iPad

As this is written the iPad is about 2 weeks old and I have owned one since the first day of release. That first week was spent while on vacation and I got plenty of time to interact with the setup, apps, and "relaxed" use cases. Week 2 saw the iPad torture tested in a work environment.

Unlike so many that had to be "first" to say something about the iPad -- even if they didn't own one -- mine has been a measured silence on the machine. After years of writing and reacting, I try now not to be the typical tech blogger; fast on the trigger with first impressions that are often wrong headed. I'm hoping somebody might read this a few months or years from now and find some guidance in these words as they consider getting their first iPad or xPad or MagicPaper or whatever it will subsequently be called.

Let's deal with this whole business of iPad envy. If you've got it, please admit it. I've heard from a few that are waiting for the "second" or "next" generation of iPad. You know; the more capable one. Well... This one is pretty capable. Please, name a new technology that wasn't improved in its follow-up iteration. Holding and using an iPad, I am constantly reminded that this is not a first generation device. It is a forth generation touch mobile device from Apple. (After the original iPhone, the iPod touch and the 3G iPhones.) While it does show applications immaturity, the hardware combination is one of the best I have ever used. That almost never happens with a first generation device and with the iPad, we can see that Apple has done its homework. I will grant that there are technology skeptics out there that don't want to be burned by a new device but please make sure that you have thoroughly test driven the product at a store before you pronounce it not ready until version 2.

What about those who just cannot find something to do with the iPad? Well, fair enough, provided you haven't had much time to test it or you just don't have a work flow to support it. If however, you are someone like Jeff Jarvis, then please spare us the goofy stunt of re-boxing your iPad because you don't know what to do with it ( http://www.buzzmachine.com/2010/04/10/reboxing/ ). Coming from Jarvis, that video sounded insincere and I'm sure that is not what he was going for. Opinions like Jarvis' and the much yammered Doctorow's ( http://www.boingboing.net/2010/04/02/why-i-wont-buy-an-ipad-and-think-you-shouldnt-either.html ) seem more rooted in politics than use cases so they just are not very contributory.

My initial assessments -- before release -- have been substantially validated with heavy use. This is a device that will wow you on first use and continue to deliver.

Use Case 1: Mr. Good Note
The model for a good laptop device or a great arm's length device is the book. It contains knowledge, it's portable and a single book in-hand fills its role innocuously. (A pack full of them is a back-breaking pain.) Likewise the paper notebook or notepad is the universally accepted portable device for knowledge retention in the both the board and class rooms. While you can walk into most class rooms with a laptop computer these days, most meeting rooms are still hostile to the presence of computers. But take a tablet notebook into a meeting and the objections disappear. For me me the lesson has been clear; the tools of engagement, and the way they are perceived, are important in determining the success of a meeting.

The iPad has the opportunity to displace both the book and the notepad. The immediate use case for professionals is as an information storage and capture device. My experiments with the TC4400 tablet computer have persuaded me that there is no real resistance to a computer being in a meeting, just certain types of computers and form-factors. The trouble with my existing tablet? It's heavy, dim and has poor battery life. You just don't want to go to a meeting with your power plug in hand. So the iPad's promise of light, bright, long-life display is compelling. There is a problem though. Typing on the display is going to be unnerving to other meeting attendees, so I am planning on using a stylus with my iPad. I'm sure it will be essential and I will report back on this as I gain experience with concept. Interestingly, stylus products are all from third parties and Apple does not natively support "inking" in the iPad. This will be a big space for developers and early indications are that are a few developers ready to port their iPhone inking programs to the iPad.

Use Case 2: The Memex
If you have never heard of Vannevar Bush's Memex, you will be using something like it soon -- whether it's an iPad or not. Many of us use our iPhone's like a Memex now however the screen size and resolution is not optimal for many pictures and diagrams. The iPad thrusts us into the Memex age with ubiquitous connectivity, portability and accessibility. Every professional could use a Memex, so go buy an iPad. With access to Wifi or 3G, you have a port into all of your knowledge windows.

How will the iPad work with private sites, networks and personal information? Very well. I smile every time I hear or read about "lock-in" or "closed systems" on the iPhone or iPad. Have you been to the App Store lately? The iPad is going to do a few things really well out of the box, the rest is up to developers. Right now on my iPhone, I can SSH into confidential servers and sites with ease using ezShare. The same program allows me to effortlessly transfer files and capture email attachments. A killer feature that I hope is fully exploited in an iPad version, is desktop sharing. Yes, that's right, imagine cruising your own desktop computer from the iPad while you recline on your couch. Now think about accessing that file you forgot during a meeting, calling up a key piece of data to refute or confirm an issue or using the iPad as a window into a video presentation that runs somewhere else. That is the kind of thing Bush wanted in the 1930's and I wanted in the 1980's. The future has arrived.

Use Case 3: Workflow Control
I'm sure many will abuse the iPad's email functionality by blindly using push technology in a Pavlovian rush to mediocrity. The smart professional will see a different picture; one that leads to a more mindful, controlled use of action oriented tools.

We're sort of there now but the model needs tweaking. A well developed iPad app would be able to deliver information in context based on location and time of day. Imagine a scenario where a well planned day gets "entered" into the iPad and shepherds the busy professional from desk to meeting, meeting to presentation, presentation to one-on-one. Stuff arrives just-in-time and only the stuff that's needed gets delivered. It's going to happen and I'm hoping the folks at Omnigroup are working on this. I'm using OmniFocus on both a laptop and an iPhone, so parts of the workflow are there for me now. An iPad, however, would better fulfill the promise of a rich workflow management device.

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Well that covers it for now. I'm going to sit back, anticipate the launch and think about some more specific use cases. I'll be blogging about my early use of the iPad and will dive more deeply into app and workflow development.

The iPad is neither an awkward iPhone nor a general purpose notebook computer. This is an important distinction because there are functions that the iPad will do better than either of those two framing categories. There is overlap between the product classifications but given the special mobility and interactivity of the iPad it will be better suited to uses where the user will be recumbent or seated in a relaxed manner. There really was a good reason for having Steve Jobs sit in an easy chair for a good part of the demo. What do you do when you're in a comfy spot? Read? Play? Watch? Study? Ponder? Create? These are the action verbs that define strategic use of an iPad. The iPad has to functionally perform well in the hands -- it has to feel good. It has to render video well and it needs tools for creativity. The creative tools cannot be "tablet enabled" versions of existing programs, I've already examined why that is a bad idea. Instead, the device needs to combine the comfort of a good book with the interactivity of a digital touch screen. All of that comes together in the iPad's Reader app, a program so thoroughly familiar in feel that it even has page flipping. The iPad will be a killer reading device -- absolutely category stomping. Having tried to jumpstart the electronic reader category with the Kindle, Amazon will adapt their technology as an app for the iPad. Physical Kindles are likely to disappear in a year or two, while Amazon gets down to business competing with Apple on the iPad platform. This is no epic struggle, there's room for at least two bookstores on the iPad. There are certainly more than that available now on the iPhone.

Functionally the iPad is not ideally suited for use while walking around or seated at a desk. Those functional requirements (see: www.bredemeyer.com/pdf_files/functreq.pdf ) are fulfilled in the first case by a device that can be hand-
held (walking around = iPhone) or by a general purpose computer in the latter case (desktop = Macintosh). You can read books on an iPhone but it's only the best device for reading if you are being jostled on a train or you are looking at directions while strolling down a piazza. You can read a book on your laptop but it's not a great form factor for curling up with on a couch and, as a reader, you are disconnected from interacting with the "page" on your screen. Computers, as we know them now, make lousy books but all of that is about to change.

What about audio and visual experiences? Yes, you've got to have audio; through both an internal speaker and headphones. Certainly the video must render well. With both of those functions and a "good enough" processor, the iPad will become an alternative personal platform for gaming and viewing. The iPad will not be an ideal iPod because it is just too big to carry around.

What about creativity? For the knowledge or professional worker, potential productivity gains from developing an iPad workflow may be the biggest piece of candy in the whole candy store. While the iPad will be good at passive activities like reading, viewing and gaming it also comes with a level of interactivity that will appeal to thinkers, provided the apps are well designed. This combination means that the iPad fits and, in fact defines, a new category of digital machine -- let's call it relaxed computing.

iIf you haven't seen either Steve Ballmer's 2010 CES keynote or Steve Jobs iPad product announcement, stop reading now, find the videos and watch. I'll wait. Come back when you're done.

What did you think? If ever there was a personification of the differences between mobile computing visions it's certainly there in those two presentations. Ballmer quizzically stalking an array of machines (Wow, they all run Windows) and eventually ham-fisting a "slate" from HP with an underwhelming 30 seconds of "we can do mobile touch too" demo. Jobs on the other hand was about the concept, the idea, the promise and the future. He made it clear; the iPad will not be another Netbook and no, it's not a giant iPhone. It's magical baby and we are changing the game.

When you first see the iPad, the clarity of product vision over a 10 year span becomes very real. Take a look at the evolution of mobile and touch-based products from the first iPod, through it's various generations, to the iPhone and, yes, even the MacBook Air. Doesn't the iPad look like the screen off of a MacBook Air sans keyboard? Apple was thinking about the future and a review of the product evolution makes an outsider like me go "Doh!" at the obviousness of their direction. In hindsight, of course.

The iPad is not a pen based me-too slate or a convertible tablet. Apple actually knows something about that having had a crack at that game with the Newton. The iPad is both mobile and tactile in a way that no Windows based machine currently is. That is a key take-away -- Apple knew the pen-based model was broken. What's the point in adapting handwriting as the major source of input on a machine when multi-touch technology exists? Why are people going to pick up a pen when most laptop users have now given up the mouse?

The gestures and cues that appear on an iPad show a real integration between the software and the hardware. Previews of key applications demonstrate that somebody actually designed the software with the functionality of the hardware in mind. Applications currently run one at a time and that, to me, is important. This is a tool for focusing on doing one thing well while you're doing it. If you want to watch a movie while you write a movie script, IM a movie actor and chat to friend about the movies then use another class of computer. The iPad wants your attention. The navigation does not seem like an afterthought in the way that "flick" technology in Windows 7 does. iPad is hands-on, just like a keyboard but better. A two year old is going to grok the iPad. A 2 year old. Give a two year old a Windows based Tablet and all they will do is chew on the stylus.

The Professional and the iPad: Part 3 - Got Tablets. Need iPads.

In Part 1 I noted that I am currently a tablet user. The machine I am using is the HP TC4400, a venerable Core 2 Duo convertible notebook; it doubles as a 10" (1024x768 res.) laptop and with a flip of the screen can be folded back to make a thick slate. Weighing in at over 4 pounds, it is a pretty hefty note pad to carry around. As a Microsoft Windows XP tablet enabled machine, I was getting pretty frustrated with it's functionality by the end of 2008 but the release of the Windows 7 Ultimate Beta and Release Candidates really interested me in sticking with the machine (I have since licensed a Windows 7 Professional upgrade). Windows 7 renewed the hardware and improved much of the basic tablet functionality. Handwriting recognition is really improved and the overall response of the machine is crisp. With 3 MB of RAM I have found myself inking much more than I did in the previous 2 years. That said, the principle note taking application from Microsoft is Onenote and I have had my fill of that program. The basic metaphor is that of a binder with tabbed dividers and separate pages. It should work, right? It does -- as long as you don't have 5 years worth of notes. I found my workflow around OneNote breaking down about 2 years ago and have been re-building it for about as long. That is unproductive -- so I have said goodbye to Onenote.

The promise of the 2001 Bill Gates tablet seems in retrospect to be half-hearted. There certainly were organizational barriers to the success of the tablet concept at Microsoft. From a distance, one might be forgiven for thinking that the tablet's lack of success was due to corporate ADD. Microsoft's vision was half-baked; it was conceived primarily as a software solution. Where was the hardware that could fulfill the dream of a go anywhere computer? It was left to others to create an elegant piece of hardware that would fulfill the dream of large screen portable computing on a Windows platform. Yeah. We're still waiting.

Portable computing is more than software. Exhibit #2 would have to be Windows CE and the Windows Mobile phone platforms. Has there ever been a must have Windows Mobile device? Maybe Microsoft started too soon. Maybe they were ahead of the curve. Maybe the hardware wasn't ready. Why though were RIM and, subsequently Apple, able to develop more compelling products even as Microsoft went through multiple iterations of its platform? Tablet computing on the Windows platform has always felt incomplete. Until Windows 7 it was a bolt on. It's still a cranky work-around in most applications. The promise of tablet specific applications never materialized and what we tablet users were left with have been "tablet enabled" applications. It's been good enough for enthusiasts and vertical markets but hasn't made the radar of most working professionals or knowledge workers.

Let's step back a bit from the iPad and take a look at professional workflows and current software tool sets.

I am a Professional Engineer. I manage professional teams of electrical engineers and designers in the building science field. We work with our customers, Architects and other Engineers to make things. Our work is partly creative and partly analytical; engineering is about what is possible, what is safe, what is appropriate. We work on a myriad of projects, sub-projects, developing ideas and business concepts. By myriad, I mean hundreds of GTD style projects are active on a regular basis.

Conventional Microsoft Office tools are ill suited to planning, strategizing and determining what is important. (A lot of other applications software fits that description too.) In order to use Microsoft products, you need to smear a layer of customized developer goodness on top of the basic applications, all of which have too many features. For the average user, Microsoft Word is a Boeing 747 cockpit. It is impressive, daunting, clearly powerful and entirely useless without extensive education, practice and regular use. You have to be a highly skilled, demonstrably expert airline pilot to fly Microsoft Word. That makes no sense. It's the same with Excel and especially Outlook if you really want to lever rich value out of the software. Why do you need to become as heavily invested an expert with the craft of the tool as you are already in your field of choice? I do not have to become an airline pilot to fly from Vancouver to Toronto. Every time I need to be productive in a Microsoft application I have to think really hard about whether what I want the program to do will make me more productive or force me to burn cycles discovering how to make it work.

Many companies use Microsoft platforms and applications. The platforms are okay. The applications... well, umm.... please re-read the previous paragraph. This then is the challenge of the modern professional worker: How do you break free of the constraints inherent in tools that have a lineage forged when the space shuttle was new technology? How do you establish a workflow that can both conform to the incumbent's behaviors; but also, enhance your workflow? That kind of magic happened in 1979 with the release of VisiCalc. Ever since we've just been tarting things up with feature after feature.

There is no miracle in my efficiencies or work patterns. I am inundated with no more emails or phone calls than many; considerably fewer than many well known gurus or mavens, I would guess. The biggest difference is that, perhaps, I can afford to ignore far fewer of the messages I receive. There are nascent actions buried in about 75% of my emails. I am getting better at appraising content and determining whether it necessitates a reply, largely due to a multi-year rumination on the thoughts in "Getting Things Done". Not replying is not the same as ignoring messages. A celebrity may get thousands of "Ur kewl" greetings that can be dealt with by way of an auto-reply. Engineers don't have fawning masses that can be assuaged with a mail rule. Working professionals get deluged by documentation and deliverables. In turn, we generate a considerable number of our own deliverables; drawings, sketches, letters, reports, calculations, presentations and, latterly, many more photographs, even videos and audio recordings.

The Microsoft Office of today enhances the production of deliverable spew but it does little to organize the volume of stuff. Take a look at the average professional's computer desktop or file structure. There's crap everywhere. It may be crap. Or it may be really important. It may be a really, really important file that sits in an obscure folder, that was updated, never re-named and saved in the wrong place after being emailed to only 2 of the right people on a distribution list that should have had 3 others on it. Only in the last couple of years has a product like Sharepoint emerged that can help with these typical distribution and filing faux pas.

We have developed bad habits in office and professional workflows. The biggest of these is that we react immediately to our email applications; Outlook while at our desks and the Blackberry when on our feet. Should I be interrupting a conversation to look at my pocket delivered email? Why, how, when did email become an immediate communications medium? These are neither new nor original thoughts. Rather than lamenting what to do about it though, professionals have an obligation to move to a more productive and responsible model. For a variety of demographic, competitive, economic and humanitarian reasons all professionals must assert more creativity and innovation. That means not being professional email reactors but actually being more professional. Do more of what the profession requires of you and less of what the tools require of you. Nobody wonders what kind of typewriter Ernest Hemingway used.

Full disclosure: I'm probably an Apple fan-man but I come by that honestly. Having learned machine language on a Data General Nova (see: http://www.simulogics.com/ ), I learned early in my computing odyssey that the best computer for programming was the one in front of you. I had no end of problems compiling Fortran programs on my punch cards for the unseen HAL in the CS building. The sheer satisfaction of flipping the switches on the Nova and understanding what every bit did was illuminating. That was my first "magical and revolutionary" experience. There was always the programming though. Computers never had a complete applications set for me. Over the years I have programmed in Basic, Pascal, C, Forth, Actor, VB, PHP, Javascript and probably a bunch of others I have forgotten about.(Oh yeah, how about "Knowledge Man"? It was a pretty cool integrated DB back when DbaseII was the standard). All that and I am neither a programmer nor a developer.

My first personally owned microcomputer was a 6502-based Acorn. From there I moved to PC clones; a Corona, a Heath-Zenith luggable, a bunch of white boxers and then into laptops by the mid '90's -- a couple of Toshiba's, a Dell and an IBM. In 2006, after important personal and career transitions, I re-examined my workflow and made two key hardware-centric changes; I purchased my first Apple MacBook (the 13" Black one) for personal use and an HP TC4400 Tablet for career use.

I have sinced revved the MacBook to a 13" aluminum model 'cause we needed more CPU's at home. The HP Tablet is still doing its thing largely due to the resuscitation that a Windows 7 upgrade provided.

It has taken 3 years of day dreaming, ignorance and occasionally deliberate change to get to the stage where I am today in terms of my daily workflow using the machines I have now. Prior to that was decades of "more of the usual". The jump from the command line to GUI was about as exciting as getting my first hard drive -- special -- but strangely incremental and clearly inevitable. The jump to the iPad should be far more interesting -- like those first few magical days working with the Nova.

(coming next... Part 2 - The Professional's Dilemma)

I'm back in the chair. Thanks for waiting.

As this is written, we await the release of the iPad on April 3, 2010. While waiting for that Saturday to arrive, I thought it might be useful to convey my justification for pre-ordering and first day pick-up of the 1st generation iPad. After I got past part 3, I realized that this was something more. For me, the iPad represents a sea change in a journey through computing from the heavy iron of my youth in University to my first interaction with microcomputers. Yes, I think the iPad will be "magical" and "revolutionary" but in a way that is informed by years of dreaming about what I thought computers should be. I have been waiting for something great to write about for over 2 years now and I'm back. Back to the blog, back to writing and back to thinking about the professions, knowledge work and craft we weave to make our knowledge tangible. The iPad serves as a catalyst for this return.

I will circle back to these posts to test some of my early suppositions about the iPad, the experience and the functionality of the device, so expect updates and reports from the field as the experience continues. Magical? Yes. Revolutionary. Really.

Stay tuned for part 1...