Martin: If you believed most geeks out there then the answer is a resounding NO! Fortunately they are completely wrong. It MIGHT change the world. I am very excited about it and will definitely buy one. It will be great for sitting around the house in a comfy armchair web browsing, gaming or playing videos. I will do this at the expense of switching on my iMac.
This is where computing will go next. We’re going to loose the computer (for most tasks). We all live ‘digital lives’, in the last few years we have digitised our music, photos, contacts, and most of us are well on the way with our films and TV. Many of us could barely manage if the internet was switched off for a few days. Yet the computer is still a very formal way of doing things, even a laptop still has too much formality and procedure to its use. The computer dictates your posture as you use it and forces you to interact via the mouse or track pad and keyboard. Nobody wants to use a computer, they want to view and edit photos or read a blog or watch some pratt on youtube in the snow.
Devices like the iPad will develop to do more and more of our computing tasks. Its unlikely that they’ll ever be used to write 20,000 word essays but they will become the norm for the fun stuff. I think the iPad is a signpost of where Apple intend to go next. So, the iPad itself won’t change the world but its close relatives will.
Thomas: It’s certainly going to change the world, in one of two ways. It’ll either be the greatest invention since the car, or we will all realise Steve Jobs can’t always live up to his own hype machine. I’ve drunk the kool-aid, I believe the hype. It might not change my life but I’m an edge-case, for the people I know, my Mum, Dad, friends, this is the end of the personal computer. It won’t happen overnight, but it will happen for exactly the reasons you state. I use my computer to configure other computers (my job), my Mum uses her’s to do email, web browsing and managing her photo’s and music. All of which are almost covered by the iPad version 1.0, and if not will all be covered by version 3.0.
It turns the experience from ’sit-up’ to ’sit-back’. When I was younger, after a family holiday we would sit on the sofa drinking coffee and pass round the holiday snaps, but now to do the same, we stand up and crowd round a computer screen. And of course now we have ten times the number of photos. The iPad neatly takes this back to the sofa. It’s much easier to endure 100+ photo’s of someone else having a ‘great time’ in the sun while you’re say back in a comfy chair with a coffee.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that I agree. This is like the point when cars became sufficiently well engineered and simple to drive that the man in the street could own and drive one without needing an intensive training course. You’ll always get the odd power user of any device. I’m happy with my computer, but nearly everyone I know will be happier with an iPad.
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