
Moving on from iPad "office productivity" apps - kingsidharth
http://www.marco.org/3836678176
======
muhfuhkuh
The potential for "productivity" is what I envisioned it as being when it
first came out (and was resoundingly downvoted for on various social news
sites, including this one, I believe): One handed work.

If you ever see someone with their laptop open in one hand and (optionally)
carrying their AC adapter with the other, heading off to a meeting room,
that's what iPad is for.

If you see a doctor walking in to the office, greeting you, then turning their
back to you to clack something into a desktop facing the wall, that's what an
iPad is for.

If you see a delivery person or home-service person (plumber, contractor,
arborist, lawn mower) or even a cop sit in their car for several minutes as
you look at them wondering what the hell they are doing in there for so long,
that's what an iPad is for.

When you see a realtor have their laptop setup and using some clunky interface
to hook into as you gather around leaning over a kitchen island to see some
number or other, that's what an iPad is for.

It's not for coding sessions or writing novels or anything crazy like that.
It's for plugging into a projector to do a presentation; it's for handing to
you to sign after it's been used to swipe your credit card for a purchase, or
when you receive a delivery; it's for your doctor showing you a test result
without you getting out of your chair or bed.

Give it a few years, then it'll look less like a toy and more like the
Jetsons.

~~~
tygorius
Funny thing about the market, it gets to tell you where the sweet spot is, not
the other way around. Your scenarios presume that the iPad's mobility will
trump the disadvantages of the small screen size to the point it will replace
existing solutions with bigger screens. I'm not convinced that's the case. For
example, when I visit the doctor or dentist, I don't go to an "office", I go
to an examining or operating room. You know, places where they like nice big
displays so everyone there can see the details of the x-ray pics? Those rooms
are already networked and they stay put day after day, so mobility is not a
desperate need.

Some of your examples seem contrived, like the office meeting where someone is
dragging their power brick -- as if the iPad was the only device with a
battery that lasts all day (and that the office worker didn't just unplug
their laptop at their desk, where it had been freshly charged).

Police in their cars don't need a smaller display, and when they're out of the
car they don't need yet another thing dangling from their belts. Delivery
drivers already have solutions that are designed for their specific
application and I suspect playing movies as well isn't a high priority at
FedEx HQ's IT planning meetings. Etc, etc.

~~~
muhfuhkuh
"You know, places where they like nice big displays so everyone there can see
the details of the x-ray pics?"

Where is this place you go? Because doctor's offices either have desktop
workstations or a lightbox to throw up X-Rays (or will just show you print-
outs). With an iPad they can just pinch out to zoom in. YC and Start fund
seems to dig the idea of doctor's using iPads, seeing as how Dr Chrono got
funded.

"Some of your examples seem contrived, like the office meeting where someone
is dragging their power brick"

It's not contrived because I saw that constantly at the office I worked in
(before I started working from home).

"Police in their cars don't need a smaller display"

The ones I've seen in cruisers have 10" display bog-standard notebooks (some I
believe still use DSTN screens, which are ancient as hell).

"Delivery drivers already have solutions that are designed for their specific
application"

Right, as if that gigantic gizmo with 1000 buttons and a tiny monochrome
resistive pressure-pen screen UPS drivers carry for signature confirmation is
the end-all technology for delivery drivers.

~~~
tygorius
The last three "offices" I've been to have been an oral surgeon, a dentist,
and the pet hospital. In all cases light boxes have been replaced with
electronic storage and big LCD displays. The oral surgeon worked with
printouts of the x-rays, however, as they were easy to mark up, show to
patients, and store in a file folder.

It's probable the doctors involved had desks and PCs, but as a patient/client
I didn't see their office. I saw them in examining rooms and operating rooms
-- places where an iPad simply makes no sense.

We could argue hypotheticals all day and it wouldn't change anything. I'll
believe your examples when I see them in the real world.

~~~
muhfuhkuh
"We could argue hypotheticals all day and it wouldn't change anything. I'll
believe your examples when I see them in the real world."

There's alot of evidence out there that it is being used for business[1]. And,
even more pilot rollouts in disparate industries. It's still a really young
technology in its current "slate form factor + simple OS + simple native/web
apps" incarnation, but already iPad is starting to eat away at netbook
market/mindshare.

[1]
[http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9182498/iPad_lures_bu...](http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9182498/iPad_lures_business_users_in_law_medicine_and_other_fields)

------
GHFigs
I don't think Apple was really trying to pitch office applications on the iPad
as an example of what you _would_ do with it, but to be an example of what you
_could_. As if to say: "Don't think of this as just a toy, just a gadget, just
a big iPod--think of this as a personal computer."

In that sense I think Apple's message is the same this year as it was last
year. Consider Garage Band. It's not about the five bucks. It's not even
really about selling more iPads (though it will undoubtedly help). It's really
about demonstrating the absence of certain perceived limitations about what a
"giant iPod" can do.

I think that's what Apple's overall strategy with its apps is: to keep
pounding away at perceived limitations of the platform, both in functionality
and performance, with vivid real-world demonstrations of what's possible.
Consider that all five paid applications that Apple has demoed at the iPad
events are content creation applications, striking squarely at the persistent
criticism of it as a "consumption" device.

Maybe next year we'll see Xcode.

~~~
greyman
I tend to agree with the blog author, that Apple didn't yet found the sweet
spot for the iPad’s usage. Everyone is different, and for some people (who
maybe mostly interacted with other websites), iPad can even replace a laptop.

If I can speak from my experience, I still see iOS as mostly a gaming and
entertainment platform. You mention that with Garage Band, Apple removed some
perceived limitations about the platform - yes, I agree, but so what, for many
it is still an entertainment application.

To sum it up, until now I am not that impressed with what App Store offers -
they are just a handful of useful applications there, drowning in a sea of
games/entertainment/kill-time apps. We are still far away from that so-called
"post-PC era".

~~~
GHFigs
I think the popularity of games/entertainment/killing time apps on the iPad is
more a reflection of the popularity of those tasks on personal computers in
general. For most people this is all they do with a laptop at home, and it's
not infrequently a part of what they do at work, too.

There are people who feel the iPad does each of those things inadequately (as
with productivity apps), but the point is to demonstrate that _it_ can do
those things, whether _you_ do or not. To show that it's not (say) a web-
browsing device that can't game or a media player that can't browse the web or
an e-reader that can't edit HD video. It can't do everything for everybody,
but I think they're trying to expand the capabilities into doing almost
everything for almost anybody (as a PC does) rather than seeking a sweet spot.

------
swombat
Anecdotal evidence: the iPad has completely replaced the laptop for my
girlfriend. She hasn't opened up her laptop in months. She uses it mostly for
email, for editing and sending presentations and documents via
Keynote/Numbers/Pages/Dropbox, and for interacting with the numerous websites
which she needs to deal with.

Since she spends a lot of her days on the move and doesn't like to work at a
desk, the iPad has been a godsend for her. Before, she used to have to carry
her craptop around and plug it in all the time to get power. Now, she just
carries her iPad, and usually doesn't even bother to take the power supply
with her, because the battery lasts so long. And she can use it on the bus, on
the tube, etc.

~~~
larrykubin
Same with my wife who is a home health speech therapist. I got her an iPad for
xmas and she hasn't opened her laptop since. It is convenient to take with her
in the car, she can keep a large calendar of appointments and jot notes on her
patients, logs all of her hours and does invoicing, can use it as a big map to
find her patients' houses, has large visual references of medications and
anatomy, and patients can easily do activities on it.

Then she gets home and kicks back on the couch or in bed and reads some
message boards, watches some YouTube or Netflix videos, or plays some casual
games.

------
bluehat
The article doesn't go far enough: the iPad is the temporary hack bridge
between technologies. The major function of the iPad I have seen among people
who are not making hardware accessories has been as a social bridge so they
can get work done in a place/time when pulling out a whole laptop would be
weird, awkward or rude. For example: if you're having a lunch meeting and the
other person is late, pulling out a whole laptop rubs in how late they were
because you had time to "set up and settle into a device" instead of "messing
about on your iPad" which is socially closer to messing about on your phone,
and we hold no stigma against for a waiting person.

Having a sister 10 years younger than me (14) has taught me that younger
generations are not use to our protocols and therefore hold no squeamishness
about breaking the conventions of them. For example, if you have her (or her
peer's) attention you know this because she has removed one phone(MP3 player)
earbud to listen to you. She doesn't see continuing to use the technology as a
potential distraction/rudeness, and in many senses resents the older
generations (teachers/parents) for demanding her absolute attention for every
trivial thing.

The iPad is our bridge from dropping in and out of the internet in the real
world all the time, because a full drop is seen as rude, but her generation
won't really care about that. They'll just drop in and out as they please,
which is why I suspect that they'll have little use for the iPad, except as
the training bridge for dinosaurs like us.

~~~
rbarooah
Temporary hack before what? Back to laptops, or forward to neural interfaces?

~~~
bluehat
I've never seen us go "back" to any technology in anything other than
aesthetics which seem to cycle. If I knew what was coming next though, I'd
probably go build it. I bet it is exciting, technically currently difficult,
and will make a lot of money.

Neural interfaces seem a little too far forward though, it seems like you'd
need another generation to have that be socially "normal," and that they'll
need their own cultural bridge technology. There must be something between an
iPad and neural interfaces which lets us casually and continuously wander in
and out of the internet.

~~~
billpaetzke
>There must be something between an iPad and neural interfaces

Probably something wearable:
[http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2010/03/wearable-
computing...](http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2010/03/wearable-computing-
expert-now-apple-prototype-scientist.ars)

My guess:

a pair of glasses (in which you can see a screen--or transparency for
augmented reality) with full voice control. Bluetooth keyboard and trackpad
optional for productivity usage. Can also control via iPhone or iPad.

~~~
jarin
I've been saying for a while that I think the "next thing" is high-powered
cellphones acting as a computing device (providing storage, connectivity, and
processing power), with several different types of devices acting as dumb
terminals.

If you're at home or at work, your keyboard and monitor auto-connect to your
cellphone to provide a full-sized screen. If you're on the go, you use your
cellphone as-is, or you use an eyepiece or tablet as an alternate display.
Ideally, the main apps you use would provide appropriate user interfaces for
each situation.

~~~
nradov
I think you're basically correct, but the docking devices are likely to be
more than dumb terminals in some cases. At work that cellphone may plug into
another device which provides additional, higher-speed processor cores.

------
waxman
I'm looking forward to the further convergence of iOS and OS X.

As the owner of a mid-2010 Macbook Pro and a first-gen iPad, I think the new
Macbook Air, which is a significant step in that direction, could replace both
devices for me.

The iPad cannot be used for productivity work (coding, writing, even longer
emails), but my 15" MBP is relatively clunky, especially for the type of
consumption activities that the iPad excels at (i.e. reading on the couch,
watching a TV episode, etc.) I wish I could have the best of both worlds.

The new iPad version of Garage Band really captures this: in some ways it's
better than the Logic Pro I have on my laptop; I can play keys on it, I can
trigger drums with my fingers, etc., but it's painfully underpowered (in terms
of CPU, memory, I/O, etc.) to comfortably record a serious track on it
(despite what Gorillaz accomplished).

I'm waiting for a Macbook Air with a full touch screen, and a new OS that
fully combines the simplicity and interactivity of iOS with the power and
breadth of OSX.

~~~
joebananas
> I'm waiting for a Macbook Air with a full touch screen

You're in for a long wait then. Jobs said laptops with touch screens is total
bullshit when talking at the new air launch.

~~~
axxl
Admittedly, Jobs has said many things that end up happening. That the switch
on the side of the iPad would not be controllable (which it is now) is just
one recent example. So anything can happen!

~~~
joebananas
There is a world of difference between Apple changing their minds on a switch
and Jobs saying that they've done extensive user testing on touchscreens on
regular computers and that it turned out to be worthless.

------
ctdonath
"the iPad hasn’t “killed” the laptop at all"

Pundits keep missing the point. Tablets aren't about replacing desktops or
laptops, they're about "anywhere, anytime, always on".

C'mon, people, it's a half inch thick and 24 ounces. There is no keyboard, and
the bluetooth keyboard is more a makeshift hack than solution.

Mine paid for itself in a month by giving me the ability to work anywhere
anytime - not work well as I would with a desktop, but work at all in the
little 5-15 minute gaps, regardless of where I was.

In addition, it enhances personal life for the same reason: books, movies,
email, games, internet, news, etc all in the same ubiquitous tiny sliver of a
package.

Gonna do real work? Get a desktop.

Office apps are available not to replace the desktop, but to let you do basic
work anywhere anytime.

And a notebook is a desktop pared down to it's barerest compromise to achieve
portabiliy. Give up a bit more functionality and you get a tablet.

------
MrFoof
The iPad's success is getting me away from a desk for the first time in 15
years.

I will absolutely use my primary computer with its giant display for
development, complex games, video encoding and photo work. I will absolutely
continue to bring my new MacBook Pro to client sites.

But for everything else I will be slouching in my lounge chair with my iPad.
Even typing out responses such as this one I'm typing at about 80-90% of the
speed of a physical keyboard. Most of my leisure computing activities are
browsing, Twitter, the occasional IM and email -- and I absolutely prefer the
iPad for those activities over my MacBook Pro or my development workstation.

I've used a computer for 30 minutes since Friday. I haven't had a need to.
With work that changes, and that's fine. But for play, this is without
question my preferred device. _Especially_ since I seem to be getting 15-18
hours of usability from a charge since the screen only needs to be at about
30% brightness to be easy to read.

~~~
tygorius
I think your examples hit on a key point -- iPad use cases are decided by
individuals, not by organizations.

I occasionally watch a CNBC trading show ("Fast Money"). The four traders at
the desk used to have live market feeds delivered to laptops that sat on the
desk, and those were replaced with iPads on stands last year. Now some of
those traders have their laptops back in addition to the iPads, presumably
because when you're looking at charts and numbers, bigger _is_ better.

------
siglesias
Honestly iWork didn't work on the iPad the first time around because the
performance wasn't there. I found Numbers and Pages too choppy for anything
other than basic editing tasks.

Secondly lots of office apps are based on traditional paradigms and metaphors
related to printed documents. I think the key insight will be to create a new
document type that makes more sense for tablet consumption, and maybe this new
document will lead to a new kind of office app less reliant on the keyboard
and mouse.

------
rbarooah
While generally a reasonable point of view, which I'm not really contradicting
there are a couple of points worth mentioning:

1\. Eliminating the keyboard dock makes sense just because the Bluetooth
keyboard is _a much better solution_. I just put my iPad on a book stand when
I use it, but Apple's regular dock would do as a stand. I don't use the
keyboard that much - really only when I have a long email to write, or some
text to write that I want to capture while it's in my head, but when I do it's
vital.

2\. Pages and numbers are actually quite popular on the App Store. Maybe
that's because people haven't figured out that they aren't going to use them
but I'm not so sure. I don't have a computer at home anymore, and occasionally
I need to print letters (e.g. To the bank, to landlords, etc.). For this kind
of light usage, Pages and an AirPrint printer work very well. For _domestic_
use that's really all most people need. But without pages or an equivalent I
simply wouldn't be able to do this.

So a less sweeping view is that doing light office tasks is actually very
important for the iPad to be viable. It's just that it's solved now and the
keyboard dock isn't needed.

~~~
spiralganglion
But I don't use Pages (etc.), and none of the other iPad owners I know do
either. What Marco seem to be wondering about is the killer functionality that
_absolutely everyone_ will be using the iPad for.

However, I think we've already found it: the web.

Maybe that's not the only thing the iPad will come to pass as the definitive
device for. But it's certainly off to a good start.

~~~
rbarooah
Do you have a computer for those other things?

------
dpcan
I just see it as another gaming console.

Whenever I think about buying one, this is why it comes to mind. I think it
would be fun to play games on.

I really don't see the harm in marketing it as a game console. MS has XBox,
Apple has iPad. Seems legitimate to me.

All I use my Galaxy Tab for is games. Except maybe to check a website from
time to time.

~~~
bane
I think they may be scared of the Amiga effect. The Amiga was a fabulous
productivity and general purpose computer, but died the slow death it did
because it was generally seen by consumers as a fancy video game console.

Competitors swept in, played down the "kiddy" game aspect of their systems and
played up the productivity aspect and demolished the Amiga in the market
place.

Extending a system perceived as a "gaming system" into other tasks has been
extremely hard. Despite being decent TV-top web browsers for a while,
dedicated gaming consoles have never really found a role outside of gaming for
example. At one time, the PS2 had enough peripherals and such for it to turn
it into a fully fledged general computing device, but it never took off as
such since it's just a game console.

In Japan, theres a similar problem with pre-PC computers like the MSX, PC-88
or the X68000, all great general purpose computer, all viewed as game
consoles, all dead dead dead.

(yes there are plenty of other reasons for the death of the Amiga, but the
general consumer's view that it was a gaming device definitely played part in
that)

~~~
nradov
That's really not the reason that the Amiga failed. It was more due to lack of
compatibility with the leading platforms, tight coupling to broadcast
television video standards, and a shocking level of incompetence in Commodore
management.

------
egypturnash
Different tools for different scales, and places.

While on tour, Damon Albarn created an entire Gorillaz album on his iPad:
<http://thefall.gorillaz.com/>

For a lot of people, the iPad has ended up being an awesome platform for $2
games. And that's valid too. We like to play. Sometimes we play by making cool
stuff. It's not as if the iPad is the first general-purpose computing device
to have a mix of "useful" stuff and games; how many Apple IIs were bought with
the intent of balancing one's budget?

------
YooLi
The iPad was never meant to "kill" the laptop. From the very introduction,
Jobs said it was to fill the role between the smartphone and the laptop. The
iWork apps are consistently top sellers in the App Store. Apple didn't create
iMovie and GarageBand because they are moving away from office apps, they made
them because they already have office apps. So they didn't make an iPad 2
keyboard dock; it's probably because it wasn't a good seller. Most everyone I
know uses the Bluetooth keyboard. I find it a bit of a leap that the missing
keyboard dock means Apple is moving on from office apps.

------
junklight
My ipad hasn't replaced my laptop (I got an Macbook Air 11 for that) what it
_has_ replaced is all the other crap I used to carry around when travelling -
books, media, stuff I did on my phone but is much nicer on a big screen, music
making tools (actually I couldn't do this on the move prior to the ipad). I
recently completed a two day trip abroad with my Tom Bihn satchell , ipad ,
laptop, wires and a couple of clean shirts (ironed using the 'hot shower'
classic)

------
ndl
From my time as a volunteer high school tech support helper, I remember the
first year that Dell shipped us laptops without the external floppy drives.
This was annoying to many of the old-timers who had established techniques
around booting from a floppy.

We got over it.

We don't understand touchscreens well enough yet. We are using an old metaphor
(the keyboard) and porting it completely literally. We might never replace the
keyboard fully, but surely there is room to innovate.

------
Tycho
I'd agree, but with two caveats:

1\. I still dont like laptops that much either

2\. iPad makes a _great_ productivity device in a _supplementary_ role. It
substitutes for reference books and documentation. And it's better to switch
to the iPad if you want to read a long article. And there's those little
single-purpose apps for doing things like regular expressions, drawings,
recordings.

------
DannoHung
I think they just need to fix the keyboard. Trying to have a straight keyboard
of that size just does not fit with people's hands.

Split it up into two 30 degree rotated sections in horizontal mode and two
thumbpads in vertical mode and it'll make typing a helluva lot easier.

------
stcredzero
_why the iPad is truly exciting: we can see that it has great potential, and
while we don’t quite know its nature yet, we’re pretty sure that it’s huge._

We can begin to see what this potential is already. The key is the form factor
and the input. (I mean, what else _is_ there to the iPad? The whole point of
the design is to reduce it to that point.)

The form factor is about personal consumption of information and about
interpersonal sharing of information. It's about handling data and content in
a way which is immediate, as if the app _were_ your content and your're
handling your content directly -- not that there's an app between you and your
content.

Focus on these two aspects, and there's a good chance that your app will be
revolutionary and disruptive.

------
ericb
The Ipad's Achilles heel is that it doesn't lend itself well enough to
Enterprise, and it can't serve two masters, design-wise. In the same way the
Blackberry got popular for enterprise use, I think even a slightly clunkier
device which fit right into the standard Windows enterprise and gave IT
departments a lot of control, business apps, and integration with their
infrastructure would do very well. Closer to what the IPad would be if it was
instead just a PC in a different form factor. Where is the Dell Ipad?

~~~
jwedgwood
I'd like to hear your thoughts on how the iPad doesn't lend itself well enough
to Enterprise.

I have nothing specific in mind that disputes your assertion, but the linked
article below says this, which sounds meaningful - "80% of Fortune 100
testing/deploying, 366 documented mass rollouts."

I'm also hearing that Microsoft views the iPad as a potentially disruptive
force in the enterprise, though that is second hand.

[http://www.zdnet.com/blog/sybase/ipad-2-will-continue-
enterp...](http://www.zdnet.com/blog/sybase/ipad-2-will-continue-enterprise-
invasion-despite-delivering-zilch-for-them/956)

~~~
ericb
Sure, they are deploying them, but only because nothing really fits the bill
better, and often because their users beg them for them as toys. My wife has a
director-level title at a large biotech. Some of this comes from her
experiences. Here is where it falls short:

Most large businesses have a variety of native windows apps they rely on. The
ipad works well as a web browser, but misses all of these. Companies have
large investments in these programs, and having them inaccessible is a
liability for the ipad. As an example, I have seen business units literally
"powered" by excel spreadsheets and VBA. The iPad can't deal with things like
this.

Standard native file access. How do I open a config file with "notepad" in the
iPad? How do I browse to the file? What app opens it?

Windows permissions. The iPad can't work with Windows file system permissions,
so it is a second class device on Windows-based networks, if you want to
access files, it does not play well with your carefully created Windows
permissions, so those access rules and group policies are lost on it.

The iPad is not a part of the standard microsoft security apparatus, so it is
"special" in this regard. It won't get Windows updates, security bulletins,
etc in the same way. It needs special attention from IT, and carries separate
and perhaps unknown security risks.

Since the iPad is oriented toward finger-touch, stylus apps don't work well,
so note taking apps don't work well.

The app store is consumer and game oriented, something businesses would
specifically like to avoid on their devices, generally. Because of the app
store approval process, and low price point expectations "Enterprise" business
apps are loathe to move to it and risk a heavy investment that could be
arbitrarily destroyed.

The iPad's success in the Enterprise is really a result of a failure of
imagination and execution by Apple's competitors.

