
The iPad Big Picture - fogus
http://daringfireball.net/2010/01/ipad_big_picture
======
spamizbad
The author is way off base carping about the CPU. It's the fastest CPU on a
mobile device because it's likely a 3-issue ARM11-derived CPU with out-of-
order execution: that means PA Semi (now part of Apple) has designed a chip
based on the Cortex A9 or started with an ARM11 and tacked on similar
features, like Qualcomm did with the Snapdragon (in the Nexus One) instead of
opting for an Cortex A8-derived core.

When the Tegra2 and OMAP4 (Cortex-A9 derived ARM CPUs)start shipping in bulk
the playing field is going to be leveled: now everyones got access to a
3-issue OOOE ARM11. Only these will (optionally) be multi-core, something
Apple probably isn't interested in as it's not doing multitasking.

~~~
jodrellblank
_When XYZ is released the playing field is going to be leveled_

When manufacturers start taking notice that unresponsive, laggy, slow devices
are unpleasant to use, the playing field can start levelling. Until then
everyone else is doing a Wintel - hardware many times faster, normal
activities just as slow as ever. It's not hardware, it's software that
matters, it's design.

I've been humming and hawing about whether this will be worth a look given the
obvious things to gripe about. I heard on one of the post-announcement streams
that the first impressions were roughly "heavier than expected, unbelievably
responsive". This quote from DF "if I had to sum up the device with one word,
that word would be “fast”." really pushes me strongly in favour. I'm
interested.

If nobody else is going to push for responsive software and Apple are, then
I'm going to lean more in Apple's direction.

~~~
barrkel
I would rather put it the other way around: one of the most noticeable things
about the iPhone / iPod touch is its slowness, the little glitches in the
animations where the rendering drops a few frames, the pauses before there's a
response to pressing the big button.

Wintel very much isn't "slow as ever", in my experience. Desktop machines are
another class of hardware altogether; I have 12GB of memory, an SSD, 8 logical
cores and 2 monitors on my desktop - nothing slow, laggy or unresponsive about
it.

~~~
jodrellblank
The iPhone has the feel of a device where they care about responsiveness but
the hardware isn't up to it. Every Windows mobile phone I've seen has the feel
that the software is built badly and nothing the hardware can do will help.

 _Wintel very much isn't "slow as ever"_

You are right, I'm spoiled by fast hardware, compared to the machines of
yesteryear my desktop is a joy. But a processor capable of tens of billions of
operations per second compared to my human senses - nothing should take long
enough that I can notice it.

When using Visio and accidentally mousing over the My Shapes menu the whole
program locks up for about 10 seconds while it finds zero shapes from a
network drive and then doesn't cache the result. While using VMWare vSphere
client, almost every click, view change, menu popup, any action at all takes a
blinking and a flickering and a delay. Explorer happily does slow folder and
drive refreshes and ignores right click popup menu requests on many occasions.
IE 8 opening a new tab is a laggy occasion. SQL Server Management Studio 2008
is a blinkenflicker fest all over.

Here and there, slow calls are in UI threads, network requests are blocking,
network requests are slow out of all proportion with the amount of data that
needs to be transferred due to odd protocols and many layers, crunching data
is not offloaded onto other cores, frequent results aren't cached, the spinny
circle cursor and the "program is not responding whoops it's back now" affair
happen all too often.

I can see two reasons. A) it's hard. B) It's not a priority. I can forgive the
iPhone because it mostly works well. I can forgive small companies writing
desktop software. I can't forgive the likes of Microsoft and VMWare, because
they have masses of cash and eat hard problems for breakfast, so the only
conclusion is that they don't care that I get a twinge of reluctance to use
their software, a frowny lemon eating face when I wade through it, when I'm
drumming my fingers and using the free time to grumble about their software to
my colleagues.

Fast responsive small simple software is a joy to use, I am cheered by PuTTY,
Paint.NET, 7-zip, VirtualBox, VLC, AnyClient, Vim. Even Adobe deserve praise
for the improvements in startup time from Adobe Reader 6 and the plugin
fiasco.

VMWare vSphere client, as it fires up the coal boilers and defrosts the Java
VM, whips at the tired donkey graph drawing libraries and runs all it's server
queries through a dialup connection simulator, oh no. No no no.

If Apple are going to focus on speed, I'm going to focus on giving them my
cash. I can feel my mental liking of the iPad converging, decision weightings
on it's faults are weakening and it's pros are strengthening, a preliminary
RDF field is forming to buffer my perception of the change in my bank account,
the justifications are coming more and more easily to the fore.

I will only end up disappointed, apps will chug, serious web pages will lag
and layout will take ages, iPhoto will arbitrarily slow while scrolling ...
but by then it will be far far too late. :/

~~~
barrkel
A lot of MS software design has been historically clueless about network
latency, I'll grant you that. I sometimes joke about imagining a world where
the web is built on top of DCOM, where the view in your browser is rendered
via object-oriented RPC calls from the server, etc.

Apple are a much more insidious threat, though, in my opinion. One of the
reasons I first got into programming was because one of the first computers I
got didn't have any I/O other than the keyboard, the monitor and speakers -
the tape drive was broken. A flashing BASIC prompt (ultimately MS licensed)
greeted me at every power-on. The only way I could do anything with the
machine was to write the program myself; and I could keep nothing of what I
wrote, and had to write it all again if I wanted it again. Every night I wrote
an alarm-clock program to wake me up in time for school the next morning.

Now if I were that age again today, and had an iPhone or iPod touch in my
pocket, or god forbid an iPad in my bag, I couldn't even write a program on
it, much less save it on the local file system. Apple is almost intrinsically
hostile to software engineers, as I see it. Developers are like rodents to be
trapped by promises of a slice of market willing (and hopefully forced) to pay
for software; but the trap is far tighter than anything MS has ever lain.

~~~
DannoHung
2.5 years of a closed phone platform is an insidious threat? Where were you
for most of the 2000's?

I predict that within 2 years the iPhone OS will allow you to run unapproved
apps provided you click through enough, "Hey, we're warning you! Don't come
crying to us when you manage to blow up your dock connector", messages.

~~~
barrkel
iPad isn't a phone. iPod Touch isn't a phone. To the degree that these devices
are successful, they will be replacing user-programmable devices from the
bottom up.

It's all very well for you to "predict that within 2 years" everything will be
fine. That's not the way it is today, and it's not the way it has been in the
past. Everything I know about Apple tells me they have no love for developers
whatsoever, and that their rise is one of the worst things that could happen
to this industry in terms of open platforms. Apple likes their monopolies
much, much more than MS does.

~~~
DannoHung
Something is only user programmable insofar as the user has the capability to
program it.

An open device today still wouldn't be user programmable because most people
would not have the ability to do so even if they had the desire. For those
people (read >95% of the market), functionality and ease of use are so, SO
much more important than theoretical freedom.

------
chime
What nobody talks about is the impact iPad could have on the data-entry /
industrial market. I'm pretty certain that I'll be buying a bunch of the 16GB
$499 iPads for my job (pharma manufacturing). Make a simple web-app for
collecting data and the iPad replaces paper easier than any other 4x more
expensive tablet. No need to setup or install software or custom apps: Safari
+ default onscreen keyboard works just fine.

~~~
fungi
why this and not one of the other significantly cheaper linux/arm tablets?

if nothing else they would be less likely to grow a pair of legs.

~~~
chime
1\. Much much better touchscreen

2\. Better on-screen keyboard

3\. Safari

4\. Ease of setup/use

5\. 802.11n

6\. Low Cost/Performance

7\. Quality/stability that I expect from Apple

8\. Longetivity

9\. Battery life

10\. Coolness :)

~~~
jodrellblank
In summary: It's worth spending hundreds of dollars to not have to use Linux /
the kinds of devices Linux is associated with.

The message the desktop Linux community is refusing to learn from. At least
half your points are fairly directly based on the state of Linux at the moment
(e.g. Safari, ease of setup) and the other half linked to the state of the
ecosystem surrounding Linux which pushes for cheaper and hackier solutions
(wifi drivers, perception of coolness, implementation of software and hardware
quality).

~~~
chime
Bug in iPad: 1,000,000 million hits on Google with 1,000 solutions

Bug in any of the other Nix tablets: 12 hits, all of them from people like me
asking for solutions

Question I have to ask myself is do I want to save $2k upfront and spend
countless hours some day in the future supporting the device or just pay a
higher price and get a stable appliance that I don't have to worry about.

~~~
bioweek
Counterpoint: my mac stopped seeing my iPhone. There was no advice on the
internet on how to fix it. I'm completely lost at what to do. I can't upgrade
the phone's software, and can't load new songs, I can't backup my phone :-(

~~~
jesnell
Happened to me a month ago. There was in fact a lot of information on the net
on how to fix it, but none of the suggestions worked. In the end only a full
reinstall of OS X (done for unrelated reasons) fixed it for me.

------
jsz0
I think the iPad will be successful but it will have more of an iPod success
curve versus an iPhone out-of-the-gate smash hit curve. I believe there are
some pieces that aren't in place yet. I think eventually, to hit the magic
price point, Apple needs to find a way to subsidize the iPad without a
cellular carrier. I suspect that will be in the form of an iTunes subscription
program. Shave $100 off the cost to build it and subsidize it by $200 via an
$8/month charge built into the subscription program. All you can eat books,
movies, music and TV. $199 out the door. That's the point where everyone will
want an iPad the same way the iPhone became hugely successful at the same
price point. $499 is a very reasonable starting point for now. I think they'll
easily sell 3-5 million of them this year. The last thought I have is that
Apple's hype machine probably got a little ahead of themselves here. CNN had
the iPad release as their Breaking News story for a couple hours today. That's
probably a sign that your hype factor was impossibly high. That puts you
firmly into backlash territory. I would expect to see another round of
features/enhancements/deals shortly before it's release -- probably in
conjunction with iPhone OS 4.

~~~
olefoo
Yeah, this is a 1.0 release And it will get better after a few years of field
experience. I think that after the level of hype we saw, it had to be a let
down.

But, I do think this will be a hit for some unexpected applications. I could
see deploying one almost anywhere a stylish but not terribly powerful terminal
is needed. A lot of salespeople will be buying these.

To most technically inclined people the iPad won't have much appeal beyond
being a shiny toy. But to many professional people who are not technically
inclined it will be a useful tool that feeds their need to feel in control of
technology rather than at the mercy of it.

------
pavs
I am a big fan of apple product and I don't wanna be rude to the author,
mostly because I don't know much about him. But this post reminds me of a
typical obnoxious apple fanboy.

"Its not only good, it awesome, super, duper good."

Lets not get carried away now. We know almost nothing about the processor. We
don't know how it will compare against a similar range intel processor. We
don't know how much the ipad OS (which obviously isn't _exactly_ the same as
iphone OS) was optimized for this processor.

Most importantly we can only speculate about apple's _real_ reason for going
into chip making business, it might not be because they have a better product
- but in the long run it might be cheaper for them to make their own.

~~~
FraaJad
Gruber, the author is the alpha dog of mac fanboys.

He sets the tone for the rest of the tribe. He is very good in what he does.

What you see may be the remnants of the reality distortion field he was
exposed to today ;)

~~~
dasil003
Does just the word "fan" even exist in tech circles anymore? According to my
definition Gruber is by no means an Apple fanboy. Why? Because he is not
scared to criticize Apple and most of his theses are objectively credible.
Just because he likes Apple and often writes rebuttals to pundits who just
don't _get_ Apple (or more likely are trolling for hits) doesn't make him a
fanboy.

There's no doubt that the Apple fanboys all read him, but to call the man
himself a fanboy is to drain the word of its whole connotation.

------
jsz0
Looking at the big picture the thing that really stands out to me is the iWork
demo. The built-in apps were a bit ho-hum because they _are_ very basic
applications like most of Apple's other bundled apps on other platforms but
the iWork demo... You've got basically a near desktop quality application
here. Look at all the new UI widgets, toolbars, drop down font selectors, a
general purpose file-insertion tool using media browsers, a windowing system,
context sensitive keyboards, etc. I can imagine we're going to see a lot of
iPad applications that are near desktop quality. The first generation of
powerful multi-touch software. This is where the people saying _"it's just a
big iPod Touch"_ are totally missing the point. iPad applications are going to
be serious, nearly fully featured, applications.

~~~
yankeeracer73
Agreed - I thought this was pretty damn impressive. I wonder how they're
handling the file system behind the scenes. What will be the interface to save
and open files? Some new file manager in itunes? A new hybrid interface
pulling in elements of OS X?

------
alex_c
_they own and control the hands-down best mobile CPU in the world._

Let's not get carried away. It's only fair to make that statement once Apple
DOES cram the A4 into an iPhone and blows the competition out of the water.
(I'm assuming that's the plan, but until then, the comparison implied by
calling it a "mobile CPU" is a bit pointless).

~~~
boucher
I have no idea how John Gruber could possibly think he has a remotely informed
opinion on what constitutes the "best mobile CPU in the world".

~~~
bootload
_"... Steve has a reality distortion field.' 'A what?' 'A reality distortion
field. In his presence, reality is malleable. He can convince anyone of
practically anything. It wears off when he's not around, but it makes it hard
to have realistic schedules.' ..."_

Gruber needs some grounding against the _"Reality Distortion Field"_ ~
[http://folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story...](http://folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Reality_Distortion_Field.txt&sortOrder=Sort%20by%20Date&detail=medium)

~~~
alex_c
I'm a bit surprised though - I've only read Daring Fireball over the past year
or so, since I started doing iPhone development, and it's usually pretty
rational. I did a double-take when I read this one (and the words "reality
distortion field" did cross my mind).

------
fserb
"He also said that when you consider MacBooks as “mobile” devices, Apple
generates more revenue from mobile hardware than any other company in the
world" hits the bullshit alarm.

Well, when you consider BMW cars as "mobile" devices, BMW generates more
revenue from mobile hardware than any other company in the world. C'mon,
MacBooks as mobile devices? And only comparing with real mobile-only sales?

Also, the tone of the article sounds even a bit religious: "This is something
they want us to notice". Looks like one of those apocalypse cults after their
expected end-of-the-world day blew off: a bit disappointed but they keep
looking for a sign, because there must be one.

------
derefr
> After using the iPhone so much for two and a half years, I’ve become
> accustomed to web pages rendering (relative to the Mac) slowly. On the iPad,
> they seem to render nearly instantly. (802.11n Wi-Fi helps too.)

...but the wi-fi doesn't actually help as much as you'd think. If you've ever
tethered a 3G iPhone, the speed difference between web browsing _on_ the
phone, and web browsing _through_ the phone is palpable; at this point,
upgrading cell networks is a bit silly, as every phone in the market is too
CPU-limited to render pages as fast as they're pulled down. Getting the A4
into the iPhone would likely be a bigger subjective speed boost than putting
3G in ever was.

~~~
bmalicoat
Exactly. I doubt adding n over the iPhone's g did much to increase the
browser's speed because the iPhone couldn't even consume all of g's
throughput.

------
waterlesscloud
I wonder how much the decision not to have multitasking was influenced by the
desire to have the ipad look fast?

~~~
phil
I think Apple has decided they don't like multitasking on its merits. You can
only do one thing at a time, so why run more than one application?

Instead, they're putting their effort into making application launch and exit
very fast, and cautioning developers that they should save all important
state, and restore it all next time.

------
Tichy
Claiming they have the best CPU after a couple of minutes testing the device
as an end user seems way over the top. It's also not likely that the same CPU
could simply be put into a phone.

~~~
gvb
On the contrary, it is _extremely_ likely that the A4 will be in the next
iPhone. The CPU architecture is the same (ARM) and the peripherals are the
same (video, etc.). It is an Apple ARM-SoC[1] rather than a
Samsung/PortalPlayer/TI/whoever ARM-SoC[2]. The functionality is a perfect
match, the physical size is likely to be a close match, the speed is _much_
better, and the power efficiency appears to be similar or better (the iPad
undoubtedly has a much larger battery).

Look at the heritage: PA-Semi created a remarkably fast, remarkably low power
PowerPC architecture SoC. They are _very, very_ good. Apple bought them so
that they could use that power, speed, and efficiency knowledge to create the
A4. Reports are that they used the fast ARM Cortex A9 core and did their magic
on the peripheral parts of the SoC. That is exactly what all the other ARM
licensees are doing, except the others (arguably) don't have the same talent
level as the PA-Semi engineers.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System-on-a-chip>

[2]
[http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/consumer_electronics/i...](http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/consumer_electronics/ipod_faq/ipod-
processor-type-portal-player-samsung.html)

------
stcredzero
_They’re Microsoft and Intel rolled into one when it comes to mobile
computing. In the pre-taped video Apple showed, Bob Mansfield said of the
iPad, “No one else could do it.” Only Apple._

The Windows XP tablets really were quite impressive after about the 3rd
iteration of the software. I have an old tc1100, and it's very nicely
designed. Surfing, I must say is a pleasure on the thing. They also had Zinio
magazines pacakged with the install. Of course the whole Windows software
catalog is quite usable on the thing. But Windows Tablets went the way of the
Amiga and a bunch of things by Atari. It's one thing to make great technology.
It's another thing to _market_ it. Apple can do _both_. Or rather, they can do
5 things very well:

    
    
        - Hardware
        - Software
        - Human Interface Design
        - Marketing
        - User/Developer Ecosystem
    

If they weren't able to do all 5 of these very well, it wouldn't matter how
great the devices are. Other companies do the hardware & the software. Some
are even pretty good at the marketing. Very few companies do all 5 of these
things as well as Apple does.

(You can think of the success of both Firefox and Ubuntu as the introduction
of good HID polish and Marketing to communities that already had the Software
and a good User/Developer ecosystem.)

------
jvdh
The problem with computers and "feeling fast" though is that it tends to wear
off.

~~~
chrisbolt
Until you use one that doesn't.

------
jared314
The bragging could also be an attempt to separate the continued success of
Apple and the employment of Steve Jobs.

------
eel
A post entitled _The iPad Big Picture_ seems to be lacking in something that I
would consider to be part of a big picture: what will the product be used for?

Is it intended to be a replacement for the laptop? Or is it a supplement to
the laptop, filling a previously unseen niche between the phone and the
laptop?

~~~
ubernostrum
Looking at it, honestly, it's something I'd use instead of a laptop for a lot
of cases, from sitting around in a coffeeshop to catch up on feeds to going to
conferences (since it can do Keynote, which is the only thing I currently
actually need a laptop for).

~~~
adw
The highlighting stuff in Keynote (telestrator mode!) looks seriously awesome.

Imagine you're in a VC meeting and you're doing financial projections. You
could all stare at a big screen, or you could put one of these down in the
middle of the table, say "here, let's work on it together!" and you're away.

It's _all_ about the form-factor and the utter reliability. This is a great
replacement for a road-warrior meeting laptop - what the MacBook Air was
trying to be - and it's the ideal computer to buy for your granny or your kid
brother who wants to check their email and write the odd letter.

(Much less use if what you do on the move is program, but that's OK. It's not
aimed at you.)

~~~
ubernostrum
Pretty much. I almost never do actual coding at a conference; I do my talks, I
take notes in other sessions, I read interesting links and occasionally pop in
to IRC. I don't _need_ a laptop for that, but since the laptop's the only
thing I have which does all those things I end up taking it.

Plus the iPad would probably be a nicer device to have with me on the plane...

------
tlack
Wow! I was sure he would finally have something fair, balanced, or even
perhaps negative to say about Apple! I am totally shocked that he found some
obscure point about the iPad to harp on about rather than mentioning the many
obvious negatives.

~~~
ubernostrum
Yeah, Gruber's _never_ criticized anything Apple's done.

For example, he wouldn't dream of criticizing the App Store or its policies
the way _this_ guy did ("Rules you don’t know about are scary"? "To act fairly
would be to follow the rules. To act capriciously is to be the rules"? Nobody
who's been in the Reality Distortion Field would write that!):

<http://daringfireball.net/2008/10/the_fear>

[http://daringfireball.net/2009/05/diary_of_an_app_store_revi...](http://daringfireball.net/2009/05/diary_of_an_app_store_reviewer)

<http://daringfireball.net/2009/08/ninjawords>

<http://daringfireball.net/2009/08/phil_schiller_app_store>

<http://daringfireball.net/2009/08/wikipedia_app_age_ratings>

<http://daringfireball.net/2008/09/app_store_exclusion>

------
RyanMcGreal
>They’re Microsoft and Intel rolled into one when it comes to mobile
computing.

Anyone else get a chill when reading this?

------
freetard
They're not making their own CPU, their just licensing ARM tech and adding a
few spins to the thing.

~~~
gvb
In the same way stock car racing
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stock_car_racing> is just taking stock cars and
turning them into race cars.

------
kingkawn
Can we go back to how off this thing's name is?

~~~
jodrellblank
Sure. <http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/01/22/canvas>

------
ecq
My wife absolutely loved the iPad so much she wants me to buy her 2. one for
her and one for her brother. (and maybe one for me if i'm nice to her)

This thing is going to be huge.

~~~
pavs
>(and maybe one for me if i'm nice to her)

Buy yourself a pair of balls too.

~~~
xenophanes
Don't be mean.

