Showing posts with label ipad. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ipad. Show all posts

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

The iPad is an appliance not a computer & you should be happy about that













Picture this.





You've spent ten straight hours hunched over the laptop/desktop at work, hammering out code/composing a TPS report or whatever it is that you do at work that involves the use of a computer.





You've reached home. Now, you settle into the couch & want some relief. You pick up your home laptop/netbook to read a Dilbert comic strip to see the humor in your incredibly obtuse manager or the nefarious cost cutting.





Instead, you see the Virus Scanner reporting 3 new viruses found. Or that your disk has run out of space & needs defragmenting. Or, there are 16 new updates in the OS & you need to patch the OS. Now.





Tell me truthfully, do you look forward to this?





You maybe a Unix hacker by the day, but hey, this is entertainment! Do you tinker with the frequency bands in your TV everyday? Do you try to optimize the sound bitrate in your stereo? No? 





I've been using an iPod Touch since November 2009. I've been using a home desktop & an office laptop during the same period. When I want to play a racing game or quickly check my email on my iPod, I have yet to face a scenario like the one mentioned above.





And I'm glad about that, however much I may love tinkering with technology.





So, if the iPad is a 'dumb' device that doesn't allow installing software and isn't letting you hack away at it's internals, why bother? It's a radio, a TV, a car. Use it for a few hours and forget about it. 





Enough said.

Monday, February 1, 2010

Why the iPad is for old people? (Not the diaper, the device)

Various tech pundits have said that, the newly released iPad is for 'older people'. http://gizmodo.com/5458855/the-apple-ipad-is-for-old-people.

I'm trying to hazard a guess as to why that is so.

You see I attended this talk recently. http://www.upabangalore.in/mwiki/mediawiki-1.15.1/index.php?title=Jan_2010_talk. One of the speakers outlined the concept of Personas in design. These are dummy people, with character & quirks & needs & wants that designers setup & then test against. 

Who is the Persona numero uno at Apple? One Mr.Steven P Jobs. It is anecdotal that Apple builds what 'Steve wakes up and wants looking at his mirror'. Any surprise then, that the iPad makes the oldies happier than the rest? Or is supposed to? 

Do I buy the fact that the iPad is for oldies? I'm not sure I do. But this seems to lend credence to the beliefs of those who do.