Schafer | Condon | Carter

Wow, do people love to love – and love to hate – Apple products. Since it’ll be like breaking the law to not blog about the iPad, here goes.

I was hoping the iPad would be more like a full-blown laptop with a tablet style interface (I was also hoping it would have a decent name). Since that’s not what Apple did, I have to judge iPad on what functions it performs and compare it to similar products, to the extent possible. The trick is to judge it on what is – not what I wished it would be.

As an owner of an iPhone, for me the key benefit of an iPad is the large format – so it only makes sense in my mind to compare it to a e-book reader or a net book. Mainly, an e-book reader. I’ve been considering an e-book reader recently, so it’s worth considering the comparison.

Given it’s price (relative to the competition) and functionality, I think the iPad is a much better value. The Kindle web browsing is very limited. You can’t use it to organize your life. You can’t add to your blog with one. You can’t watch video content.  You can’t make a client presentation (not a good one, anyway). It’s black and white. In a nutshell, the iPad web experience is useful for more than purchasing e-Books and listening to mp3’s.

Apps aren’t coming for the kindle any time soon, and certainly not iPhone style apps. Given the 100’s of thousands of iPhone apps that just need to be adjusted with higher resolution graphics in order to be upgraded for the iPad, I predict those will come fast and furious.

The iPhone, and presumably the iPad, are built to last. The worst (non-water related) damage I’ve seen to an iPhone was this. It was dropped off of a 2nd story balcony onto a concrete parking lot, and still remains fully functional. All the things I’d use an iPad for, and then some, could be handled by my MacBook Pro – but I’m not about to bring that into a dusty woodshop or even remotely moist environment. The iPad is sealed tight as a bugs behind, so it’ll survive in environments my laptop (or netbooks) wouldn’t dare venture.

There’s a great deal of discussion about how “open” the iPad and other recent Apple devises, aren’t. While I have an opinion on this, the matter affects such a relatively small group of people that I won’t weigh in on that one. It’s a product for consumers, not developers (sadly).

There you have it. The iPad is an e-book reader on steroids. Lots of steroids.

Back in November I offered a tweet regarding a quote by Rory Sutherland, which went “The interface fundamentally determines the behavior”. This morning I lived the quote in a small way. Here’s what happened.

As is my standard practice, I play a little solitaire on the morning commute (by train) to just get my brain moving a little bit. Last night I left my iPhone at the office, so I used the solitaire game on my iPod instead.

The iPhone interface for this game is pretty great. Tap a card. Tap it’s destination. Done.

On the iPod, however, the interface is the scroll wheel and the center button. Scroll to the card you’d like to move (it scrolls in either direction through all the cards in the deck and on the table until you reach your destination). Tap the button to select. Scroll through all the cards between where you are and  your destination. Tap the button again to drop the card.

Little habits form, like drop a card on the table and scroll really fast to the right to get back to the deck. But if you’re in the left column on the table, your trip would be much faster if you scroll in the opposite direction. Stuff like that. So, the interface is a bit cumbersome.

Normally, I can win a game before my 20 minute commute is over. It might take me 5-10 games to do it, but you can crank through a game really fast, abandon it once you know it’s a lost cause and start a new one without losing more than a few seconds. On the iPod, however, I could only manage to complete (abandon) one game and partially complete a second. The effect of the interface occurred to me when I realized I was thinking so much about being efficient in my use of the interface that I was making ill-advised moves.

So ends my completely anecdotal tale proving the wisdom of Rory Sutherland.

Multiple news sources have reported that Google, after a series of major cyber attacks, has decided to stop censoring its content and is considering pulling its operations out of China all together.

The Google attacks have focus on gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists, but also extend to a minimum of twenty other companies in the finance, internet, technology and other sectors.

If anyone is in a position to walk away from the Chinese market, I guess it’s Google. Good for them, I say.