I’m considering the possibility of getting an iPad.
Do not panic - I have not become an Apple fanboy. Yet.
However, the idea of getting something that just works — something that turns on right out of the box without any particular need for customization or much of any setup — appeals to me. Perhaps something with a truly intuitive interface, a simple way to download programs, and just the right number of software choices. Something elegant and simple, dependable, durable and resilient, something I can reasonably expect not to crash more than once in a blue moon.
Something that works.
Flashback
Back in the day, tech writers used the toaster metaphor, namely that — ideally — technology shouldn’t be any harder to figure out than your toaster, and it should occupy the same niche in your life: a device that turns on when you want it to, and does exactly what you want it to do, every time.
That’s pretty much been the Turing Test of home computing, i.e. a lofty standard that functions as a useful rhetorical construct, but which is never really going to be attained in the near future.
Except, we’re getting awfully close now, and Apple is leading the charge.
The new iToaster 4G
Toasters Ahoy!
I used to consider it essential to have a PC with a decent engine under the hood. I told myself I needed the horsepower to run all those expensive programs required to get my job done.
Except that now those programs are going to the Cloud. And since I’m less code-monkey and more manager, I need those programs less and less. That means bye-bye big-ass desktop, maybe even ’see ya’ to my laptop, and hey - iPad: you’re lookin’ awful good….
But the main reason for the change in thinking is that I’m sick of giving a damn about all the stuff under the hood. I don’t want to have to give a crap about all the pop-ups that Windows Vista throws at me. I don’t want to have to care about the registry, cleaning it, defragging the hard drive, setting endless preferences, restoring data, figuring out how to sync devices, conflicts, blah, blah, blah, blah. I just want something that works. I don’t need infinite customizability and extensability, not nearly as much as I once thought. I don’t need 1,000 horsepower (computationally speaking). I just need a device that gets the job done.
Ceci n’est pas un computer
Apple got religion (Church of Jobs) and figured something out years ago that probably won’t sink in at Microsoft for another four or five: computers aren’t computers anymore. They have finally become appliances. The experience finally matters more than the hardware.
Ceci n’est pas une pipe.
Not a pipe. Not a computer, either.
So, if I no longer need a computer in the 80s/90s/00s sense of the word, why buy one? Why go through the hassle (and no Mac, you’re not immune to this criticism either) of set-up and installation and maintenance and all the other crap that goes along with that? Why not just get a simple, stripped-down easy-to-use appliance that does what you need it to do?
I think I just might.
Ceci est un commentaire.
Being a late-adopter, I’m not yet sold on the iPad, as too much can go wrong: consider the iPhone 4.
Also, with novel formats, too much can change in too short a time, while we all sort out what should “just work” with what. Are these basically keyboardless netbooks? What happens when we get a new Wi-Fi standard? What will I look like when I try to photograph someone with this thing?
On the other hand, now that Moore’s Law is finally hitting some quantum roadblocks, we’re seeing a lot less change “under the hood” as you put it. More fundamentally, however, consumers are realizing that there are more things that don’t need to improve. Word processing was first: MS Word 2007 isn’t all that different from MS Word 6, which I used in the 1990s. I type. I format. I add pictures and links sometimes — and that’s all.
So, what’s next for saturated needs? Do you need a webcam with enough resolution to steal your retina patterns? enough hard-drive space to hold your genome? How many PowerPoint backgrounds will it take to cloud the fact that my presentation is digital Xanax?
Maybe Magritte was onto something: the representation of a thing is not the thing itself. But as we strive to define our digital lives, we may find that we don’t really want to live “in silico” … yet. A true representation would take a lot of bandwidth.
Saturated needs? Sounds like something angioplasty takes care of.
I heard someone once say that Word reached its peak of usability sometime in the early 90s around version 5.1. I’m not sure I disagree. Is bolting a web editor onto a word processor useful, or the equivalent of adding pontoons to your car, and taking it out into the bay to see if it’ll float? I dunno.
In the end I guess you & I have to balance the < --BUSINESS TERM ALERT--> return on investment < --BUSINESS TERM ALERT--> of getting something simple vs the disruption of the new.
And you will look like a dork when you try to photograph someone with it. You will look like you’re body scanning them at the airport. There ain’t no other way.