When the iPad was released a couple of weeks ago, I, like everyone else, shunned it. It couldn't multitask. It used the iPhone operating system and not OSX. It didn't have a webcam. It was going to cost at least £400. In fact, because I couldn't think of any way to fit it into my to my everyday hardware arsenal, I merely cast it aside as a huge opportunity lost by Apple.
And then an interesting thing happened. Last weekend I went to my have dinner with my parents. During the obligatory "how's work" conversation, my mother quite excitably asked, "Darling! have you heard about the new iPad? They sound marvellous. I think I might get one!". After picking myself up from the floor, I looked at her in disbelief. This was my own mother, who, despite her very best efforts, is incapable of working the DVD player, only watches the TV for Attenborough at Christmas and found the transition from Outlook Express to Gmail completely baffling.
I tried to make sense of this sudden uptake of the latest technology. Granted, her interpretation of the iPad review in the Daily Telegraph was positive and my sister did buy her a Nintendo DS recently, but I still couldn't fathom how it could be relevant to her everyday life. Then she told me - iBook. My parents love to read, and whilst my generation absorb information via blogs, tweets and other online media, they are from a generation where their primary source of information comes from broadsheets, Radio 4 and books.
My father is an avid collector. The Cambray family house is bursting with books, so the thought of hundreds of the little buggers neatly stored in a plank of plastic a fraction of the size of a lever-arch files appealed. And whilst they were at it, why bother with one of those "Funny little Sony thingies" whilst the iPad does everything else as well and "All for such a reasonable price"?
And then it dawned upon me. I don't want one. My boss doesn't want one. I suspect because you are reading the blog of a digital agency, YOU don't want one. But there are millions of baby boomers who are too scared to do new things on their computers yet quite like the idea of a shiny new toy to hold their hand. These people couldn't care less about multi-tasking, never use a web-cam and couldn't think of why they would ever wish to have Twitter updates whilst checking their email and listening to Spotify. They don't know what Twitter or Spotify actually are. In fact, they would probably be sold on the fact that they will not be interrupted by all these alerts whilst trying to read a book or read a newspaper article online.
And so in my mind all us geeks have - to be quite frank - been a little arrogant. We have decreed that this product is a waste of time based on the fact that we don't want one. I think that Apple have actually done pretty well in finding a new market for a new technology. People have been banging on for years and years about creating products for this largely affluent generation. My degree dissertation was about the inclusive design of domestic cookers which, as boring as it sounds, did raise questions about the design of products for anyone who had anything less that perfect motor and cognitive ability.
And while all these silver surfers scurry across to the Apple store to get their paws on one, we as web developers (ah yes ... here comes the segue!) need to wise up. The iPad is going to completely change how we build user interfaces for the web - for the first time we are going to be considering people who have a full size touch screen - where a mouse 'hover' status is useless, where the website width will have to stretch when the iPad is turned by 90 degress, and it will be as easy to scroll horizontally as it will be vertically. To illustrate my point, someone who works in the same office as me was getting pretty excited about an AIR application used in France at a ticket machine. Imagine using that with a mouse...it would be a nightmare! But with a decent touch screen all these new possibilities spring to life. And no, you wouldn't need flash to make it possible!
And that's why it's going to change our game. And I can't wait!
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Xanthe says: