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I just got back from one of our local Apple Stores and the iPads on dis­play had quite a throng around them.  I didn’t check, but sus­pect that they are prob­a­bly  sold out for today. My visit got me think­ing about how to explain why I think the iPad is both so suc­cess­ful (and this is not just a belief, it’s a fact: Apple has already sold a mil­lion of them, and this past Fri­day they first went on sale in the rest of the world, (includ­ing here in Canada), and why Apple has once again filled a need that peo­ple didn’t know they had in the first place.

First, How to Define It

In describ­ing what the iPad is, it’s easy to get caught up in what it doesn’t have, since that may be what strikes one at first; There’s no key­board, no mouse or track­pad, no mon­i­tor stand, and all of the rest of that stuff that goes along with the expe­ri­ence of using a com­puter or con­nect­ing to the Inter­net.  That also includes a desk or table, chair, mouse pad (or with the advent of opti­cal mice, at least a sur­face for mov­ing the mouse on) or the var­i­ous power, video and net­work cabling, exter­nal hard drive or opti­cal (DVD) drive. There’s also a lot of upkeep and main­te­nance that has been taken away from the iPad;  there’s no anti-virus pack­age that you might be reminded to get shortly after start­ing it up, no place to get soft­ware except the built-in iTunes store. You don’t have to worry about defrag­ment­ing a hard disk (there is none — it’s solid state mem­ory) or even emp­ty­ing a trash can on the screen to free up disk space. While all of this does get one closer to the unique­ness of the iPad, it cir­cles around the issue some­what, which I’ll get into in a bit.

It’s also com­mon to define the iPad as just a large iPod Touch or iPhone, since those are devices we are already famil­iar with. The fact that Apple chose to use a very sim­i­lar oper­at­ing sys­tem and launch­ing screen to the one on those devices only serves to bol­ster the opin­ion that the iPad is merely a larger ver­sion of these other gad­gets, some­thing I’ve heard espe­cially from peo­ple already famil­iar with those exist­ing prod­ucts. I think this is an incor­rect assess­ment, sim­ply because there are activ­i­ties and media that are obvi­ously far more suited to the larger form fac­tor (like watch­ing movies) than the smaller ones. A wall clock is not merely a large wrist­watch. It’s a com­pletely dif­fer­ent, but related time­keep­ing object. But again, I think this is look­ing at the wrong thing.

To para­phrase the philoso­pher Lud­wig Wittgen­stein, don’t look for the word, look for the use. Rather than try and define the iPad by what it is lack­ing or what it appears to be based on, define it by how it’s used. It’s here, I think, that you get to the really inter­est­ing and excit­ing thing about the iPad, which is the user model, or the total­ity of the expe­ri­ence under which it’s used.

Many of the most rev­o­lu­tion­ary tech­no­log­i­cal advances are ones that embrace a new user model. Wi Fi and lap­tops freed peo­ple from being teth­ered to a sin­gle office or desk. The new 3G net­works and hard­ware to con­nect to them on a Net­book allow one to be con­nected to the Inter­net not just in a Café with a local wi fi access point but per­haps sit­ting out­side, by a bab­bling brook.

The iPhone’s size and weight meant that you didn’t have to be sit­ting down to use it. You could be wait­ing in line, walk­ing, or sit­ting  in a seat on the bus or a car. In fact, the iPad is the first com­puter  that is almost intended to be used while slouch­ing. It’s not a desk­top or lap­top;  it’s a lounge­top! The idea that a com­puter is not nec­es­sar­ily for work (the Desk­top and Lap­top com­put­ers are osten­si­bly for that pur­pose) or for com­mu­ni­ca­tion (all of the above plus the smart­phone or PDA  - Per­sonal Dig­i­tal Assis­tant, a term coined by another Apple CEO —  plus phone) leaves the iPad a com­puter for casual use, mainly media-consumption with some email and web surf­ing. One could cer­tainly do work on an iPad, and no doubt, some peo­ple will ded­i­cate them­selves to using it for their work tasks, but the iPad is first and fore­most, the first com­puter designed to be used while a user is sit­ting back com­fort­ably. That’s prob­a­bly the big (if not one of the biggest) deal, in my opinion.

The lack of all of those other items (key­board, mouse, exter­nal drive, cabling) meant that there is less to dis­tract the user from the touch­screen and the con­tent dis­played on it. Peo­ple often describe the expe­ri­ence of using an iPad as qual­i­ta­tively dif­fer­ent; that there is no longer ‘some­thing’ in the way, between them and the Inter­net. While the day has not yet arrived where we ‘jack in’ directly to the Inter­net, the iPad comes a step closer to that con­sen­sual hal­lu­ci­na­tion.

The iPad as Har­bin­ger of a new Age of Human Con­trol Interfaces

It’s even more inter­est­ing to take note of the fact that Steve Jobs con­ceived of the iPad first, and then real­ized that they could use a smaller ver­sion, with some of the scrolling behav­ior, as a way of build­ing a tele­phone and inter­net device/iPod. The pure idea, that of a sim­ple, flat, sheet of glass that dis­plays con­tent and inter­acts with the user was the orig­i­nal idea. You could put that foun­da­tion under any other gad­get. Peo­ple will now expect the iPad/iPhone touch­screen inter­face with it’s com­bi­na­tion of mim­icry of phys­i­cal scrolls and eas­ily changed col­lec­tion of but­tons or con­trols depend­ing on the con­text as the default user inter­face for any num­ber of other tech­nolo­gies. Your car will have a small iPad screen built into the dash (some­one has already installed one, accord­ing to one of the tech blogs). You’ll set your ther­mo­stat or fade your lights with one of these glass inter­faces, and you’ll pro­gram your microwave, dish­washer, or even toaster with one, once the tech­nol­ogy becomes cheap enough to use every­where.
By jet­ti­son­ing the clut­ter and encum­brances of com­put­ing, the iPad pulls the rest of the world into an intel­li­gent and software-driven set of con­trols. Phys­i­cal knobs, along with raised phys­i­cal but­tons, will only be used where absolutely nec­es­sary. As for the rest, we all Pad.