Artificial Angels

I didn’t immediately fall in love with the iPad. It underwhelmed me at first sight, but after allowing its potential to simmer in my skull, the criticism I held against it shattered. In its place is now only an anxious desire to own the device as soon as possible!

One of the major complaints against the iPad is that it doesn’t run OS X, the Mac operating system. I was among the disappointed. However, a tablet that runs an OS designed for a keyboard and mouse sounds much more awesome than it’d actually be. Can you imagine having to use your stubby fingers to fiddle with windows, menus, and tiny widgets designed for the precision of a mouse pointer? What a hassle! Even if Apple included a stylus, which everybody knows they would never do, it would still be more trouble than it was worth. Consider all the keyboard shortcuts taken for granted, such as command-tab, command-Q, etc. Try to navigate your computer for a week without them; not very convenient, eh? OS X software was designed with the assumption that people would use it with a keyboard and mouse and would never work as well on a tablet as software specifically designed for fingers, which is why nobody cares about the tablet PCs in which Microsoft shoehorns Windows.

The same is true with Flash. I was also surprised iPad’s Safari wouldn’t support Flash, but it’s not as big of a problem as others suggest. Flash is used mostly for advertisements, videos, and games. Nobody will miss the advertisements, websites are now often designed to display their videos in formats compatible with MobileSafari, and Flash games would not be as fun on the iPad for the same reasons an OS X app would not work well on it: the assumption of a keyboard and a mouse. Besides, the best Flash games have already been ported to the App Store.

If people demand a tablet that runs OS X and Flash, they will be happy to know such hardware already exists: Axiotron’s ModBook. Yes, they are expensive, but what do you expect to pay for an ultra-portable tablet Mac? The cheapest MacBook is $999; a tablet with as much power as that system, a 64GB SSD (16GB would simply not be enough), 3G, GPS, a multi-touch screen, and an ultra-thin body would cost much more than a grand. To reduce the price below $1,000 would require sacrifices that would cripple the device. An inexpensive ultra-portable tablet-based Mac is simply impossible.

Another common complaint is that the iPad won’t support multitasking. There are definitely times when I wish my iPhone could run multiple apps simultaneously–I’d like to use TextExpander in every app–but it is not as much of a problem as critics suggest. Apps that are designed well will return to the exact state in which you left them as though they remained open the entire time, and push notifications take care of the need to keep apps such as BeejiveIM open at all times. If the iPad were a computer in the traditional sense, the lack of multitasking would be unforgivable, but considering that apps will consume the entire screen–would we really want to be forced to deal with moving, resizing, and minimizing windows–and will open quickly and usually in their previous states, multitasking isn’t as vital. Of course, it would be nice to be able to listen to music on Pandora while using another app, but it is hardly a deal-breaker.

One complaint that doesn’t make sense is the idea that the device will be terrible for book-reading because of its backlit screen. People already stare at computer monitors for hours. If they can handle that, why would it torture them to stare at a similar screen?

The one valid criticism against the iPad is its absence to easily transfer and print files. I know there are apps for such needs, but they don’t always work and people should not be required to risk their money for such basic functions anyway. Hopefully, Apple will resolve this issue by late March. I also hope Apple improves its notification system for push notifications and text messages; its too disruptive as it is.

Besides those grievances, there are many others, but they come from people much more rabid and much less reasonable: “Apple is draconian! Google’s open source Android OS and its permissive app store that allows scammers to steal bank information from customers foolish enough to trust a Google phone with their information will crush the iPad as they have already done to the iPhone! Who wants a phone without a replaceable battery and crappy keyboard anyway?” To the typical Linux nerd, computers are not made to facilitate productivity; they are made to be tinkered with, slaved over for hours to enable basic functions, and to pirate all sorts of disgusting Japanese pornography. Is that what most people want from technology, as the nerds often bleat? Well, let’s consider the Droid: in its first week, Motorola sold 250,000 units. In the iPhone’s first week, when it still cost $499 with a two-year contract for service with a mediocre phone company and had no app store, Apple sold at least twice as many units! I don’t think Steve Jobs will lose much sleep by snubbing nerds that would rather work on computers than work with them.

I’m excited for the iPad. It might be a giant iPod touch, but one could say a truck is nothing more than a car with a giant trunk, yet would anybody argue that the extra space a truck offers in its bed grants it no more utility over a typical sedan? It will provide a better experience for surfing the web, reading books, viewing videos, and composing documents than an iPod touch with portability that not even the expensive and underpowered MacBook Air can match, and that’s not even considering all the ways clever developers will utilize its potential. Just as the Mac revolutionized the personal computer, the iPod revolutionized the digital media player, and the iPhone revolutionized the smartphone, the iPad will revolutionize.