9 ms·

They, Xerox management, gave him a license to do so. People at PARC weren't so enthusiastic, I think.

by tewks 17y ago

stcredzero 17y ago
The Xerox management thought all of those things were just toys and that computers would never be anything but what they were at that moment. Reminds me of a lot of people who look at the iPad and say "meh."
- catfish 17y ago
  Fools rush in... FOR DRM.
- axod 17y ago
  Come on now. Please explain to me what is revolutionary about the iPad. It is 'meh'. It's just a big iPod touch. It's like a netbook or laptop but less useful. There's nothing revolutionary about it at all. It's a slightly slicker version of all the tablet PCs that have failed to capture significant market share for the last 10-20 years. It'd be easy to say "sure but you're a geek, you just don't see how easy to use and useful the iPad is for normal people". But I don't think it is. The form factor is just bad. Watch the video on the Apple store, and you'll see actor after actor carefully pretending that it's comfortable to sit/stand/hold this device without getting an aching hand/sore neck etc. Yes, there are applications, just like there have been for previous tablet PCs, but they're niche. Is it really that much more than the Apple Newton was 20 odd years ago? Did the Apple Newton seem revolutionary at the time? If so, why did it fail? I'd love to hear a concrete reason why the iPad is 'revolutionary'. Like a genuine reason, not just people pointing to the lone person on slashdot who called the iPod 'meh'. That doesn't count. So, please explain to me clearly, why having a laptop without a keyboard/trackpad is revolutionary.
  - aresant 17y ago
    "It's like a netbook or laptop but less useful." To us less useful means less depth. To the general market less useful means less confusing. Less confusing in consumer devices = win.
    - axod 17y ago
      As I say, I disagree. It's less useful for consumers, because you can't type on it properly, you can't rest it on your lap, you can't view any flash websites, etc etc. It's the geeks that are hailing it as useful. I can't see how my kids would use an iPad, and I can't see how my mum would use an iPad.
      - anigbrowl 17y ago
        No offense axod, but you have a big anti-tablet bias, and I think it undermines your objectivity, the point that you keep repeating your anecdotal evaluation of your immediate family members not being likely adopters as if they were the median. You seem to be reasoning from an n of 3 or 4 people. I find it easy to see why Apple expects it to be popular. I may be wrong, but the (apparent) fact that lots of people are interested in buying an iPad suggests they can think of ways to use it, and seriously doubt that Apple would be investing lots of money in launching one without assuring themselves of likely demand first. Me, I would rather not buy an iPad - even though it looks like a very good product, technically - because I am increasingly put off by Apple's aggressive vertical integration and business tactics (like this patent lawsuit). But however I feel about that, I can't deny their expertise in engineering and marketing. Even if I buy a competitor's product, the price and specifications will have been influenced by Apple's offering. I feel like we (computer users) have already gone through this 'utility' barrier many times - did average consumers 'need' the mouse, the GUI, videogame consoles, color graphics, dedicated monitors (vs a TV adapter) etc.. etc.? Well, no, not as such, but it seems that people's desire for a technology often forms prior to the availability of tools that properly exploit it, even though their use cases may be inchoate. I'll give you two examples of non-computer geeks who nevertheless have use cases for a tablet, with the understanding that these too are anecdotal. One is down the street from me: the people who work at the 7-11 use an oldish Panasonic tablet computer for inventory management. they probably don't need multitouch and the software looks a bit primitive, but they seem well comfortable treating it as a digital clipboard that they can hold with one hand and operate with the other. Now, you don't need a degree to work at 7-11 or even to get your own store, just a willingness to work at a small 24-hour retail outlet. 7-11 is a mature franchise business so I don't imagine that they rolled out the use of tablets to their employees on a whim - more likely, such devices hit a sweet spot between usability and capability which proved beneficial for limiting the cost of inventory control. Another area is for creatives in a studio. I work with audio and video for a living, and for some tasks using a mouse is royal pain in the ass. There is a thriving industry in hardware control surfaces for musicians, and many of them are repurposed by 3d animators, compositors, and other video professionals because the cost of dedicated hardware for the latter is stratospheric. A general purpose device with multitouch is already a winner in this market. Cheaper ones will sell like hotcakes. Add enough of these market segments together, and you're looking at some real money.
  - bphogan 17y ago
    The only thing I can say in response to this is that I see that my dad uses his iPhone to surf the web much more than he uses his computer, and he's interested in a bigger screen to do so. He's in his 60s, and he's actually not buying another desktop computer (his is 11 years old) because his iPhone does what he needs, and more, plus he's tired of viruses and spyware. (Yes, we know it's not a target yet, but a closed system does help prevent a lot of that.) I see it as a step towards hurting Dell, who makes a portion of their money selling laptops and desktops to people who really don't need them, like my parents, grandparents, other non-technical people. It's also a step towards hurting the "PC repair" industry that charges these poor folks $150 to install and run freeware antivirus tools and "double your memory". I think the lack of Flash support is going to hurt it the most, as the target market I'm describing are people who tend to use Flash a lot (think Facebook games and other online games.) The iPad is aimed at that market of people - the people who use the Internet as another vehicle for entertainment. I've seen what the iPhone has done for average people, and I think this is Apple taking that a step further. I guess I wouldn't say it's "revolutionary" but then again, I said that about the iPhone. ("it's just another phone, who cares?") And remember, it was pretty 'meh' before the app store. I could be wrong, but I think it has the potential to be pretty neat for the average person. We need a revolution in that space.
    - axod 17y ago
      Why wouldn't a netbook+ChromeOS win? I disagree @ iPhone. That was revolutionary. It was the first pocket webbrowser that actually worked well and rendered websites properly. >> "And remember, it was pretty 'meh' before the app store." Again, difference of opinion. I couldn't care less about the app store. Why would I download software approved by Apple, when I can just use the browser for most things?
      - stcredzero 17y ago
        If I were Apple, I'd love for ChromeOS and Android to win. If that's the "losing" position for Apple, then they're sitting pretty. By the time that would happen, Apple could just roll their own Android that can run legacy iPhone apps, and even have their own high-end, high-margin Apple walled garden there. Who's not sitting pretty? Microsoft. They've got to connect a Hail Mary pass with WinMo 7 to survive and stay relevant. They may do it, though.
  - jsz0 17y ago
    It's the first tablet device that will have a large library of tablet-specific multi-touch software available. We've never seen that before. It's also the highest density multi-touch device we've seen on the consumer market.
  - philwelch 17y ago
    The iPod touch's greatest weakness is its small size. Eliminate that and you have something you can really use for ebooks and video (and for that matter, an ebook reader and 10" portable DVD player duct-taped together already cost as much an iPad even before you throw in the digital picture frame). But having a larger landscape for multitouch apps represents a lot of potential. The greatest weaknesses of a PC are its complexity and its UI. A PC is complex enough that a novice user can either completely fuck it up or is terrified to try doing more than a limited number of tasks with it. And that's an inclusive or. PG, in 2001: "When you own a desktop computer, you end up learning a lot more than you wanted to know about what's happening inside it. ... My mother has a computer that she uses for email and for keeping accounts. About a year ago she was alarmed to receive a letter from Apple, offering her a discount on a new version of the operating system. There's something wrong when a sixty-five year old woman who wants to use a computer for email and accounts has to think about installing new operating sytems. Ordinary users shouldn't even know the words "operating system," much less "device driver" or "patch."" http://www.paulgraham.com/road.html http://www.paulgraham.com/road.html Even if you're accessing web apps, people still have to wrangle with the operating system a good deal. People need a limited device that gets out of the way and doesn't need them to administer it. And it turns out that a limited device can also make some security guarantees about running native apps, as well. The keyboard/mouse UI is pretty nice, but still a weakness in some respects. Keyboards are fast and mice let you do spacial things with a screen. Unfortunately, keyboards in most contexts have somewhat arbitrary effects ("/" means search, "command-z" means undo) so people don't use them outside of entering text, and mice are not especially fast. Both devices are also rather indirect. Multitouching a handheld device is about as fast as a keyboard and probably even more intuitive than a mouse. And the directness is unmatched. It can even reproduce maybe 70% of a keyboard just by pushing a keyboard up onto the screen. This seems obvious in retrospect now that we've had iPhones for years, but once again--the weakness of the iPhone and iPod touch is the small screen size. And in the laptop context, the keyboard and trackpad physically get in your way. Why have a touchpad which indirectly controls a cursor when you can just touch the screen? The keyboard has more use, but when you take the tradeoff of eliminating it, you can get a lot closer to the screen and carry it around in a usable state far more easily. I've spent a lot of time carrying around open laptops, and it's pretty unwieldy. I don't think the iPad will be revolutionary until it doesn't require a PC to sync to. It would also help if it was cheaper--cheap enough that you could have one in each room, at least. And I'm not completely convinced myself. But there are enough signs that they're onto something that I'm intrigued.
  - rimantas 17y ago
    It'd be easy to say "sure but you're a geek, you just don't see how easy to use and useful the iPad is for normal people". But I don't think it is. Sorry, but you don't see. Heck, I am a geek and I do want iPad, and I know exactly why do I want it. That's because I know what I will not be doing with it, and why "deficiencies" which were repeated over and over since Jan 27 do not matter. No, I won't be doing any programming on it, nor will I be carrying it out of my house often. But there are activities on which I spend a lot of time and for those iPad is just perfect. I used to be surprised how many geeks missed the point that iPad has IPS screen, but I just gave up. It is so easy to point what iPad does not have and miss that it does have. Just wait till you can spend some time with the device, and say meh then.

They, Xerox management, gave him a license to do so. People at PARC weren't so enthusiastic, I think.

by tewks 17y ago

They, Xerox management, gave him a license to do so. People at PARC weren't so enthusiastic, I think.

The Xerox management thought all of those things were just toys and that computers would never be anything but what they were at that moment. Reminds me of a lot of people who look at the iPad and say "meh."

catfish 17y ago
Fools rush in... FOR DRM.
axod 17y ago
Come on now. Please explain to me what is revolutionary about the iPad. It is 'meh'. It's just a big iPod touch. It's like a netbook or laptop but less useful. There's nothing revolutionary about it at all. It's a slightly slicker version of all the tablet PCs that have failed to capture significant market share for the last 10-20 years. It'd be easy to say "sure but you're a geek, you just don't see how easy to use and useful the iPad is for normal people". But I don't think it is. The form factor is just bad. Watch the video on the Apple store, and you'll see actor after actor carefully pretending that it's comfortable to sit/stand/hold this device without getting an aching hand/sore neck etc. Yes, there are applications, just like there have been for previous tablet PCs, but they're niche. Is it really that much more than the Apple Newton was 20 odd years ago? Did the Apple Newton seem revolutionary at the time? If so, why did it fail? I'd love to hear a concrete reason why the iPad is 'revolutionary'. Like a genuine reason, not just people pointing to the lone person on slashdot who called the iPod 'meh'. That doesn't count. So, please explain to me clearly, why having a laptop without a keyboard/trackpad is revolutionary.
- aresant 17y ago
  "It's like a netbook or laptop but less useful." To us less useful means less depth. To the general market less useful means less confusing. Less confusing in consumer devices = win.
  - axod 17y ago
    As I say, I disagree. It's less useful for consumers, because you can't type on it properly, you can't rest it on your lap, you can't view any flash websites, etc etc. It's the geeks that are hailing it as useful. I can't see how my kids would use an iPad, and I can't see how my mum would use an iPad.
    - anigbrowl 17y ago
      No offense axod, but you have a big anti-tablet bias, and I think it undermines your objectivity, the point that you keep repeating your anecdotal evaluation of your immediate family members not being likely adopters as if they were the median. You seem to be reasoning from an n of 3 or 4 people. I find it easy to see why Apple expects it to be popular. I may be wrong, but the (apparent) fact that lots of people are interested in buying an iPad suggests they can think of ways to use it, and seriously doubt that Apple would be investing lots of money in launching one without assuring themselves of likely demand first. Me, I would rather not buy an iPad - even though it looks like a very good product, technically - because I am increasingly put off by Apple's aggressive vertical integration and business tactics (like this patent lawsuit). But however I feel about that, I can't deny their expertise in engineering and marketing. Even if I buy a competitor's product, the price and specifications will have been influenced by Apple's offering. I feel like we (computer users) have already gone through this 'utility' barrier many times - did average consumers 'need' the mouse, the GUI, videogame consoles, color graphics, dedicated monitors (vs a TV adapter) etc.. etc.? Well, no, not as such, but it seems that people's desire for a technology often forms prior to the availability of tools that properly exploit it, even though their use cases may be inchoate. I'll give you two examples of non-computer geeks who nevertheless have use cases for a tablet, with the understanding that these too are anecdotal. One is down the street from me: the people who work at the 7-11 use an oldish Panasonic tablet computer for inventory management. they probably don't need multitouch and the software looks a bit primitive, but they seem well comfortable treating it as a digital clipboard that they can hold with one hand and operate with the other. Now, you don't need a degree to work at 7-11 or even to get your own store, just a willingness to work at a small 24-hour retail outlet. 7-11 is a mature franchise business so I don't imagine that they rolled out the use of tablets to their employees on a whim - more likely, such devices hit a sweet spot between usability and capability which proved beneficial for limiting the cost of inventory control. Another area is for creatives in a studio. I work with audio and video for a living, and for some tasks using a mouse is royal pain in the ass. There is a thriving industry in hardware control surfaces for musicians, and many of them are repurposed by 3d animators, compositors, and other video professionals because the cost of dedicated hardware for the latter is stratospheric. A general purpose device with multitouch is already a winner in this market. Cheaper ones will sell like hotcakes. Add enough of these market segments together, and you're looking at some real money.
- bphogan 17y ago
  The only thing I can say in response to this is that I see that my dad uses his iPhone to surf the web much more than he uses his computer, and he's interested in a bigger screen to do so. He's in his 60s, and he's actually not buying another desktop computer (his is 11 years old) because his iPhone does what he needs, and more, plus he's tired of viruses and spyware. (Yes, we know it's not a target yet, but a closed system does help prevent a lot of that.) I see it as a step towards hurting Dell, who makes a portion of their money selling laptops and desktops to people who really don't need them, like my parents, grandparents, other non-technical people. It's also a step towards hurting the "PC repair" industry that charges these poor folks $150 to install and run freeware antivirus tools and "double your memory". I think the lack of Flash support is going to hurt it the most, as the target market I'm describing are people who tend to use Flash a lot (think Facebook games and other online games.) The iPad is aimed at that market of people - the people who use the Internet as another vehicle for entertainment. I've seen what the iPhone has done for average people, and I think this is Apple taking that a step further. I guess I wouldn't say it's "revolutionary" but then again, I said that about the iPhone. ("it's just another phone, who cares?") And remember, it was pretty 'meh' before the app store. I could be wrong, but I think it has the potential to be pretty neat for the average person. We need a revolution in that space.
  - axod 17y ago
    Why wouldn't a netbook+ChromeOS win? I disagree @ iPhone. That was revolutionary. It was the first pocket webbrowser that actually worked well and rendered websites properly. >> "And remember, it was pretty 'meh' before the app store." Again, difference of opinion. I couldn't care less about the app store. Why would I download software approved by Apple, when I can just use the browser for most things?
    - stcredzero 17y ago
      If I were Apple, I'd love for ChromeOS and Android to win. If that's the "losing" position for Apple, then they're sitting pretty. By the time that would happen, Apple could just roll their own Android that can run legacy iPhone apps, and even have their own high-end, high-margin Apple walled garden there. Who's not sitting pretty? Microsoft. They've got to connect a Hail Mary pass with WinMo 7 to survive and stay relevant. They may do it, though.
- jsz0 17y ago
  It's the first tablet device that will have a large library of tablet-specific multi-touch software available. We've never seen that before. It's also the highest density multi-touch device we've seen on the consumer market.
- philwelch 17y ago
  The iPod touch's greatest weakness is its small size. Eliminate that and you have something you can really use for ebooks and video (and for that matter, an ebook reader and 10" portable DVD player duct-taped together already cost as much an iPad even before you throw in the digital picture frame). But having a larger landscape for multitouch apps represents a lot of potential. The greatest weaknesses of a PC are its complexity and its UI. A PC is complex enough that a novice user can either completely fuck it up or is terrified to try doing more than a limited number of tasks with it. And that's an inclusive or. PG, in 2001: "When you own a desktop computer, you end up learning a lot more than you wanted to know about what's happening inside it. ... My mother has a computer that she uses for email and for keeping accounts. About a year ago she was alarmed to receive a letter from Apple, offering her a discount on a new version of the operating system. There's something wrong when a sixty-five year old woman who wants to use a computer for email and accounts has to think about installing new operating sytems. Ordinary users shouldn't even know the words "operating system," much less "device driver" or "patch."" http://www.paulgraham.com/road.html http://www.paulgraham.com/road.html Even if you're accessing web apps, people still have to wrangle with the operating system a good deal. People need a limited device that gets out of the way and doesn't need them to administer it. And it turns out that a limited device can also make some security guarantees about running native apps, as well. The keyboard/mouse UI is pretty nice, but still a weakness in some respects. Keyboards are fast and mice let you do spacial things with a screen. Unfortunately, keyboards in most contexts have somewhat arbitrary effects ("/" means search, "command-z" means undo) so people don't use them outside of entering text, and mice are not especially fast. Both devices are also rather indirect. Multitouching a handheld device is about as fast as a keyboard and probably even more intuitive than a mouse. And the directness is unmatched. It can even reproduce maybe 70% of a keyboard just by pushing a keyboard up onto the screen. This seems obvious in retrospect now that we've had iPhones for years, but once again--the weakness of the iPhone and iPod touch is the small screen size. And in the laptop context, the keyboard and trackpad physically get in your way. Why have a touchpad which indirectly controls a cursor when you can just touch the screen? The keyboard has more use, but when you take the tradeoff of eliminating it, you can get a lot closer to the screen and carry it around in a usable state far more easily. I've spent a lot of time carrying around open laptops, and it's pretty unwieldy. I don't think the iPad will be revolutionary until it doesn't require a PC to sync to. It would also help if it was cheaper--cheap enough that you could have one in each room, at least. And I'm not completely convinced myself. But there are enough signs that they're onto something that I'm intrigued.
- rimantas 17y ago
  It'd be easy to say "sure but you're a geek, you just don't see how easy to use and useful the iPad is for normal people". But I don't think it is. Sorry, but you don't see. Heck, I am a geek and I do want iPad, and I know exactly why do I want it. That's because I know what I will not be doing with it, and why "deficiencies" which were repeated over and over since Jan 27 do not matter. No, I won't be doing any programming on it, nor will I be carrying it out of my house often. But there are activities on which I spend a lot of time and for those iPad is just perfect. I used to be surprised how many geeks missed the point that iPad has IPS screen, but I just gave up. It is so easy to point what iPad does not have and miss that it does have. Just wait till you can spend some time with the device, and say meh then.