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As soon as we see people getting work done on the Kindle Fire, I'll grant you that. If your work involves a lot of writing, then the iPad isn't an obvious boon
by spiralganglion 15y ago
As soon as we see people getting work done on the Kindle Fire, I'll grant you that.
If your work involves a lot of writing, then the iPad isn't an obvious boon [1]. But if you can do your work more efficiently by treating data and actions as symbols, the iPad is just overflowing with potential, much of it already being realized. Musicians, artists, animators, logicians, teachers, doctors, researchers; the list of professions offered new ways to work is getting longer and longer. To these people, the iPad can be life-changing.
I don't think the Kindle Fire will change anything. It's just not in Amazon's DNA to make a product focused on anything other than buying and consuming content — and there's never been a shortage of ways to buy things.
[1] http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2011/09/doable-or-not-my-experience-with-working-for-ars-on-the-ipad.ars/ http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2011/09/doable-or-not-my-e...
- jgmatpdx 15y agoLogicians? I'm not seeing the iPad app to write math papers without, y'know, writing.
- spiralganglion 15y agoLogic is a game of symbols and relationships. The iPad is the best tool I've ever seen for working with symbols and relationships.
- jgmatpdx 15y agoBeing a practicing mathematician means generating and publishing results. I am interested to see your iPad app for diagonalization results or computability proofs.
- zheng 15y agoHave you ever seen a whiteboard? I do anything remotely logic based on one.
- jgmatpdx 15y agoMy whiteboard even has a fantastic multi-user interaction system!
- jeffreymcmanus 15y agoThe Kindle is not for getting work done. It is for consuming content.
- ugh 15y agoThat’s the point.
- jgmatpdx 15y agoThe potentially interesting question is whether the iPad is actually good for non-consumption tasks. All the faculty in my research group purchase Apple products, and most of them are wandering about with iPads. They're all quite happy to use them for reading papers, reading email, etc. However, none of them, despite having been using the devices for some time (close to year for some) even feel comfortable using them for technical email, let alone writing lectures, presentations, or papers. Again, I don't know whether the software to make those tasks workable _could_ exist; I simply have experiential evidence that it does not yet.
- ASDASDSDA 15y agoMusicians, artists, animators, ??? Any serious professional will have a maxed out task specific equipment. logicians?? Lol I take it that you are not being serious! teachers, doctors, researchers! haha Doctors need to enter lots of information and prefer a laptop / proper keyboard. As far as researchers are concerned any serious researcher will be either using legacy software or cutting edge software that runs on specialized machine. And oh if you actually leave your hipster utopia you will realize that teachers get paid peanuts. please iPad is a toy and kindle fire is a cheaper and much more affordable toy.
- alex_c 15y ago>Doctors need to enter lots of information and prefer a laptop / proper keyboard. Any reference for that?
- jgmatpdx 15y agoI would also be mildly skeptical about that claim; I think there have been some fairly successful uses of custom UIs in medicine.
- gnaffle 15y agoWell, an anti-reference: The (admittedly few) doctors I know enter simple keywords into some predetermined fields - perfect for an iPad. For anything longer they record a message that someone else transcribes.
- spiralganglion 15y agoI have made a living as a musician, as a 3d animator, and as a software dev. My parents are both teachers. I did a lot of research in my University days. In all of these areas, I can see the potential for multitouch-based applications that go far, far beyond what we're currently seeing, or have ever seen on a traditional mouse/keyboard computer. In fact, in my current line of work as a developer, I'm pursuing these very things. If you're in a line of work where you're attempting to push the boundaries of what's possible with a computer, I find it hard to believe that you aren't fully aware of the realized and unrealized potential of multitouch devices. Just because the iPad feels like a toy right now, doesn't mean it's limited to that sort of usage for all people, from now on. I just don't see Amazon playing any role in pushing user-facing technology forward. Silk is brilliant, but the Fire doesn't really enable anything that wasn't previously possible, and I don't see that changing. The iPad did.
- bad_user 15y agoTo me the e-ink Kindle is life-changing ... it's what I wanted since 10 years ago, an affordable e-ink reader and access to the biggest library of books on earth, just one click away.
- CJefferson 15y agoYou mention researchers and logicians using the iPad. Can you give any examples? I tried using the iPad, but the lack of support for LaTeX or papers in svn, git or mercurial repositories made it completely unusable for anything resembling work.
- alttag 15y agoIn my field (Information Systems), most papers are served as PDFs. My advisor has switched almost entirely to his iPad for most work, especially when reading/annotating articles. Most journals in my field require Word docs, and don't use LaTeX. It's been my observation that the field is filled with business people who use computers, and relatively fewer computer people who ended up in business. Sure, there are some of each, but the former seem to outnumber the latter.
- omaranto 15y agoIt seems useful to mathematicians: they spend most of their time reading, thinking and writing. An iPad can help with the reading, which is one activity out of the three!