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I can believe the iPad will do well in this market, but I don't believe apple gave it more than a tiny amount of thought when designing the thing. Apple are al

I can believe the iPad will do well in this market, but I don't believe apple gave it more than a tiny amount of thought when designing the thing. Apple are all about mass consumer markets, it'd be totally out of character for them to design a system for home automation, or even doctor's offices. Not that they won't be happy that it'll do well there, but it'll be a pleasant side effect rather than a goal.

glhaynes 17y ago
Yep. I remember a few years back seeing Jobs compare Apple to Chrysler (I think?) in this respect... something along the lines of: Chrysler makes minivans for families. They happen to also be really good for businesses that need to shuttle executives around, and Chrysler is happy to sell to them, but that's not who Chrysler is thinking about when they design them. This was obviously a few years ago. :)
stcredzero 17y ago
I think the key is the merger of personal media, communications, entertainment, and home automation. Imagine that you're reading a magazine article on the iPad. This reminds you of a band. You go over to the media remote app and put an old album of theirs on. Out of curiosity, you do a search and go over to the Amazon page and order their new song. This reminds you of something else that you ordered and you check on the package tracking. You see that it will arrive when you are out of town and message your girlfriend to see if she'll drop by and pick it up off the front steps on the way home from work in a few days. Most of that, you could do on the PC. But with the iPad, you could do all of that just sitting on the couch. The home automation part: You call up a recipe app as you walk to the kitchen. You flip to the ingredients view and you see that you need some more ginger. You flip the ginger into a shopping cart app for Whole Foods and it gets added to your "Personal Shopper" bag for you to pick up later.
gacba 17y ago
Not unlike how Java evolved: Gosling and Joy envisioned something to use for smart appliances and network-aware devices. Its popularity stemmed from the fact it was far more useful outside of that context in enterprise and client-server development. And thank goodness too, man...did you ever see Jini? What a disaster. Of course, I'm sure some will say the same about Java, but it's hard to argue against the fact it was more useful than originally intended.

glhaynes 17y ago

Yep. I remember a few years back seeing Jobs compare Apple to Chrysler (I think?) in this respect... something along the lines of: Chrysler makes minivans for families. They happen to also be really good for businesses that need to shuttle executives around, and Chrysler is happy to sell to them, but that's not who Chrysler is thinking about when they design them. This was obviously a few years ago. :)

stcredzero 17y ago

I think the key is the merger of personal media, communications, entertainment, and home automation. Imagine that you're reading a magazine article on the iPad. This reminds you of a band. You go over to the media remote app and put an old album of theirs on. Out of curiosity, you do a search and go over to the Amazon page and order their new song. This reminds you of something else that you ordered and you check on the package tracking. You see that it will arrive when you are out of town and message your girlfriend to see if she'll drop by and pick it up off the front steps on the way home from work in a few days. Most of that, you could do on the PC. But with the iPad, you could do all of that just sitting on the couch. The home automation part: You call up a recipe app as you walk to the kitchen. You flip to the ingredients view and you see that you need some more ginger. You flip the ginger into a shopping cart app for Whole Foods and it gets added to your "Personal Shopper" bag for you to pick up later.

gacba 17y ago

Not unlike how Java evolved: Gosling and Joy envisioned something to use for smart appliances and network-aware devices. Its popularity stemmed from the fact it was far more useful outside of that context in enterprise and client-server development. And thank goodness too, man...did you ever see Jini? What a disaster. Of course, I'm sure some will say the same about Java, but it's hard to argue against the fact it was more useful than originally intended.