LIVEdigitally

Monthly Archives: April 2010

Two Weeks Later: Why I'm Keeping my iPad

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I purchased an iPad on day one (roughly minute 3), without much assurance as to how or why I’d use it, or even if it would be a “keeper” in my digital lifestyle.  Here’s a recap of my feelings over the past two weeks:

Day one.
Let’s be honest, the first day of any new toy is either “wow this is awesome” or “gosh I’m disappointed”.  Most products don’t get well-tested in their first few hours of use, and it’s generally hard to evaluate the real-world practicality of any device.  For example, a digital camera will take good pictures, but you might not try it in a fast-action setting; similarly a GPS device will get you to your first destination, but you won’t evaluate how rapidly it finds the signal when you are lost up in Tahoe.  My day one was a lot of fun.  I didn’t really “do anything” with the iPad, other than try downloading stuff, typing on the keyboard, doodling in one of the (way too many) doodle apps.  Good times.

Week one.
Within three days I had sync’ed my email, contacts, and calendar to the device, and all worked quite smoothly.  I copied some photos, videos of the kids, some Arrested Development episodes, and some music from my library.  I also experienced my first real “use” of iTunes as a sync platform – it’s okay, but has some bizarre shortcomings that I was quite surprised about.  I downloaded a few apps (all free ones, didn’t want to buy anything yet and still haven’t bought one yet to this day actually),  played with them, kept some, deleted others.

Most of my time in week one was spent using the device in three settings (well, kinda four – read below)

  1. On the bus
    Media device: Watched videos, wrote a blog post, listened to podcasts
  2. At the office
    “Accessory” computer to my iMac:  Mostly light email, calendaring, some Harbor Master.
  3. At home
    Laptop replacement: light-to-moderate email, Web surfing, lots more Harbor Master.
  4. Demo to others
    My fourth scenario was simply showing the iPad to anyone around – lots of inquisitive folks wanting to see it in use. I wish I was getting a commission.

Week two.
The second week of use was my true “now how do I feel” week with the iPad.  Was it actually better/easier/more convenient than my MacBook?  Did I really want to carry this on the bus or other places? Would a murse fit into my lifestyle okay (separate post of iPad cases & sleeves coming)?

The above answers were all “yes”es, and more.  The only three uses of my MacBook last week were: watch NHL GameCenter (Go Habs!), sync and backup digital pictures, and charge/sync content to my iPad.  For literally everything else I used my iPad in lieu of the MacBook.  And not only did I use it, I found myself preferring it for most casual use.  But then this weekend got even more interesting.

On two different occasions this weekend (at a movie theater and while touring farms North of San Francisco) we had the iPad handy to look up long lists of content.  To be perfectly clear, we opted to carry an iPad rather than print out Web pages.  This was a conscious choice, and not in any way for “show off” factor (don’t worry – that was accomplished through plenty of other methods).  It was just an easy way to bring content along with us AND have our calendars AND have email history AND have contacts/address book information.  Things we obviously could do with smartphones (but generally choose not to), paper (ugh), or laptops.  But I’d *never* throw my laptop in the trunk on a day trip – something that just felt natural with the iPad.

It ain’t all kool-aid!
There are certainly flaws with the iPad.  In fact, my evernote-based list of likes/dislikes actually has more entries on the dislike list (future blog post).  It is, unquestionably, about the least ergonomic device I’ve used (the lap-pad pics from their ads are great, but radically unrealistic).   The lack of even simple multi-tasking (mail + calendar anyone?) can be annoying.  They could even take a cue out of Android and include a “back” button that spans multiple apps.  More on this in a future post.  But most importantly…

It’s not a replacement for any computer.  Just some.
As much as I believe the iPad has major impact in regards to light/casual/home computing, I don’t think most households could get by with “only” an iPad.  The lack of ability to effectively handle one’s digital camera needs is a “killer feature” for having a computer.  Further, no businessman could possibly exist on the iPad alone, though it’s an amazing complement to one.  I will say that I believe mail on the iPad vastly outshines any other non-computer device, specifically including BlackBerries, and that’s an important piece of ground for Apple to break.

But it is game-changing, and almost definitely not a bread machine.
I like having the iPad around.  I like turning it on, using it, then knowing it’s still there. It feels like everything the original PalmPilot put into my hands (though unfortunately not my pockets), only in context of computing and the Internet in 2010. I believe my use will only increase, and intend to start purchasing apps now.  It’s probably the most interesting digital accessory one can purchase, and unquestionably dabbles in “computer turf”.  I thoroughly enjoy using it, and find that it is helpful (not harmful) to overall productivity.  Except, of course, when I play Harbor Master.

Apple to Developers: Shall We Play A Game?

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Apple announced new MacBook Pros today, and I think Michael Gartenberg addresses about 40% of the importance with his post on it.  The other 60% (maybe more), in my opinion, is about gaming.

Gaming’s long been a thorn in the side of Mac users.  In a previous era the Mac platform represented only the most miniscule of computer purchasing, and even today it’s just a fraction of all computers sold.  That is, until you look explicitly at the home and high-end laptop markets, at which point the story gets more interesting.

Last month it was announced that Steam (a gaming platform) was coming to the Mac.  Today, inside their official announcement for the new MacBook Pros they explicitly state:

More than twice as fast as the GeForce 320M, the powerful new GeForce GT 330M provides incredibly smooth, crisp on-screen graphics for the most demanding 3D games, creative software and technical applications.

Video games are an $11 BILLION dollar industry. That’s more zeroes than I can type.  And almost none of it is on the Mac platform.

Yet.

I’m a big believer in betting on trends.  Further, if I apply our typical analysis as to determining market viability for gaming on the Mac, here’s how it looks:

  1. Does the infrastructure already exist?
    It does now. Macs have sufficient hardware and a mature enough OS to enable immersive gaming (a requirement for non-console games), as well as well-integrated connectivity and media sharing for casual gaming.
  2. Does the product tie into a rising trend?
    As stated above, “heck yeah”.
  3. Is there already an “acceptable” solution to the problem?
    No, the only way to play games on the Mac today is either (1) use BootCamp or (2) play Web-based games.  Minorly acceptable for some, but clearly not touching on that $11B number.
  4. Is there a perceived need?
    Quite clearly, people like to play computer games, and there just aren’t many for the Mac. So yes.
  5. Is there a want for the product?
    Gaming is one of those rare “need/want” industries.  Some basic googling will find evidence on both sides of “are computer games a waste of time” but let’s simply agree it’s debatable.  It most certainly is a high “want” and has tons of emotional and cultural significance these days.

I believe Apple has laid all the groundwork necessary to entice game developers to really pay some attention to their platform.  They’ve showed them a clear revenue path through iPod/iPhone/iPad distribution models, and the Mac is the final bridge to cross.  The only downside whatsoever is the amazing costs that go into modern game production, with budgets reaching $100 million, and climbing.  But considering a $50-60 price tag, and popular games selling 1-3 million (or more), the possibilities are unquestionably there.

Game on!

Would you like to become an infamous blogger?

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Been a big fan of LIVEdigitally for hours/weeks/years?

Have opinions on gadgets, convergence, digital home stuff, or other consumer lifestyle technology?  Or just an opinionated guy/gal?

Want to get on random media mailing lists from big companies, get PR blasts, butthen get questioned when you ask for review units?

Feel like expressing yourself in more than 140 characters at a time?

Enjoy writing opinions months before the “big guys” do, only to see them share the same thought but as front-page headlines?

Like saying “no it’s live digitally, not living digitally or live digital” over and over again?

Want to toil until the wee hours of the night writing stuff, all for no compensation whatsoever?

Then this is the place for you!  Shoot me an email, or leave a comment here and I’ll get in touch!

Tales of Gadget Design: the FlowerPot Gizmo!

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I’ve been asked to write more frequently about building gadgets, so I’ll be putting together posts that reflect the variety of experiences and advice I’ve gleaned over the years. To get this party started (yo), I thought I’d share what I consider to be a fairly amusing, yet quite real, topic: the FlowerPot Gadget Design. The story goes something like this…

You’ve conceptualized some new gadget. It’s going to revolutionize the long-sought-after convergence between microwaves, WiFi routers, and doorbells. The technology is mostly figured out, the first rev of the board design is mostly working, it’s time to start thinking about the actual product now. You hire a top-notch industrial design firm (probably the one who used the coolest method of binding their sketches and/or presentation), share your vision, and await your first concepts.

A few days go by, and their team shows up with a cleverly bound sketchbook, all parties very excited about the upcoming ‘reveal’. Anywhere from 6-12 concepts are shown, some very simple ‘boxes with a mild twist’, some ubercool concepts that are obviously impossible to actually manufacture, and then, there on one of the pages, it is. The flowerpot. You look at it a couple of times to make sure the synapses are firing properly and that you are in fact seeing a flowerpot. And it’s true, you are.

Now I don’t know if the flowerpot originates in design school, or if some legendary designer once waxed poetic on the flowerpot as ultimate incarnation of designing gadgets. I can say I’ve seen the concept presented many times in my career, a surprising amount i’d say. Even last week when meeting a new (and very cool) gadget company when discussing their product strategy I explicitly asked the question if their ID firm mocked up a flowerpot. They showed me the molded sample.

I’m not a designer, but I believe I have a good eye for products combined with a healthy respect for the design process. I know there is often a healthy ‘battle’ between design concept and real world implementation. But I am pretty sure we aren’t going to see very many flowerpot gadgets actually come to market anytime soon, well maybe with an exception here and there.

And then again, maybe the FlowerPot Gadget *is* the future….

the iPad will kill home computing, period

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I’m writing this on my ipad, from the bus, really just to see if I can and how well it works (and how much the motion sickness will hit me by the time I’m done). Note: the preceding sentence was unfortunately all that i recovered after I accidentally quit without saving. But i can tell you i wrote a lot, and am mild to moderately queasy now, but am at a computer to finish it up.  Not for any reasons other than there’s just nothing better than a 27″ screen!

Why am I so bullish on the iPad?  In a nutshell, it does 80% (or more) of the things most people need to do with their computers in their home life.  Here’s a quick rundown on the 5 major components of “common use computing” and the iPad’s “fit” to task…

  1. Email.
    Email is either top or the 2nd-most important personal computing task.  Email on the iPad works great, especially for typical “staying in touch” emails, forwarding along urban myths, sharing funny videos, and all the things most people use email for on a day-to-day basis.  As my last time stating it – this is not about office computing, nor those who are taking office computing tasks and doing them at home!
  2. Web surfing.
     Again, either 2nd or top on personal activities is simple Web surfing.  Facebook, YouTube, viewing photos, reading stuff, playing games, etc.  While there is a major drawback in the lack of Flash, the reality is this will change one way or the other (in other words: either less Flash on the Web, or Flash comes to the iPad) sooner or later.  In my weekend’s worth of use I encountered flash twice, though on the other end my cousin’s kids were rendered practically useless to visit the sites they frequent.  Safari on the iPad is a very nice browsing experience, though I believe it could be improved a lot – tabs, for example, probably do make sense (where they didn’t on the iPhone).  In the “80%” view, it’s definitely above satisfactory.
  3. Media consumption & playback.
    “Stellar” is probably the right word I have to describe the iPad as a media device.   Video looks amazing, music playback is the same as any iPod, it just works great.  My wife’s already streamed a Netflix movie, and I’ve synced kid videos from our Flip (they actually look better than they do on the higher resolution screen of the MacBook).  Moving to mixed media types, well there’s again, the lack of Flash, but the YouTube app works well enough, Marvel has a very interesting comic book reader, and I expect we’ll see other new forms of content coming soon.  Again, there are quirks, but it’s overall one of the best media players I’ve seen.
  4. Simple productivity.
    Most people don’t need PivotTables, Custom Animation, and WordArt.  They need basic spreadsheets, simple presentations, and light document editing and creation.  For a fee, those features are available for those who’d like them, and my hunch is you’ll see a lot more show up in the coming months.  Those apps plus EverNote, WordPress, and others enable some very light touch (or is that multi-touch) ways to continue to manage non Web-content on the iPad.
  5. Gaming.
    Gaming on the iPad is great, though it does not replace PC gaming at all (hence the magic 80% number).  Further, initial reviews of some “power games” for the iPad, such as Command and Conquer, imply it can do a lot more than just labyrinth.  I do feel the power-gaming community will not ebb from their platforms, but I do think the iPad will represent a lot of new gaming potential for both casual and heavy gamers.

I will maintain my statement that the iPad is ushering in a new era of gadgetry, in fact it’s probably going to change the way we think about computers in the future. There are, and always will be, complaints and criticisms of new products.  It doesn’t quite do everything as perfectly as possible.  Yup, check, that is true to all things.  But perfection is not, and never will be, delivered by any kind of gadget or technology.  There’s always going to be something it misses out on.  But then again, when was the last time you bought a $500 device to help you fold a t-shirt?  So there!

And for those of you who still feel “it could be more” or complain about the lack of a camera, here’s a video reminder for you to enjoy…

Everything’s Amazing, Nobody’s Happy from frijole on Vimeo.

What if the iPad turns out to be a bread machine?

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With all my gushing over the iPad (considering I haven’t even touched one yet), I thought I would take a moment to write about the dark side of the device.  After all, it very well could miss the mark for fitting into my lifestyle.  The more I considered it, the more I realized the potential gadget parallel – the bread machine.

If you’ve ever had a bread machine, or know someone who has, the following probably sounds a little familiar.

Day zero:

Day one:

  • Receive bread machine.  Either as gift or because someone told you that you just had to have one.
  • Unbox it with extreme excitement.
  • Plug it in.
  • Find all the ingredients you need, make a loaf of bread.
  • Eat the loaf, marveling in the joy of fresh hot bread.
  • Tell all your friends about the amazing new bread machine.

Days two-ten:

  • Research more bread recipes.
  • Buy different types of grains, flours, seeds, yeasts, and other ingredients.
  • Make some “wacky” types of breads.  No less than one loaf per day.
  • Slowly settle in on your personal favorite.
  • Tell all your friends about the amazing new bread machine and that they HAVE to have one.

Days ten-thirty:

  • Make a loaf every few days.
  • Run out of ingredients when you want to make bread, get annoyed.
  • Get a little tired of cleaning the bread machine.
  • Start buying some bread from stores again.

Days thirty-sixty:

  • Make a loaf or two.
  • Move the bread from the middle of the kitchen counter to a cabinet somewhere.
  • Buy lots of bread.

Day sixty-one:

  • Either put bread machine in the garage, or give it to a friend/relative

Now other than the bread machine enthusiasts who are going to come leave nasty comments, I think I’ve done a fair job recounting the story of the “gadget I didn’t truly need, but had a lot of fun with for a little while.”  The iPad may certainly fall into this category.  As I’ve previously blogged, I’m quite excited about the device, but still don’t quite know why.  My hunch says it won’t be just a novelty that gets shelved in a few weeks or months, but it could happen.

My Flip cam is a bit of a novelty gadget – I still use it from time to time, but not the way I expected to.  I’d put bluetooth headsets into this category for most people.  Any kind of “power mouse” or other computer accessory that really just adds to the complexity.  The Sony Dash.  Digital Picture Frames.  Most kitchen gadgets (hence the bread machine).  My OLPC is my grand champion worthless piece of green plastic.  Novelty stuff.

How can you tell if something is just a novelty?  I’d say it falls into one, or both of the following definitions: Things that people buy without a clearly defined lifestyle benefit, OR things that don’t provide value in a easier/faster/better way in life.  So a digital picture frame has a benefit (see your pictures without using your computer), but it’s actually harder/slower to do so than a computer, so it’s a novelty.  Bluetooth headsets have clear benefits, but having to remember to bring them with you AND keep them charged creates more work.  The OLPC? Fuggedaboutit!

So the iPad?  No clearly defined lifestyle benefit I can think of (I can do all the same things with my laptop).  But is it easier/faster/better for doing anything?  Yes.  This may sound trite, but I firmly believe it will be a easier/faster/better way to do “general Internet things.”  And I’m fairly convinced that that category is ill-defined today, but will be a distant memory in the not-all-that-distant future.

Or I could be wrong and you’ll hear about my mom using it in a couple of months…

Very Curious: My First Real iTunes Sync Experience (on the iPad)

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I’m willing to place a small wager that I represent less than 1% of iPad pre-order customers when I say: “I have never owned an iPod/iPhone, nor used iTunes to sync a media file/collection.”  Yup, I’ve never dealt with the library, App Store, syncing, or anything else before.  Sure, I’ve used my friends’ iPods to browse and play music, but that’s about it.  In candor, my one experience with buying and playing content from iTunes was quite unpleasant, but I recognize it was a bit of an anomaly.

My expectations are fairly straightforward, or so I think they are.  And while I suppose there’s probably videos or web pages that already explain it all, I am looking forward to a fresh, unbiased out of the box experience (OOBE).  Here’s some of what I expect:

  • I can go to iTunes, pick stuff I like/bookmark/purchase, and it will automatically download to my iPad over WiFi.  Now I have a hunch the auto-sync part may not work like I hope, and I may need to sync over USB, which wouldn’t be terrible, but disappointing.
  • I can browse and search the app store from the iPad, find stuff, purchase & download directly
  • I can (fairly easily) sync media files (music, photos, videos) from my iMac/MacBook to my iPad
  • I can sync from one iPad to more than one Mac computer (home MacBook, office iMac)
  • On the iPad, Web links to apps enable direct download & installs (with no intervening steps)
  • On the iPad, I can browse music on my local iTunes server, and sync them (with no intervening steps)

My biggest concern is the ability to use the iPad, find content on the local network, and browse it there.  I mean this specifically with iPhoto, but general file browsing & playback is also a desire.  I’ve got close to 10K photos on my NAS and my MacBook, and would like to view them whenever I’m on the home network.  Further, I’m hoping to be able to do so while away from home, though I’m not sure if that’s possible (even with MobileMe – a service I do not currently subscribe to).  The mere idea of “use my iPad as a remote photo viewer” reaches “killer feature” category for me.

I’ll check back in on this topic once I’ve played more with the iPad + iTunes and taken enough time to sit down and write something.  Which may or may not occur via my iPad.  I’m sure there’s an app for that.