Why a New iOS Home Screen is a Big Deal

In his iOS 6 wish list, Federico Viticci wishes for a new iOS Home screen. Viticci has written about the problem of the iOS Home screen before, concluding that “Apple needs to tear apart the whole concept and rebuild it from the ground up.”

I agree. I think Apple does intend to rebuild the iOS Home screen from the ground up. I also think their intentions for the new Home screen are exciting, ambitious, and will prove to be a big deal.

Not until recently have we felt much of a need for a revamped home screen. Since 2007 iOS has evolved significantly in both its functionality (i.e. multitasking and Notification Center) and in the amount of available apps (thus folders, and multiple Home screens). After five years the Home screen is feeling cramped and outdated.

If I were a betting man, I would wager that the iOS Home screen as we know it today is not Apple’s long-term plan. My hunch is that the Home screen is still the way it is because the long-term ramifications of what it could be are huge.

A reimagined springboard is a prime opportunity for significant innovation. And significant innovation takes time.

Rebuilding the Home screen isn’t just about increasing usability. It is also about innovating at that “front-door interface” of how and where we get to the stuff on our devices (you can hardly do anything on your iPhone without going through the Home screen). Moreover, the ramifications of a reimagined Home screen go beyond iOS. As we are now learning via Lion and Mountain Lion, innovation on iOS is a setting of the stage for innovation on OS X.

During a recent episode of The Talk Show, John Gruber talked about how OS X is stuck with the “Desktop” whether they like it or not. Twenty years ago the Desktop as a folder for quick access to your files and your file system made sense. But that was when people predominantly interacted with files first before launching an app. Apple is now steering people away from the need to interact with the file system. With iCloud, automatic and in-app document saving, and versioning, we are seeing a shift in personal computing where people interact less with files first and more with apps first.

Khoi Vinh recently said:

Right now the most interesting [design] thing happening on the desktop, by far, is Apple’s iOS-ification of OS X. They’re clearly in the process of upending a decades-old paradigm for thinking about desktop software, and whether it’s successful or not is going to be very interesting.

A new iOS Home screen is Apple’s chance to get the “front-door interface” right. When they change the Home screen it’s going to be a big deal, and it will become a core part of iOS for the next decade.

Another reason why a new Home screen is such a big deal is because what Apple does to reimagine it on iOS will impact OS X and the Desktop and Dock (or perhaps the next evolution of Launchpad).

Put another way: I don’t see Apple just stealing ideas from Android and Windows Phone and implementing “live widgets” onto the iOS Home screen. When they update the Home screen they’ll have skated to where the puck is going to be.

Dan Frommer’s Sweet Mac Setup

Who are you, what do you do, etc…?

I’m Dan Frommer, based in Brooklyn NY, but always a Chicagoan at heart.

My main gig since 2005 has been writing about technology news, particularly from a business angle. My most recent project is SplatF.com, a site I started by myself in July, 2011, and hope to be working on forever. Right now it’s a mix of news analysis, reporting, data mining, chart porn, and link aggregation. In the future, who knows what it’s going to turn into. (I’m also, more recently, Editor at Large for a larger tech site called ReadWriteWeb.)

Before that, I helped start a site called Silicon Alley Insider in 2007: A New York-centric tech site that kept growing and morphed into Business Insider, which is now a huge and popular general-purpose news site. I started writing professionally at Forbes, writing about Internet infrastructure and telecom. I’ve also been a part- to full-time web designer since 1995, and I helped work on a few now-defunct Mac sites in the mid-to-late 90s.

What is your current setup?

I work mostly from a home office in Brooklyn, but I do a fair (and increasing) amount of travel. My main rig is a 2009 quad-core iMac, 27 inches, with an old 24-inch secondary Dell screen (not pictured) that we use to watch videos on from a different angle. I prefer a wired keyboard to wireless (same for mice when I used them) but I’ve gotten used to the Magic Trackpad. My desktop image is an aerial photo of lower Manhattan that I shot out of the window of a plane a few years ago.

I also have a 13-inch MacBook Air for cafes and travel and an old Mac mini hooked up to my TV in the living room. Around the house, I also have a bunch of old Macs collecting dust, including my “Windtunnel” G4 tower (dual-DVD drives!) from 2003 and some old PowerBooks. And an Apple II floppy drive that Steve Wozniak autographed for me.

As far as post-PC living… I have an old iPad 3G, which I’ll be replacing with the new iPad whenever it comes out. And my current smartphone is a factory-unlocked iPhone 4S, which I bought to experiment with overseas SIM cards during my travels this year.

Oh, I also have one of those fake-plastic-grass charging stations, which I mostly use to add some color and life to my desk. Love it.

Why this rig?

I bought the 27-inch iMac soon after they first came out because the screen was just amazing. (It still is.) On most days, it’s still fast enough that I haven’t felt the urge to replace it. Though having the SSD boot drive on my Air has really changed my perception of how quick a Mac should be, so maybe this year I’ll pick up a new iMac with an SSD boot drive, depending on how things go. (I’m in no hurry.)

I started with the 11-inch Air but gave it to my wife after I spent a little time with the 13-inch model. The extra screen size and battery life on the 13-inch is well worth the extra bulk to me, especially considering how light it is relative to my old 13-inch plastic MacBook. The MacBook Air is really the laptop I’ve always wanted but never had: Light enough to take everywhere and not secretly hate it for making my bag heavy. I was so excited about the 12-inch PowerBook G4 when I got it in 2005 but it was always so heavy that I never really took it anywhere. The Air is really magical.

What software do you use and for what do you use it?

I was really into little hacks and automation and shortcut-type stuff in MacOS 8 and 9, but after switching to OS X in 2001, I’ve tried to use as much of a stock install as I can. It’s nice to keep things simple, I think.

Most of my work is in Chrome, using WordPress for SplatF and Movable Type for ReadWriteWeb. I also use TweetDeck almost all day (the old, Adobe AIR version; like it more than the new one so far). I have Photoshop Elements, Fireworks, and Acorn for graphics stuff, but I don’t do much that’s more elaborate than cropping and resizing images, and maybe adding a little text to them. For photos, I mostly use Image Capture and the Finder to organize them. I do a lot of charts for SplatF, and almost all of that is done in Numbers from the Mac App Store. Other than that, I use Adium for IM and Mail for email.

I’m still running Snow Leopard on my main iMac — haven’t felt the need to upgrade — but have Lion on my Air. It’s… okay.

The old Mac software I miss the most was an app called Hotline, which was most popular around 1998-1999. It was a cool mashup of FTP, IRC, and newsgroups, and there was a great community. I spent hundreds of hours on Hotline in high school, and then a lot of time on Carracho, a Hotline successor. But I don’t think any of that stuff still exists.

How does this setup help you do your best creative work?

My main job is to find and sift through endless streams and piles of information, so being able to have 2 or 3 windows open at the same time, large enough to see a bunch of data, is why I love the big iMac so much. At Business Insider, I had a second 24-inch screen open to TweetDeck all day, but I don’t really like multi-screen setups. I’m really big on symmetry. During baseball season, sometimes I’ll prop up my iPad next to me to keep the Cubs game on, because the iOS version of MLB’s stream is better than the Flash-based web version.

How would your ideal setup look and function?

My desk is pretty big, but once I move in a few months I might investigate some sort of hybrid sit-stand system. I really like standing, and feel like a jerk sitting around all day. Other than that, I’d just like to always have the biggest screen that makes sense to have. If Apple made a 42-inch iMac, I’d probably buy one.

I like having separate desktop and laptop computers so that I can leave my desktop on all the time (acting as a home server of sorts) and keep a subset of my data on my laptop. Most of my work is on the web so I don’t really care about syncing.

I’m blown away by how efficient, quick, and quiet Macs are these days. When I was home over the holidays, I booted up my old IIci and my old Performa, and the CPUs were both so big, so heavy, and so loud for the little processing power they provided.

More Sweet Setups

Dan’s setup is just one in a series of sweet Mac Setups.

Apple in 2012

Based on Apple’s patterns of the past, along with some current rumors and my gut feelings, it looks as if 2012 is going to be a doozy:

• The 3rd iPad
• Mountain Lion
• iOS 6
• The 6th iPhone
• Significant update to the MacBook Pro lineup
• A television (?)
• And who knows what else (such as iMac, Mac Pro, and or iPod updates, iCloud enhancements, etc.)

A few years from now, I suspect we will look back at 2011 as having been the year Apple’s foundation was done being laid. From the introduction of the iPhone and iOS in 2007 to the shipping of Lion and then iCloud in 2011 — it was all just one long product rollout.

Apple spent the previous several years getting their mobile devices, desktop hardware, and operating systems all right where they want them. The foundation has been laid, and starting in 2012 they’ll be building on that foundation.

It sounds dramatic and even a bit cliché, but this is the beginning of the future for them. Apple isn’t slowing down any time soon.

The Kindle Touch: 90 Days Later

Last November I bought the $99 Kindle Touch with Special Offers.

Though I am not a speedy or avid reader — I read about one novel per year, and a few other books — I very much enjoy reading. After purchasing an iPad in 2010 I swore I’d never buy a physical book again if I could help it. The convenience of having all the books I was reading or planning to read available on one device was just too awesome.

When I bought the Kindle, I didn’t know if it would actually replace my iPad as my go-to reading device or not. I purchased the Kindle primarily so I could review it and so I could have experiential knowledge of E-Ink displays and just how light the Kindle is and how it compares to the iPad as far as a reading device.

However, 90 days later, the Kindle has yet to become a gadget collecting dust in the Blanc household.

The Kindle’s E-Ink screen is so much better for reading than the iPad’s backlit display. However, what I appreciate even more than the screen is the Kindle’s size and weight. The iPad is not comfortably held for long periods of time and is nearly impossible to use with one hand. The Kindle blows the iPad out of the water in this regard.

I got the device with “Special Offers” and though they bug me a bit, they don’t bug me enough to pay to disable them. Most of the ads seem to be for current Amazon ebook specials. Though at one point there was an ad for a Twilight movie that I felt uncomfortable with, so I just kept the Kindle face down when not in use. Actually, I pretty much always keep the Kindle face down when not in use.

When going on vacation, the Kindle makes a great companion if only because it draws less attention than an iPad. It feels more socially acceptable to curl up on the couch with the Kindle for several hours rather than the iPad. But if I don’t take the Kindle for whatever reason, then that’s okay because the iPad’s Kindle app stays in sync with my actual Kindle and makes it easy enough to continue reading on my iPad and vice versa.

In the three months I’ve owned the Kindle Touch I have charged it twice: once when I first got it and then again about three weeks later. After that second charge the battery has been going and going and going. And that is with Wi-Fi enabled, and I leave the Kindle in “sleep mode” when I’m not reading, rather than turning it off. I usually read on the Kindle about twice a week for an hour or two at a time.

A few weeks ago, Amazon released an update to the Kindle Touch software that greatly increased the device’s response time as it relates to navigating menus and turning pages. Ignorance had been bliss before the update, and now, after it, I can heartily recommend the Kindle Touch as a fantastic device.

And so, after 90 days with the Kindle Touch, I am still using it on a regular basis. The device makes a fine companion to the iPad even if you are not an avid reader. I have stopped buying books from the iBookstore and now buy all my books from Amazon instead.

A Clear Review

Some people thrive on lists. They have lists for errands, groceries, chores, ideas, dog names, and so on. I am one such fellow. I keep lists to help me remember things, but also to help clear my mind. The moment when the need to make a list hits could be at any time.

For me, a good list app needs to be both fast and available. Clear is both of those while also managing to be unique and quite unconventional.

As any reader of this website knows, I am an avid user of OmniFocus. Any list I may jot down will eventually work its way into OmniFocus. But the biggest caveat with OmniFocus is its speed. It takes more than a few seconds to launch the iPhone app and enter something in. New OmniFocus items beg to be given contexts, projects, start dates, and due dates. While this is OmniFocus’s greatest strength, there are times when this is also OmniFocus’s greatest weakness.

And so there are two things I like about Clear:

• As a list app it is fast to use and to navigate. It launches up very quickly, you can enter in a slew of items in no time, and you can get to a particular list very quickly as well.

• As a man who simply has an affinity for fine software, Clear stands apart as a very unique and clever app. I dive into this a bit more in my review below, but even if you are not in the market for a new list app, Clear is worth checking out if only to experience its unique design and user interface.

Clear

Clear is a list app for the iPhone like no other. When you’re in the app you only see your color-based lists. Clear is an app without chrome or buttons or menu bars or metadata. Each item holds just 30 characters of text, and there are no due dates or notes or projects.

It has the underlying simplicity and ease of use that an app with just a white background and an unordered list of items would have. And yet, through the use of color and actions and gestures, clear has a surprising amount of life to it.

Clear is literally just pixels and gestures. But combined in just the right way to make an app that is a unique and clever blend of simplicity and spunk.

Action-Centric

Clear relies heavily on the use of color and gestures to navigate. It is very action-centric. Nearly all the gestures that you normally do on the iPhone — swiping up and down, left and right, pinching open and closed — are the ways that you navigate the app. The way Clear works is quite unconventional compared to other list apps, and yet all the actions feel natural because they are common gestures for anyone that’s used an iPhone for longer than their lunch break.

When you’re in a list, you pull the whole list down to create a new item at the top of the list. Or, if you want the new item inserted somewhere other than at the top you can pinch open the list and insert a new item anywhere you like.

Swiping left-to-right completes a task, swiping the opposite deletes it. Swiping left-to-right again on that task un-completes it. Pulling up on your list clears out all the crossed off items, and pinching the list closed takes you up a level to see the menu of all your currently active lists.

In addition to pulling down or pinching open, you can also add a new item to the list by tapping in the blank space underneath your list. A new list item “drops down” and you can then fill in its contents. If you want to quickly add a series of new items, then pull down from within the item creation pane. This is actually an extremely quick way to add new items to your list as fast as your thumbs can tap them out.

Even though Clear relies heavily on the iOS pinching gestures to navigate within lists and for adding new items, the app was still designed so that it can be used one-handed. For example, when pulling a list to add a new item, if you continue to pull down you will get an option to switch lists:

You can navigate through the whole app this way.

Despite its extreme reliance on gestures and actions, I found Clear to be surprisingly discoverable. And if that’s not enough, a brief pre-launch tutorial guides you through the first time you launch the app, and you’re even presented with a list of pre-populated to-do items which inform you how to use the app.

Colorful

Like I said, Clear is just pixels and gestures. The lists are color-based with the darker colors at the top to signify greater importance.

You can re-order items by tapping and holding to move them. And as you navigate through the different hierarchies of the app the colors change as well. The default color scheme has “red hot items” as the individual list pane, cool blue items as the pane showing all your lists, and then a cooler slate grey for the menu.

You can change your color scheme in the menu. There are red, green, pink, grey, and black themes. Also there may or may not be some easter eggs to be found in the app related to themes. But that’s all they’ll let me say.

Hierarchy

One of the things that instantly struck me was the spatial stacking that Clear uses to convey hierarchy.

A typical iOS app has a hierarchy that goes left to right. Meaning, the left-most pane is the highest level and the right-most pane is the furthest drilled down into the app. For example, in Mail if you hit the back button enough times your left-most pane will be the list of your mailboxes; as you move deeper into Mail it takes you to the panes that exist on the right until you get all the way into an individual message.

For Clear, the hierarchy goes top to bottom as you can see in the image above. Also worth noting is that Clear’s bottom-most pane is an individual list — you can not drill down to an individual item. Further emphasizing the forced simplicity of Clear.

This spatial stacking is different than the way most apps work, but because of Clear’s gesture-based navigation it really works well. When you are pulling down to add a new item, the bar for that item “folds up” as if coming from underneath. Likewise, when you pinch open for a new item in a list, the item folds open. The animations are quite clever and fit in well with the unique hierarchy structure of the app.

Clearclusion

For the connoisseurs of fine iOS app or list apps alike, Clear is definitely worth checking out. And it’s just a buck in the iTunes App Store.

True Fans Instead

Yesterday, MG Siegler wrote a post titled, “Content Everywhere, But Not A Drop To Drink”. In it, he talks about how there are many mainstream tech writers who put little to no thought into their reporting.

Most are stories written with little or no research done. They’re written as quickly as possible. The faster the better. Most are just rehashing information that spread by some other means. But that’s great, it means stories can be written without any burden beyond the writer having to read a little bit and type words fast. Many are written without the writer even having to think.

Siegler concludes by saying that those who do put thought and time into their work will eventually be out of a job or else be forced to start feeding the pageview machine in order to get enough advertising income to support their writing.

Federico Viticci and Matt Alexander each responded with optimistic articles stating that thoughtful writing does still and will continue to have a place online. I, too, want to add a positive take on what Siegler is talking about.

It has been nearly a year since I took this site full time, and I think it’s fair to say that shawnblanc.net is proof you do not have to feed the pageview machine to generate a full-time income from your website. Nor do you even have to be a prolific, “A-list” blogger.

Compared to prolific writers, A-listers, or team-published sites, my website receives just a modicum of traffic. I average 150,000 pageviews in a month and have a daily audience of 12,000 RSS subscribers. In the 5 years that I’ve been writing here, none of my article have hit the top of Techmeme, Hacker News, Reddit, or even Digg. I don’t have any sources inside Apple, I don’t get invited to press events, nor do I get pre-release review-units of the coolest gadgets.

And yet, here I am, writing this site as my full-time gig. How so?

It’s because I have an incredible readership. Or, in the words of Kevin Kelly, I have 1,000 true fans. Half of this site’s income is from its membership base. And since I am fortunate enough to have readers who are willing to sign up as members and directly support this site, I am not fully dependent upon advertising revenue.

This is, of course, not to say that a membership model like mine would work for every website. But it works for this one, and it’s proof that readers are willing to directly support writers who don’t post link bait.

There are enough people reading on the internet that you don’t have to be mainstream to have a substantial enough readership to support your writing.

As I wrote last summer, my business model for this site is to give current readers — you guys — a first-class site that you want to read every day. My idea of SEO is to write with passion, and my idea of link bait is to publish stuff that you guys love.

Thus, everything I write and everything I link to is for the sake of the current reader. To all the members and readers of shawnblanc.net who’ve made that possible: thank you.

Sweet App: QuickShot

QuickShot is like DropVox but for images.

I found this iPhone app by spying on David Barnard’s Home screen. You use QuickShot to take a photo and it will then upload the image to Dropbox for you. It uploads in the background too, so you just snap a pic and close the app.

David explained how he uses the app to take pictures of all his tax-deductible, business expense receipts when on the go. When I read that, I thought to myself, what an extremely clever idea.

I keep my business receipts in Yojimbo, and so I’ve set up a folder action on my QuickShot Dropbox folder to run the below AppleScript. What the AppleScript does is: when I take a photo of a receipt using QuickShot the image will be tossed into Yojimbo with the tags “receipt” and “viaDropbox” and then the original image is deleted from my Dropbox folder.1

on adding folder items to this_folder after receiving these_items
    repeat with x from 1 to the count of these_items
        set theFile to item x of these_items
        set theTags to {"receipt", "viaDropbox"}
        try
            tell application "Yojimbo"
                set newItem to (import theFile)
                add tags theTags to newItem
            end tell
        end try
    end repeat
    tell application "Finder"
        delete these_items
    end tell
end adding folder items to

QuickShot is universal and just $1.99 in the iTunes App Store.

Tweetbot for iPad Review

Great design is often polarizing. When opinions about your design work seem to be either extremely positive or extremely negative then it’s likely that you’ve hit a home run.

And I can think of no other Twitter client that has received more polarized praise and criticism than Tweetbot. People seem to love it or hate it; very few are just “meh” about it.

I check Twitter on my iPhone an order of magnitude more than on my Mac and especially on my iPad. It’s no secret that I love Tweetbot. I’ve been using the iPhone app as my main Twitter client since late 2010 when the app was still in its early beta days.

Up until recently I have always used the “official” Twitter for iPad app. It always struck me as odd that an app on my iPhone (Tweetbot) could serve as a better twitter client than one on my iPad (Twitter). But now Tweetbot has an iPad version. And it rocks.

The most obvious differentiator between Tweetbot and other Twitter clients is that Tapbots-style of design. It permeates all of their apps and it is a part of their brand. But design for the sake of design is never enough.

No doubt that the vast majority of those who read this site are familiar with form-versus-function commandment: thou shall not let form trump function. The way an app works is far more important than the way an app looks.

Tweetbot is that rare bird of an app that carries an extremely strong and unique mix of both form and function.

Every single pixel is completely customized. The Tapbots color pallet of blue and black and grey with textures and gradients is prevalent throughout. So too, every sound is unique with the playful robotic sounds of clicks and swooshes.

But it doesn’t stop there. The amount of custom design in this app is only surpassed by the amount of functionality and usability tucked underneath those pixels.

Tweetbot, even with its extremely custom design, is still an app with greater function than form. Though the first thing you see is the custom designs done by Mark Jardine, and these are the pixels which are always before you when you use the app, what makes the app great is how functional it is.

Over time I’ve become so very used to Tweetbot’s functionality that it’s an app which has stuck on my iPhone’s Home screen since its beginning. And now it’s stuck on my iPad’s Home screen as well.

If you love Tweetbot on your iPhone, you’re going to love it for iPad. It carries all same power-user-friendly bells and whistles that the iPhone version has.

Here are a few of the iPad app’s features which stand out to me:

• Tweetbot for iPad still treats lists as first class citizens. This is one of my favorite bits about the iPhone app and I am glad that on the iPad it is still easy to set lists as your main timeline view.

• Reading articles via the in-app browser is fantastic. You get a full-screen browser along with that same awesome Readability / Instapaper mobilizer toggle that the iPhone app when in the in-app browser. Just flip the switch and you get a text-friendly layout of the site you’re on:

  

• Tapping an Instagram or other linked image in your timeline darkens out the background and expands the image:

  

• Composing a new tweet is a lot more spacious than the official Twitter client, and has the same quick-access buttons that Tweetbot for iPhone does:

  

Tweetbot for iPad is a power Twitter user’s best friend. It’s an ideal app for those who make good use of lists and who follow folks who post a lot of links to articles. You can still apply filters to mute certain users or hashtags, you can see your favorites, and retweets, and more.

I’ve been using it for the past several weeks and the more I use it the more I like it. Highly recommended.

Here’s the iTunes App Store link.

Is It or Isn’t It?

Yea

• Canalys:

  Apple, after reporting stellar results, became the leading worldwide client PC vendor in Q4 2011. Apple shipped over 15 million iPads and five million Macs, representing 17% of the total 120 million client PCs shipped globally in Q4.

• Wikipedia (from the definition of “Personal Computer”):

  A personal computer (PC) is any general-purpose computer whose size, capabilities, and original sales price make it useful for individuals, and which is intended to be operated directly by an end-user with no intervening computer operator.

• Webster (from the definition of “Personal Computer”):

  a microcomputer designed for individual use, as by a person in an office or at home or school, for such applications as word processing, data management, financial analysis, or computer games.

• Ken Fisher:

  I consider the iPad a PC because, in my view, a PC (Personal Computer) is just that: a personal computing device.

  In my Big Sky view, the PC is best understood as a bundled trajectory of technologies, of which the iPad is a significant plot point in the development of mobile computing. That is to say, I view iPads in the same vein as laptops, believing that for 98 percent of the world, the iPad is equivalent to a laptop, in terms of intended uses. When we fast forward 15 years, I expect that today’s laptop will seem most antiquated to us, having been replaced by tablet-based experiences. I do not think the home PC will feel quite so antiquated.

• Don Reisinger

  Although the tablet doesn’t look like a PC or act like a PC in the simplest sense, it is a PC. From its functionality to its design, there is simply no reason people should look at the iPad and think it can’t hold up against desktops, notebooks and netbooks.

• Harry McCracken:

  I think it’s possible to use an iPad as one’s primary device for professional-level content creation. Actually, scratch that. I’m positive it’s possible—because I’ve been doing it for the past three months, and I’ve been having a really good time.

• Chuck Skoda:

  The iPad was the first computer built to meet you on your terms. It brings the last 35 years of digital technology into the physical world in a way so natural, not only do grandmas and toddlers get it, but so do kittens and lizards.

• Terry Lucy:

  When Apple released the iPad, I would argue that it actually released the first, truly personal, computer.

• Graham Spencer:

  So if you are excluding the iPad from the personal computer category, does that mean there is some checklist of requirements for a device to be a PC? Does it need a keyboard, or perhaps a trackpad or a mouse, or does it just have to be able to install any application you want (without the approval of a gatekeeper such as Apple)? All of these ‘requirements’ are completely arbitrary — with no practical reason as to why they are required to be on a PC.

• Matthew Panzarino:

  Look, tablets are PCs, get over it.

• Andy Faust:

  It’s replacing people’s needs for traditional computing environments in the home and office, and people are buying it in record numbers.

• MG Siegler:

  All you need to know about the “is the iPad a PC?” argument: are people buying them instead of traditional PCs? Sure looks like it.

Nay

• Patrick Moorhead:

  The way technology is headed in the future, calling the iPad a PC will set precedence that will only lead to even more confusion and misinformation. [...] Let’s stop classifying the iPad as a PC, it only serves to confuse people.

• Adrian Kingsley-Hughes:

  I agree with Moorhead, it’s time to stop the madness. If tablets are classed as PCs then why not smartphones? Or smartfridges? Or digital watches?

• Eric Grevstad:

  People are using tablets for e-reading, Web surfing, and movie viewing. And—at least for now, at least if you focus on real-world usage patterns—I say Canalys is wrong to count tablets as PCs.

But are We Asking the Wrong Question?

I can’t help but think that asking if the iPad is a PC or not is to ask the wrong question.

Shouldn’t the question be: are consumers buying iPads and other tablets instead of traditional personal computers?

I suppose that the answer to that question would also answer if the iPad is a PC or not, but focusing on the latter seems to be missing the point.

To re-quote MG Siegler:

All you need to know about the “is the iPad a PC?” argument: are people buying them instead of traditional PCs? Sure looks like it.

That is exactly the point. There will come a time when the majority of consumers who are in the market for a new personal computer will consider (and buy) an iPad or other tablet rather than a laptop or desktop computer. And when that time comes, the debate about the iPad being a PC or not will be over.

The market will decide that the iPad is a PC by buying them instead of laptops and desktops.

It seems that those arguing against the iPad being called a PC are really trying to make their own point that, for them, an iPad could not replace their PC. When they say the iPad is not a PC what they mean is that either: (a) there’s no way I would or could give up my PC and use an iPad instead; or (b) the iPad is not yet a PC, but it probably will be soon.

The reason this discussion about “if the iPad is a PC or not” is interesting is because the iPad is already proving to be disruptive to the PC market.

Horace Dediu writes:

The impact of the iPad is not specific to any single vendor (Apple included). It competes for time and purchase decisions across all computing alternatives and though many times it’s additive, it is also substitutive and will become increasingly so.

Backing away from the minutia of what the true definition is of a PC, we see that millions of people are buying iPads and using them for all sorts of purposes. And why shouldn’t they? The iPad is relatively inexpensive, it is fun, it has incredible battery life, it is extremely lightweight and portable, you don’t have to get it out of your bag for airport security, and it does most all the same basic tasks your laptop or desktop can do.

The fact that: (a) such a young device could be such a smashing success; and that (b) it could disrupt the decades-old PC market, are both interesting topics for discussion. And that discussion is manifesting itself as: “is the iPad a PC or not?”

It’s fascinating that such a small and inexpensive tablet device actually has a shot at replacing someone’s large and expensive desktop computer. But what else is fascinating is that the device and the market are less than 2 years old and people are already starting to make that transition.

For millions of people, an iPad is a perfectly good replacement for their laptop or desktop. They just don’t know it yet.