Integrated Casual Computing on the Apple iPad
This is a guest post written by Brenton Lyle, Senior Gaming Consultant at Interpret LLC. To give some context, Brenton gave me permission to publish an email he wrote to my office in response to an article sent to our listserv: Who will buy the iPad? I thought the points he made were strong, well articulated and pretty funny, so it would have been a waste if it just ended up in my Outlook Deleted Items.
I think it’s important to look past the day-one reaction of the tech-savvy internet commenter crowd; they’ve proven historically to be impossible to please without creating a product that’s doomed to failure (I imagine a quad-core, Linux-based, open-source tablet with seventeen USB outs and three HDMIs, all for $32 (or $2000), might have had a chance of avoiding the ire of the self-declared gadget elite).
The iPad may succeed or fail, but I think it’s important to know what it is Apple is actually trying to accomplish (conceptually, that is; shareholder value is the literal goal, of course). Jobs decided that room exists for a gadget with a new set of uses – uses you don’t yet realize that you’ll enjoy. If they’re right, this will go next to “Put Arm & Hammer in your fridge” as another famous example of expanding your market by introducing new consumption habits. Do you browse the internet on your couch, or check your email while eating cereal? You don’t, yet*, but Apple is hoping you’ll enjoy doing it.
Jobs said in his presentation that they’re filling the space between phones and laptops. That is actually a simplification of what they’re attempting (it was too obtuse to describe on stage during the introduction). They’ve identified an entirely new type of web-connected, technology-enabled media consumption, that is neither mobile, nor full laptop computing. The whole thing gets confused, however, when one (correctly) points out that a number of devices are already capable of doing these things. The obvious comparisons that spring most readily to mind are the iPhone and netbooks, but the key to the iPad is the fact that these devices were never intended for this type of “casual computing”, nor are they particularly well suited for it, the same way that your daily-driver car can roam the open plains and explore dirt trails, but isn’t exactly optimized for the task.**
This is illustrated below:
The space between mobile and laptop computing
The famous “Blue Ocean Strategy” article (I believe Kim Mauborgne wrote it) said (paraphrasing) that you’re more likely to succeed if you figure out how to sidestep your competitors, rather than beating them in yesterday’s marketplace. Nintendo demonstrated this so soundly with the Wii—woefully underpowered, laughable graphics, and a wildly unconventional and untested control scheme—that Sony executives still cry themselves to sleep 35% of the time. Apple is attempting the same thing with the iPad: cater to an entirely new type of computer use with a device that isn’t a phone, or a computer, or any combination of the two.
People are getting hung up on the fact that, with regard to technical specifications, it is by definition (and parts vendors) a combination of the two: capacitive touchscreen (mobile), A4 processor (computer), icon-based homescreen UI (mobile), etc. But attacking the iPad because of its specifications is like lambasting the Wii because it lacked the 8-cell processor of the Playstation 3: you’ve missed the point.
* If you said “yes”, you’re likely among the netbook hyper-minority, probably hate the iPad, and have likely already written a few comments online about it. You are not actually the market for this device, and I have it on good authority that Steve Jobs hopes you spill cereal on your netbook.
** If you drive an off-road SUV in Los Angeles, we cannot guarantee that people aren’t laughing at you in the Whole Foods parking lot.
Brenton can be contacted directly at brenton.lyle@interpretllc.com.
