exception. The number of people concerned about not having root access to their iPads pales in comparison with the number of people who would freak out if Angry Birds suddenly disappeared.
Like it or not, the iPad is arguably the most popular personal computer ever made. And as much as I’d like to credit our nation’s educational efforts in computer literacy and ’80s grade schools filled with computers running Oregon Trail, the reality is that the iPad is the first computer that successfully stoops to our level. Apple’s people could explain it to us, but instead they call it “magic,” and we’re seemingly OK with that.
oy!pad
I didn’t know you were Jewish. 😉
Norman Speight you sound as if the only tool you know how to use is your penis, and you can’t get that to piss straight.
I don’t expect a television to be open and programmable (though it could be), but for people to say they “use” an ipad implies that they are “doing” something with it.
I read / watch my iPhone, and use the calculator once in a while, but am hamstrung because Jobs doesn’t allow any form of programming with it, AFAIK.
The power I hold in my hands is greater than the sum total of all the computers available before, what, 1965? And yet, it is little more capable than a TV.
It just feels like a waste of potential energy.
Pedro nuts to you. I won’t bother debating your illogicalalities. Ipad really creative stuff will soon appear, utilising touch screen versus mouse. Do you not know the great user interface innovation of multi-finger gestures. I’ll give you a single digit gesture.
Macfans know the worth of a decent well designed UI. The solidity of the OS combining BSD unix is well known.
I turned turncoat and switched about seven years past, got a mini, what a revelation with a good sony display. Costly? I well remember the Windows XP disk purchase. The hardware Windows monopoly has long past