about the iPad
I’ve now spent 24 hours with the iPad. Everyone keeps asking what I think of it, so I’m formalizing my thoughts and posting them here:
The device:
It’s pretty. This is no shock, coming from Apple, though I do find myself impressed with the quality of the display every time I fire it up.
The battery is good. Pogue said 12 hours of straight video play. Haven’t tried that myself but at the rate things are going, I’d believe it.
Downside: it does not charge when plugged into my mac (older machine) and the cord isn’t really long enough to plug into wall and continue playing with it, so you do have to take a break when you want to charge it. Fortunately the battery seems good enough that that shouldn’t be a problem.
The thing is heavier than a kindle and holding it for a while, while not painful, can get awkward. I got a case. I’d recommend it.
The content:
The Apple apps (mail, calendar, etc) are top notch. They feel like they are the full incarnation of what the iPhone version wanted to be. Disappointingly, Apple does not provide a native chat application (still) which feels like a missed opportunity for the device – perhaps that will come in the next OS.
The third party apps I’ve tried so far are also quite impressive. There does seem to be a thinness around the offerings at the moment though, particularly among the free ones. Also, there is no Facebook app, which seems weird to me. I’ve been much less active on Facebook because of that.
File handling is an annoyance. I can’t download a PDF from the web to view later (I can bookmark it and view it in safari – but there is no way to get the file in an offline state – and no way to mark up the PDF unless it’s imported into Pages – which I can only do if I email myself). Access to Mobile Me iDisk (available on the iPhone) is also noticeably absent.
One would presume the apps will catch up as they begin approving in the iTunes Store again this week.
The experience:
The thing moves fast. I imagine that the next iPhone will also process this quickly and finally we will have a powerful smartphone instead of just a smartphone. The apps all load quickly, video runs beautifully, the speaker is good enough quality to watch tv shows with.
Most importantly though, is the lack of multitasking. This will upset power users, but I found myself consistently more relaxed as I was doing only one thing at a time instead of the usual 4 or 5. I wonder if this will help combat ADD overall – I doubt it.
(I should also add, that while typing is obviously not as good as with a keyboard, it is lightyears better than with the iPhone. I can type at near keyboard pace on the iPad screen.)
So what?
Ya, I agree with the sentiment that this device is more about consuming than creating. But I’m okay with that. It’s been a pleasure to consume with it so far and I do now understand the middle zone between the phone and the laptop that this device will serve – I was skeptical about it before.
The verdict: if you like toys and consume a lot of media, it’s worth the add. But yes, there will likely be a slightly cheaper, better one in 12 months. (That said, this does not seem to suffer from the bugginess or rough first outing effects that iPhone 1 did – so don’t make that the excuse.) I like mine, and it’s been an excellent couch companion for the past day.
This post was written from the iPad.
Feel free to ask specific questions in the comments and I’ll do my best to answer.
the content wedge
In corporate strategy, theorists like to talk about the “wedge,” or the gap between cost of goods and a customer’s willingness to pay. This means that the company with the most sustainable strategy has the lowest cost of goods and the customers with the highest willingness to pay. (That’s a simplification, but bear with me).
The same could be said of content, if it weren’t for a complicating factor called quality. Whereas other industries have found ways to reduce the cost of goods without reducing the quality, content quality is still tied very closely to cost. (If you give a film student a prosumer camera and a modest budget, the discerning audience will still be able to target the work as sub-par when screened alongside a professionally produced film involving 35mm film cameras, etc.)
Recently, though, things have started to change. Technological advances have enabled the creation of high-quality content that rivals that of Hollywood. The question then remains, how long before a new system, a new content producing apparatus, springs forward to break the old-standing business model?
You can see some of this type of work happening around the web already. My friend Nathan Heleine of Crush + Lovely has been involved with this project called Fifty People, One Question. The videos are pretty astounding both from an editorial perspective and from a physical quality perspective. The photography is done by Benjamin Reece of The Deltree and it is just astounding (more of his stuff on his site). Worth checking out any of the links if you have time.
Projects like this are the future of moving image content.
bank issues report on teen media consumption: sample size 1, bank’s teenage intern
This article on Bloomberg this week caught my attention for its claim: “Morgan Stanley Intern Says Teens Don’t Twitter, Prefer Events”
For those that might not know, large financial institutions publish large amounts of research as part of their product offerings (they both sell this research and use it internally to inform invesment decisions). This report, published on a topic I care about, purports (according to the article):
Teenagers spend money on game consoles, movies and music concerts while ignoring newspapers, a Morgan Stanley report said, citing Matthew Robson. Robson should know: He is a 15-year-old intern at the securities firm.
The schoolboy was asked by the bank’s European media analysts to report on what he and his peers look for in the information-entertainment industries. What they got was one of the “clearest and most thought-provoking insights we have seen,” the analysts said.
“Teenagers are consuming more media, but in entirely different ways and are almost certainly not prepared to pay for it,” Morgan Stanley analysts Edward Hill-Wood, Patrick Wellington and Julien Rossi said in a note, citing Robson.
Call me crazy, but I had two reactions to this:
- duh. (on the last part. not sure I buy that “teens don’t twitter”)
- are banks in the habit of publishing research that is anecdotally single sourced?
san francisco treat
I arrived in San Francisco on an early flight from Chicago this morning. Every time I come to this city, I find myself liking it more and more. Maybe it’s the weather (it’s beautiful), maybe it’s the scenery (it’s beautiful), maybe it’s the fact that one in three people on my flight had an iphone.
I downloaded the wordpress for iPhone app today. So it’s possible this post is just an excuse to play with that. Ya.
a word about twitter
I’ve been spending a lot of effort lately trying to explain Twitter and/or justify my enjoyment of Twitter to people. And while it’s hard to explain “microblogging” to people who don’t quite grasp the purpose of blogging to begin with, let me just say this about Twitter:
Tonight, while I’ve been sitting here studying for next weekend’s Finance final (zzz…), I’ve been tracking the progress of 1) the NBA Finals Game 5, 2) the Tonys, and 3) the US Open (major putt by Tiger Woods no doubt) via my friends on Twitter (one of whom is actually at the Tonys). Being able to watch 3 major events, in real time, while being 100% focused on a textbook, has been pretty sweet.
And while I’m sure this doesn’t help any of those naysayers out there… this is another one of the things I find fascinatingly useful about Twitter.
