By Ben Wright
By now, there has been months of speculation, trolling and drooling over the iPad, due to be released on April 3. It has the usual fanfare of an Apple product; there are those who hate it and call it a glorified iPod Touch, and the Apple fanboys who are calling it the revolutionary product of the decade.
Of course, those are extremes, and there are plenty of ambivalent consumers out there who don’t have any opinion, but who cares about them and their apathy toward product design? That’s what I thought.
Naturally, no one can fault Apple’s design of the iPad. It will be what we have come to expect from Apple; a sleek, sexy product that will be ripped off by countless companies in the year to come. Yes, it does look like a giant iPod touch, but really, at this point in the iPad’s history, that’s all it is.
The way I see it, the first generations of the iPad will be like the first generations of any Apple product- a little clunky, buggy and will probably break in 6 months. Apple’s proprietary technologies, design for obsolescence and rushed production will lead to problems and make a lot of people angry. Or angrier, who knows.
But this column isn’t debating the intrinsic values of the iPad. As a product, one should always ask what new things it brings to the proverbial table.
The answer to that question, as far as I can tell, is loads of potential. Apple’s missteps with this product (no Flash support, no camera, same old iPhone touchscreen keyboard) will eventually (I hope) be fixed. Its HTML5 support will render Flash obselete. Additionally, rather than complaining about having to use the awful awful awful program Flash, designers should see it as an opportunity to design programs around a problem. After all, that is what design is about.
That said, there’s no doubt that the iPad is a game changer. Touchscreen technology, like it or not, will soon be even more prevalent than it is already. I have yet to see how a touchscreen can replace a PC’s keyboard; leaning over a giant screen that’s a foot or two away from your face potentially has many health consequences.
But the concept of a portable netbook that doesn’t look like a miniaturized laptop is a big step forward. Breaking out of preconceived notions of what a product should look like or do is one of the first steps in designing good products. This is what Apple has started with the iPad. Like it or not, it’s going to change the way we look at tablet computers and netbooks, and potentially the way we interact with computers in general.
It’s not a product to be written off lightly or hated before its release.
That said, stay tuned for a review of the product soon after it comes out.
