Since its launch in 2010, the iPad has suffered something of an identity crisis with marketers and designers. Both parties have been equally perplexed as to exactly where the device fits within the consumer electronics spectrum.
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“How should we position iPad in our business strategies?”
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“Do our clients need iPad-specific solutions?”
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“How should we sell iPad-based products, and to whom?”
It’s clear that iPad has been difficult to place within the market. So, for better or worse, iPad has up until now been loosely grouped under the umbrella term “mobile”.
A little history
Before iPad’s launch, Apple had already begun fundamentally altering consumer expectations for portable electronic devices. Apple’s touch-screen initiative with the original iPhone, launched in 2007, completely changed the way users thought about their mobile phones. No longer constrained by buttons or numbers, touch-screens now afforded users a much richer – and therefore more valuable – mobile experience.
Instead of just the top half or so of a device presenting the user with information (the lower half typically being a myriad of buttons, some fairly anonymous until after repeated prodding), now the whole surface of the unit could be used to present and interact with information.
But more than that, your phone wasn’t a phone any more. You could use it to listen to music, watch your favourite television shows and films, play games (that were actually worth playing), and do a myriad other things.
Critically, you could browse the web. The actual, real, normal web—instead of some horribly broken calculator’s artistic impression of the web, or that god-awful, massively pared-back WAP rubbish of yore. [shudder]
Suddenly everything you’d seen in science-fiction films, comics and TV for the last 40 years was here, and Apple had made it real—hurray! So successful, logical, and – essentially – simple was this approach to user interface design, that Apple started applying it to their burgeoning range of iPods.
Starting with the typical iPod unit, Apple made a touch-screen version almost identical to the iPhone. Later, Apple copied this approach again, in September 2010, when they launched the new iPod Nano with a full touch-screen, albeit much smaller and perfectly square in appearance. [Up to this point, all touch devices from Apple had employed a strict 4:3 aspect ratio; I expect the majority of future Apple devices will too.]
The iPad cometh
This approach seemed to be working quite well for Apple. Users loved the experiences they had, the press lapped up and reprinted every statistic about Apple they could, and it was very good for Apple’s share price.
So, on 27th January, 2010, Steve Jobs unveiled Apple’s biggest, most ambitious touch-screen device yet; the much-anticipated iPad. And what could it do? Actually a fair bit less than your typical iPhone, as it goes, and a lot less than the significantly cheaper, similarly-spec’d netbooks and laptops littering the market at the time.
But that’s entirely missing the point, no matter how true the sentiment might be. Netbooks had indeed been commercially popular for the previous couple of years prior to the launch of the iPad. They allowed you to have a desktop experience in a very portable form-factor. You could browse the web like you could on your normal computer, you send and receive emails, write documents, tweak spreadsheets, create presentations, and even play the same games you had on your home computer.
Why iPad isn’t a netbook
But was this approach to netbooks actually a good thing? When consumers want something ever-more convenient and portable, why saddle the experience with all the baggage you get with a typical home computer?
Many netbooks did – and still do – run on Windows XP, a decade-old version of “the operating system everyone loves to hate”. And if your netbook wasn’t running Windows, then it was very likely running Linux, an intimidatingly powerful and geek-centric piece of software, originally designed for academic institutions or the running of business-critical analysis systems.
This ‘kitchen sink’ approach to portable computing worked for some users, but certainly not everybody. While it answered the need for a powerful and portable computing experience, it clumsily brought with it all the conventions of a desktop computer as well. With the average netbook battery life pegged at roughly 3 hours, this meant you couldn’t be truly portable—you’d have to take your charger with you.
Netbooks are also quite cramped by necessity, with compressed screens and kiddy-sized keyboards. So not the most comfortable of things to use for an extended period of time. Worse, the way a netbook has to be unfolded – just like a laptop – means it’s still quite a bulky device to use on a train or while you’re sitting on your sofa.
All of which meant the only real benefit of a netbook was marginally improved portability over a laptop.
What iPad is
iPad is arguably the ultimate portable computing experience. It has a large display, with the same sort of resolution you can expect from a netbook or small laptop, but without the added bulk of a keyboard. It has complete, unrestricted access to the web, and provides perhaps the best online experience of any consumer electronics device yet.
When you’re browsing on iPad, online text is large, clear and legible, just like on a desktop computer, making it much more comfortable to use for longer periods of time. Articles are easier to scan, read and page through than on a pokey smart phone screen—even compared to iPhone 4, with its eye-meltingly detailed “Retina Display”.
But that’s only half the story with iPad, and the second half is what likely has a lot of marketing people running in tight circles, looking slightly panicked...
iPad can run apps
It’s true. After the runaway success of the App Store on iPhone, Apple has made the same technology available within a portable computing experience via iPad.
But does that make iPad a mobile platform? Granted, in many ways it is remarkably similar to iPhone. But let’s consider what actually defines “mobile” not only as a user experience, but as a user need.
Defining “mobile”
So just what is “mobile”? Mobile is:
- always on
- always connected
- ubiquitous
- immediate
- focussed
- compact
- swift
A modern smart phone, like iPhone for example, answers these needs by being small enough to fit in your pocket, but powerful enough to undertake all manner of small tasks quickly and with a minimum of fuss.
Habitually having that device with you at all times is what defines mobile, both as a concept and as a user need. Whether your phone is stuffed in your jeans, tucked away inside your coat, or in your handbag, you instinctively reach for it numerous times a day. It’s ubiquitous and helpful—but only as helpful as it needs to be and nothing more.
The best smart phones, by Apple or any other company, are the ones that let you solve a problem as quickly as possible. Making a call, replying to a text message, reading an email, snapping a quick photo, or alleviating five minutes of boredom with a quick game of something.
The best smart phones enable you to save time – in what I call “micro-bursts” – chiefly by accelerating communication. Or they let you make use of otherwise “dead” moments, when you must wait before you can continue your current task or errand—such as checking your meeting schedule while waiting to board a train. Your phone is instinctively in your hand as soon as you think of it, and you solve the problem.
Immediacy and focus are key to the mobile experience; they’re what users demand from mobile—just enough and no more. “Help me do this one thing right now so I can get back to the important stuff.”
Mobile is simultaneously passive and active. Modern smart phone users are always online. Digital citizenship is defining who we are, as both people and consumers. We expect mobile to enable and augment what we do, day-to-day; quickly, effectively, silently, constantly.
Drawing conclusions
iPad fundamentally isn’t designed to do the things “mobile” does—just those things and no more. Neither are netbooks, laptops, or desktop computers. They don’t answer the needs of mobile, because they aren’t intended for these use cases. Smart phones are.
Conversely, smart phones aren’t designed to be used for extended periods of time. In these cases the battery quickly runs flat, and you’ll likely feel uncomfortable reading from such a small display for more than a few minutes. Portable computers are, though, and iPad is the best portable computer available right now.
iPad combines the comfort and utility of a portable computer, with the simplicity and elegance of a modern smart phone’s interface (i.e. touch-screen), along with a battery that will last you all day. iPad also brings with it the choice and empowerment of the App Store, allowing the iPad experience to be customised to meet everybody’s portable computing needs.
So what is iPad?
It should be clear now that iPad simply isn’t “mobile”, and to continue branding it as such fundamentally misses the purpose of the device. More than that, it fundamentally ignores the needs of its users—the very people you might expect to buy your iPad apps.
iPad is a new kind of portable computer; the Apptop.