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Thursday, 28 January 2010

iPad is the web made physical

What I wanted from the iPad—a very high-pixel-density HD screen in a small device—didn't happen. But in the commentary of my techie colleagues like David, Alex and Tim, I'm seeing another disappointment. They're saying 'this isn't a computer like I grew up with'. It's not the generative machine that can be bent to our will to do anything, it's a display device.

Now this is true, but it reminds me of programmers complaining about the Web, as opposed to native applications. The Web is something that started out as a display medium, but is now the platform we all expect to build our applications on, precisely because it is an abstraction that comes between us and the particular hardware our users are running. The web is an agreement on how to phrase things.

The iPad picks up this agreement and delivers on it in a new form, but exceptionally well. When the iPhone was launched, I said that the web was the one standard even Steve Jobs can't ignore. This is reinforced by the iPad - it opens with web browsing, and the Book format adopted, ePub, is built on HTML.

I would prefer it if anyone could distribute native apps for the iPad, but we all can create websites.

The big difference the iPhone brought, and that the iPad builds on is the pervasive ability to zoom in and out easily. I think that this will lead to a change in how we think about user experience, with the deep zooming experience we are familar with from Google Maps and now Prezi becoming natural in more and more apps.

Posted by Kevin Marks at 12:47
Labels: iPad, open web

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think you are right. the iPad is less a generic "do it all" computer, but rather a window into a richer connected world.

The fact it happens to have storage (for music, books ans movies) is a great thing. The fact it can run native apps (if they can get there) adds some power and depth to the experience.

While I may loathe a lot of Flash based sites however the thing that's stopping it being the obvious next choice for a casual machine for home (that I expect my daughter will be the primary consumer of) is the lack of Flash. Not because Adobe have some magical secret sauce but simply so much of what she expects to consume today (Shockwave, Facebook games, Club Penguin) relies on it.

Sure. There are some sites and games that will make the leap to native iPad apps. Maybe some will get the same depth in iPad/Safari HTML5 but there's quite a cost for these folks to target the market and, catch-22, until they do the market won't exist.

My immediate thought when I saw this was that it would replace the backpack full of dead-trees my daughter has to lug to 5th grade every day but without an entertainment aspect it's a very expensive option even if the classwork was available for it (and no pen means no handwriting which is another loss IMO)

January 28, 2010 1:29 pm
Adnan Ali said...

Still, the web had largely open technologies (HTML, CSS, etc).

All you needed was a browser and a text editor. And you could mess around with the web. Make your own applications/sites, distribute amongst friends who were and weren't programmers.

This is not so straight forward with the iPad.

January 28, 2010 1:41 pm
Khürt Williams said...

OffBeatMammal,
I my school district in NJ kids are not allowed any electronic in schools (especially 5th grade) for the very reason of the "entertainment option".

Schools also don't want the liability for lost or stolen devices.

My son is a responsible 5th grader but I can imagine giving him a $500 device to take to school.

January 28, 2010 4:02 pm
Marc Delurgio said...

re: "I would prefer it if anyone could distribute native apps for the iPad, but we all can create websites."
and re: your prior post on the Flow Past Web...

One thing that is largely ignored in the market's zeal for native apps is that they are largely "flow-past-web-proof." For example, in your FB News Feed, you can't tap a link to a video and watch it in an iPhone app. It needs to link to a mobile web site, which recognizes the iPhone/Pad user agent and serves the appropriate media for the iPhone/Pad.

As more users engage in the flow past web on mobile devices, media companies will realize that good ole mobile web is the key to mobile content virality.

February 01, 2010 6:11 pm

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About Me

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Kevin Marks
Kevin Marks works on IndieWeb and open web tech. From 2011 to 2013 he was VP of Open Cloud Standards at Salesforce. From 2009 to 2010 he was VP of Web Services at BT. From 2007 to 2009, he worked at Google on OpenSocial. From 2003 to 2007 he was Principal Engineer at Technorati responsible for the spiders that make sense of the web and track millions of blogs daily. He has been inventing and innovating for over 25 years in emerging technologies where people, media and computers meet. Before joining Technorati, Kevin spent 5 years in the QuickTime Engineering team at Apple, building video capture and live streaming into OS X. He was a founder of The Multimedia Corporation in the UK, where he served as Production Manager and Executive Producer, shipping million-selling products and winning International awards. He has a Masters degree in Physics from Cambridge University and is a BBC-qualified Video Engineer. One of the driving forces behind microformats.org, he regularly speaks at conferences and symposia on emergent net technologies and their cultural impact.
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