

Is the iPad for dumb people? - dkasper
http://calebelston.com/is-the-ipad-for-dumb-people

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fnid2
it's just the beta version people! Eventually, it'll have a camera and multi-
tasking. For crying out loud!

In a forum full of entrepreneurs, it seems no one has any empathy for a
company releasing a new product without all the bells and whistles. There's a
huge amount of hypocrisy here from a group that espouses "Release early,
release often."

~~~
jcromartie
I hope it doesn't get application multitasking.

We know by now that multitasking is a myth. Yes, your computer can do it very
well, but you are not a computer. You are a human being, and you can't really
multitask (even if you tell me that you can, I won't believe you).

Now, iPhone OS is actually perfectly capable of multitasking, and it does run
many processes in the background, but the one-application-at-a-time choice is
a UI experiment. It is the idea that people can only do one thing at a time
_applied_. There are certainly cases for leaving running applications in the
background, but those are mostly limited to power-users.

As a developer I need to be running a shell and a text editor and a database
server all at the same time, but anybody can stop watching a YouTube video to
write an email.

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dagw
There a couple of tasks where multitasking makes a lot of sense for even non-
power-users. The huge one being to play music in the background, either via my
mp3 player or streaming via my webbrowser. The other one being skype and chat
programs. Someone sends you a link on skype and you don't want to shut down
your chat session to look at the page. Even if Apple won't go full
multitasking, perhaps they will allow some sort of selective multitasking
based on tasks where it makes sense.

~~~
scott_s
The iPhone already lets people listen to music while browsing the web. I don't
know what it does during third-party apps.

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lukifer
Nope, doesn't keep playing for third-party apps (at least, for games, haven't
tried it everywhere).

~~~
glhaynes
Correct. App Store apps (including Apple's own) are sent a signal when the
user presses the Home button. They then have a small number of seconds to
persist whatever state they need to. Some nice apps are like Tweetie: it saves
(most of) the current state of the UI so that when you come back, they reopen
right where they had been. Apparently iWork for iPad does the same.

Makes one wonder whether the Cocoa Touch frameworks could help with that
some...

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z_
This is the first posting I've agreed with on the iPad however my issue is
that the title is misleading. A better title would be,"The iPad is for people
who know what they want."

It doesn't multitask. It doesn't let you install whatever you want. It doesn't
do 1080p. It will potentially deliver a browsing, music and video experience
that is good enough at 1.6lbs.

Of course this isn't everything, there is the crucial fact that it doesn't
matter if you hate or love it, or if you are some world class tech blogger.
People buy stuff they want.

~~~
dasil003
The original title is definitely linkbait, but I disagree with your better
title. The iPad may be for _geeks_ who know what they want, but it's also for
"the rest of us". I can think of so many family and friends who are _still_
scared of computers and have only tepidly started using email and Facebook.
The iPad will be an amazing device for all these people who still don't feel
comfortable with computers after more than a decade of mainstream exposure.

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dmn
Probably the first post that has legitimately made me interested in what a Mac
may have to offer. That said, the ergonomics of the iPad look haphazard to me.

~~~
drcode
I actually just bought a Mac two days ago for the first time (to do iPad
development :-). I had always resisted because I thought "Windows and Linux
were such an effort to learn, why would I want to learn another OS?"

Suffice to say, I haven't spent a second so far trying to figure something out
in OSX that wasn't immediately obvious. Part of this is because I already have
a background in other OSes, part of it is because it really is cleanly
designed.

Bottom line, if you're a hacker and have been avoiding Macs because of the
effort of learning another OS, I can tell you it'll be a piece of cake for
you- Take the leap.

~~~
ubernostrum
I switched about four years ago because my employer issued me a MacBook Pro;
for the previous six years I'd been using Linux full-time as my desktop OS. It
took... well, hardly any time at all to get used to it.

Admittedly, I still spend most of my time in Terminal and a lot of what I knew
transferred immediately (minus the quirks of going from GNU tools to BSD), but
even in the GUI parts of the OS there wasn't anything that really surprised
me. And once I'd learned the standard keyboard shortcuts I was rather pleased
with how completely consistent even third-party applications are about
implementing them (a situation which didn't, at the time, exist with most of
the GNOME apps I'd been using).

~~~
jdietrich
I had the same experience, switching from Debian to a Mac. The only moments of
confusion I had on switching were things that were _too intuitive_. Coming
from a Linux background and remembering dependency hell, I couldn't quite get
my head around the idea that to install an application you just drag and drop
it into the application folder. As soon as I stopped trying to second-guess
the system and just did what I thought would be the obvious thing, everything
became obvious!

Of course the terminal just feels like home, OSX is a proper *nix and
everything works as you'd expect it to. The big difference is that everything
else works as you'd expect it too as well. It seems like some sort of dream
that I used to spend a whole week setting up a new computer, fiddling with
drivers and dependency problems and xorg.conf nonsense.

~~~
pyre
Don't espouse the platform too much. Maybe it's stable now, but there were
_plenty_ of issues early on. I got a Mac around the release of MacOS 10.2.

If you mounted an NFS or Samba share the filesystem driver would 'beachball'
the _entire_ operating system if the server ever became unresponsive. There
were numerous times where the smbfs driver caused kernel panics too. The only
improvement to this offered in 10.3 was a dialog that would popup asking if
you wanted to disconnect the share whenever it deemed that the server was
unresponsive. Though the 'timeout' that it was using to display this dialog
was too conservative. Sometimes it would popup just to disappear right away
when it finally get a server response. [Note: these shares were mounted over a
LAN, not spanning across the internet or something] The issue hurt me the most
when I left a share mounted at home when I closed my PowerBook, only to wakeup
the PowerBook at school/work and have OSX require a forced restart because the
server was no longer there.

{edit} I know that all platforms have issues, I just get annoyed when people
act like they don't.

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kscaldef
"It was during this time that I stopped worrying about the details of my
computer and worried more about what I could accomplish with it: browsing the
web, listening to music, doing email, and writing papers."

This is really the division. Not between smart people and dumb people, but
between people for whom what they can (or want to) accomplish with a computer
boils down to a list like that and the people whose computer-aided ambitions
are larger. This is what Tim Bray and others mean when they say "For creative
people, this device is nothing".

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pyre
> _Apple didn't set out to create a tablet as other companies had in the past,
> the same way they didn't set out to create a phone the same way every other
> company had in the past. They set out to fundamentally change the way we
> interact with our computers._

Most 'smartphone' prior to the iPhone did much the same thing, they just
failed at it. Please don't act like Apple is the lone-wolf when it comes to
'trying new things.' They are just good at creating _successful_ new things.

> _Apple didn't set out to create a tablet as other companies had in the past_

This part irks me most. Apple just created a larger iPhone. That's it. Sure
they added features like iWork, but things like iWork just didn't make sense
on the smaller form-factor of the iPhone. That's it. Sure they had a different
approach to the problem (making a larger iPhone rather than making a smaller
touchscreen desktop/laptop), but it's not like they created a new experience
with the iPad. The iPad is just the iPhone experience with a larger screen and
some extra apps.

~~~
protomyth
> This part irks me most. Apple just created a larger iPhone.

Actually, this meme is irking me. Look at the interface on the iPad, it is not
just a big iPhone interface. It has its own unique elements that allow it to
work. There is real thought going into this.

~~~
masterj
>The iPad is just the iPhone experience with a larger screen and some extra
apps.

I think this will be important. It's an enrichment of the iPhone experience
instead of a denigration of the laptop experience. A user comes to it familiar
with an iPhone and finds it faster, more useful, etc. A user comes to a
netbook and feels cramped because it's worse than what it's imitating.

~~~
pyre
On the other hand, what about someone that goes from a laptop/desktop to an
iPad without the iPhone step?

~~~
masterj
It's not the step I'm referring to really, so much as the expectations of the
form factor. I've never had a smart phone, but I don't think I would sit down
and try to do what I do on a laptop with it. However, were I to buy a netbook,
that's exactly what I would do.

It's a small point among many, but from the human perspective I think it will
significantly impact their reception to the iPad.

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ilamont
Agree with the author, but not yet willing to substitute it for my iPod touch
(which fits into my pocket) or my laptop (which I believe is better for
entering text, which is still my primary means of communication and work on
the Web).

Curious to see what kind of apps and interfaces are built for the platform in
the years to come. That could make me change my mind for future versions.

~~~
PStamatiou
It's not a substitute - It's another device with different use cases. Reminds
me of the part of the Stevenote where he was talking about the iPhone and
MacBook and then talked about where the iPad fit in. For me it's for casual
couch/bedside computing. I always tinker around with my iPhone, read HN, etc
before going to bed, so the iPad would fit in perfectly there for me. (P.S. -
hey ian!)

~~~
ilamont
Hey Paul! I can see some new use cases, but the fact that Apple has made this
compatible with most iPhone/iPod apps tells me there will be a lot of overlap.
In my own case, I use my iTouch for couchtop browsing (and sometimes light
email and Twitter) so the iPad doesn't hold as much of an attraction right
now. If there's some other killer app(s) that come to the platform, I may
change my mind.

~~~
pchristensen
I don't know, I use my iTouch around the house a ton for browsing/twitter
because it's easier than whipping out a laptop, but something that was a) much
faster and b) had easier text input would get used a lot more for both of
those things. Even if all the iPad did was instant on, fast rendering of web
pages, and reasonable two-hand typing, it would be a game-changing experience.
Sure there's the RDF, but I believe it really will be the best web browsing
experience, just like iPhone was the best mobile browsing experience.

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bitwize
The iPad is for people who _can't be arsed_ to deal with the cognitive load of
a full-blown computer. Which, depending on the circumstances, is just about
everybody.

There's a reason why the best programmers are switching en masse from Linux to
Mac on their desktops[0]. Mac OS X is a no-compromises Unix: the power and
flexibility of Unix when you need it, but when you don't it imposes virtually
zero cognitive load. Turn it on, it just works. Even the geekiest hacker ever
is going to run into times when they just want to read or surf, and not even
have to deal with the interference of a keyboard. For those times, the iPad is
perfect.

[0]Actually two reasons, the other being that they stand to make money
developing Mac desktop software. Linux? Not a chance...

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jsz0
I view technology in a compartmentalized way. I'm always going to want a
powerful desktop that has endless flexibility but I also want something simple
that always works well. I don't really care if I can't run BitTorrent on my
iPad. I can do that on my desktop.

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Soto
Okay but a bunch of these comments are very narrow minded and look like
typical windows users comments. If people think that the mac os is for simple
minded people because it is easy to use and doing things the long way or more
in depth way is for smrter people... Then throw away your calculators and
break out your abacus. Stop hating

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nearestneighbor
I think it's dumb to have to hold your screen with one or both hands for an
extended period of time.

~~~
protomyth
buy a dock

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lukifer
People aren't dumb just because they aren't passionate about the same things
you are. Lots of smart people drive cars without giving a crap about how they
work. Most people don't want computers; they want information appliances that
work reliably.

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lacrossegm
"The iPad isn't for dumb people, it is for people who don't want to think
about their computer anymore."

These devices will eventually just become extensions of our ourselves as with
other tools.

The Samurai didn't need to think about the inter-workings of his sword to make
mincemeat of his enemies in battle.

Through training, the sword becomes a natural extension of one's self.

Why should our hand held computers be any different?

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dacracot
Less is more.

~~~
JBiserkov
Less is less

~~~
protomyth
a focused well thought out less is better then an ill thought out more
(ultimate example: the marquee and blink tags in Netscape)

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protomyth
thought experiment: walk around your workplace and see how many non-developers
work in windows with all their windows maximized

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J3L2404
Is the iPad for dumb people? Are automatic transmissions for dumb drivers? No,
but you'll wish you had one in city traffic. That said, I'm glad I can drive a
stick - even though I no longer own one.

~~~
abstractbill
I only drive manual transmissions, and I live in San Francisco - plenty of
city traffic. The problem for me is that, if you know how to drive a manual
well, you can't help noticing all the mistakes most automatics make (shifting
at the wrong time, or into the wrong gear).

Most Apple products aren't like this. I ran nothing but Linux for nearly 10
years, but when I bought my first Powerbook, nearly everything was actually
significantly _better_.

~~~
xenophanes
Apple's design philosophy for OS X and iPhone OS is different. OS X is not
comparable to automatic transmission, it's a full *nix that lets you shoot
yourself in the foot plenty of ways. iPhone OS is a different style.

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nazgulnarsil
well sure. you can always phrase making something more accessible as "for dumb
people". I doubt this kind of dim view of your customer base is highly
correlated with successful business though.

~~~
drcode
you clearly didn't RTFA.

~~~
nazgulnarsil
yeah, i read the whole thing. I'm not phrasing the post as if it was a
response to the author. i agree with him.

