This started as a reply to a comment on the other post, but it quickly got away from me and turned into something else. First, the comment:

my whole issue with the ipad is pretty much summed up by my tweet of “a better name for it would have been the Segway.”

Like the Segway, the iPad fell victim to unofficial, unverified rumor mongering and bullshit hype. The ipad has a forward facing camera for videoconferencing. The ipad has a revolutionary input mechanism. The ipad cures rabies.

At the end of the day, fanboys will say “but none of that was confirmed!” … but alas, hype is hype, whether official or unofficial. Apple is a big boy, and ultimately responsible for their own rep, for better or for worse. Same with the Segway. And note: just like the segway, there were plenty of nerds who still loved it when it finally debuted. I’m not trying to claim the iPad isn’t lovable. Only that it didn’t live up to its rumored reputation.

So this time, there wasn’t a fanboy in the house who could legitimately claim they were blown away. Everything Apple showed us was fine. It was good. It just *didn’t match the hype*.

[...]

That’s not to say the iPad won’t be a success. I’m only saying its launch goes down in history as one of Apple’s most botched. This time, an apple product will truly live or die based on it’s qualities, rather than its hype. Because in my mind, the hype failed.

Whether you like it, hate it, or are indifferent, saying that the iPad announcement was “botched” is completely ludicrous.

The main mistake is over-inflating the importance of “fanboys,” just like all the end-of-open-computing Cassandras are over-inflating the importance of hackers. You (or technically, “we”) have to come to terms with the fact that Apple’s Just Not That Into You.

The iPad is targeted squarely at a “casual” audience. Not even casual computer users, like I’d originally typed, but people who don’t even think of what they do in terms of “computing.” It’s the consumer-level appliance computer that Jobs has always wanted. It’s the original Mac that required a special tool just to open it, but you don’t have to teach people how to use the mouse. It’s the iMac that advertised only having to plug in one cord, but you don’t have to plug in anything. It’s not aimed at people who would be buying a Linux netbook or even a MacBook; it’s aimed more at people who would be buying digital picture frames or portable DVD players or Kindles.

The most telling line from the whole keynote was when Jobs said Amazon did a great job with the Kindle, and Apple was “standing on their shoulders.” It was specifically about their new bookstore, but you can extrapolate that to the whole product launch. Ebook readers existed before the Kindle. There are, and were, other models that have “better” specs and features, at least on paper. But Amazon succeeded on three counts:

1. Backing up the device with a distribution model that already had tons of content.
2. Marketing the product not based on features but utility.
3. Understanding that their target audience wasn’t people shopping for ebook readers, but people who wouldn’t even have thought of getting an ebook reader.

The hard part wasn’t convincing people that their ebook reader was better than the other ebook readers — in a lot of ways, it probably was, but not in such a dramatic way that anyone would instantly rush out and buy one. The hard part was convincing people that they needed an ebook reader at all. And because they understood that, they ended up Kleenexing their product name — everybody knows what an ebook reader is now, and more often than not, they call it a “Kindle.”

And by that measure, calling Apple’s iPad announcement and the build-up to it “botched” is nonsense. It’s already done most of what it needed to do, and for free. Everybody was talking about this thing for months before its release, and Apple had officially said nothing. After the announcement, every blog had a reaction — not just the tech ones, either, but every blog. What you call “hype” I call “genius.” They only had to spend about the same marketing budget as they’d have spent on a new iPod release, but they instantly became the major player in a market, without even doing anything.

They didn’t have to live up to any hype. The hype had already done its job, which was convincing people that this was something that they needed to pay attention to. All Apple had to do was not blow it. The thing could’ve been priced out of the range of people who just want a “casual” computer, but it wasn’t. It could’ve been running OS X, convincing a lot of people that it was just another Mac or that they’d have to “learn” a new operating system, but they don’t. It could’ve been announced with just the built-in apps and come across as a glorified ebook reader or video player with no real indication of what apps for it would be like, but it comes with the App Store. They could’ve tied it to an expensive data plan, but you can get it Wi-Fi only or you can pay a monthly fee with no contract.

Compare it to the HP Slate, which is closest in terms of form factor, and which had its own mini-keynote announcement from Ballmer at CES. You could look at a side-by-side feature list and quite reasonably assume that the HP Slate is a no-brainer, and that Apple’s product launch was “botched.” But you’d be missing the point to a colossal degree. The people that Apple is trying to reach don’t care about feature lists. I’m not being condescending or patronizing with that, either — I’m one of those people. I’m a nerd with a CS degree, so I’m ostensibly supposed to care about feature lists, but I don’t unless I’m buying a “real” computer. I don’t care what kind of processor is in my DVD player, I don’t care what fuzzy-logic ever-brown crispness sensor is in my toaster. I just want them to do what they’re made to do.

What does the Kindle do? It lets you buy and read books, in grayscale on a non-backlit screen. I don’t read enough to spend $250 for that. No sale on account of limited use.

What do any of the Android tablets do? Web surfing, e-mail, date book, contact list. I’ve already got a phone that handles some of that stuff and a laptop that handles the rest. Presumably there’s an Android app store, but I haven’t heard much about it or seen any specific examples of Android apps. I’ve never seen any screenshots or video of an Android device that didn’t look like a pre-iPhone cell phone display. I keep hearing that it’s an “open” platform, and keep being reminded how great that is, but as far as I’m concerned it’s like any Linux distribution — yeah, great it’s open, but there’s nothing I really want or need to do on it since all my favorite apps are for another OS. No sale on account of vague usefulness.

What does the HP Slate do? Everything that Windows 7 does, in a thin and ultraportable form factor. Unlike Android, I know exactly what Windows is and how it works. Which browser do I use? Any one I want. Where do I get applications for it? Anywhere I want. Are those apps going to run well on a machine this small? Try it and see. What about viruses? Windows 7 comes with a free virus scanner that works well. So I have to run a virus-scanner on a handheld computer? No sale on account of a surfeit of choices.

What does the iPad do? Not everything, but a lot of things. I, like millions of other people, know exactly what iPhone OS is and how it works. Which browser do I use? Mobile Safari. Where do I get applications for it? From the App Store. Are those apps going to run well on a machine like this? They will say “designed for iPad.” What about viruses? Apple controls the App Store. Here, I’m tempted, because what over-heated tech bloggers describe as a closed system with a lack of choice, I see as something that keeps me from having to make choices I don’t care about.

That focus, combined with the “it just works” philosophy, is why Apple can branch out into consumer electronics with more success than other companies. Even companies with technically superior hardware. It’s subtle enough — or people just fail to “get” it — that a lot of people dismiss it as the “reality distortion field.” They blather that Apple “fanboys” will buy anything with the Apple logo on it and then insist that it’s the most awesome thing ever created, even when confronted with objective proof that brand X has more storage/Flash support/a camera/open source operating system/whatever. But for a lot of people, I would even say most people, it’s about getting something that does exactly what we want, no more and no less, and doing it well.

Again, all Apple had to do was get people believing that a computer in between a phone and a full-size laptop or desktop machine is a useful thing to have. And it’s not just that they didn’t “botch” that; they succeeded beyond the level anybody could’ve imagined or predicted. People who’d never have considered getting a netbook (like myself) are now debating the merits of a $500 “casual-use” portable computer, and everybody in the target market at least knows the name “iPad” and has an idea of what it does. (And again, they got much of that for free). Marketing material aside, they didn’t make a revolutionary device that absolutely no one else could make. They made a very good device that does exactly what it needs to do. And where Apple succeeds while others fail is that they didn’t stop with the hardware or even the OS: they presented the entire thing from processor to form factor to how people will actually use it and to how they can extend it.

@implementation Wind
-(int) Blow {
	int roadCount;
	NSSet allRoads;
	Man man;

	roadCount = 0;
	for (Road aRoad in allRoads) {
		[man walkDown:aRoad];
		if ([man isAMan]) {
			break;
		} else {
			++roadCount;
		}
	}
	return roadCount;
}
@end

@implementation BestClassOfAllTime
-(void) run {
	NSSet allLadies;
	try {
		for (Lady lady in allLadies) {
			if (lady.isSingle) {
				[lady putHand:UP];
			}
		}
	} catch (NSExceptionLiked) {
		throw(exception("Ring not found."));
	}
}
@end

It’s Internet Law that every website, no matter what its topic or area of expertise, has to have at least one post about the Apple tablet, and I’ve already done mine. But people keep writing things that keep getting me all worked up about it. And if the rumors are true, I’ve only got two weeks left to pretend that I have enough willpower to make a discriminating purchasing decision.

The latest thing that set me off was Dan Moren’s column on MacWorld speculating on how the tablet would handle text input. In particular:

Stylus – The stylus was a great idea back in the days of the Palm Pilot and the Newton, when everybody still used pens all the time, but we’ve moved on, folks. I mean, have you seen kids’ handwriting these days? Aside from appealing to the hardcore Newton aficionados out there, I doubt that Apple wants to evoke the ghost of that particular device. Not to mention styli are easy to lose. That said, Apple has had a handwriting-recognition technology called Inkwell squirreled away inside OS X since Jaguar, though right now it’s only really useful if you’ve got a graphics tablet or are using OWC’s ModBook. It wouldn’t be impossible for them to have dusted that off and given it an update to today’s technology. Odds: 200 to 1

Moren actually guesses that the stylus is even less likely than voice recognition or no text entry at all.

This kind of thing concerns me. Not so much for text entry, since even on a tiny keypad, I can type much faster than I can write longhand. But the whole appeal of this thing — not just Apple’s version, but every one of these devices back to the Palm Pilot — was the idea of having an infinite notebook. It would keep track of everything I wanted to carry around with me, and be smart enough to keep it all organized. No device designed to be handheld is going to do that. The iPhone is great at keeping phone numbers, reminders, calendar appointments (entered on a desktop computer), web pages, and songs and videos for quick access, but it’s not great at data entry. Have you ever been at a meeting and tried taking notes with the iPhone or even a PDA? Or doing a quick sketch? It’s clearly not designed for it.

People keep mentioning the Apple Newton in terms of what the new tablet won’t be. And you just have to watch this awesome “Getting Started” video to be reminded how much of the Newton mystique is due to nostalgia; even calling it “ahead of its time” might be a little too generous. The basic premise of a PDA is still valid, and it obviously did wonders for Palm for about a decade, but the notion of exactly what a PDA would do seems shockingly short-sighted in retrospect. That video is clearly a product of the early 90s: from Shoulder Pad Lady and Be-Earringed Goatee Guy sitting at a business meeting around an overhead projector, to the section on how easy it is to send faxes, to the guy struggling to use the Newton two-handed while talking at a pay phone.

Plus the obvious fact that half of the video is devoted to telling you how to use the thing. This isn’t like the Jobs-era how-to videos that Apple puts out, where a yuppie clad in black steps out of a white void to explain multitouch displays. Those are a combination of product branding, extended marketing, and an attempt to make the device as non-threatening as possible to the most technophobic of consumers. (That’s something else that’s made clear by the old Newton video — just how much more success Apple has had by targeting consumers instead of business people). For the majority of people, Apple’s how-tos aren’t strictly necessary. The company is obsessed — even to a fault — with making devices that you can just pick up and start using. The Newton’s big selling point was the handwriting recognition, and the failure of the handwriting recognition is the first thing anybody remembers about the Newton. That doesn’t signal “ahead of its time,” but “not ready for release.”

But the idea behind your basic interaction with the Newton is exactly the kind of thing I still want to see (and buy and use). Every demo I saw of the Newton back in the 90s defined what interacting with a personal computer should be like. You draw a line across the page, and it starts a new document. You scribble through a word and it disappears in a puff of smoke. You write notes and it understands not only the words you’re writing but the context — putting appointments into your calendar, phone numbers into your address book, sketches into a personal folder. (I’m not sure if that last part was possible or even conceived of back during the Newton days, or if it’s a more modern variation. Still, the demos made me believe that that was what was happening). You interacted with a page but weren’t limited to the page. It captured everything.

Plus I’d like to be able to draw on it, which requires a stylus. I’ve tried Autodesk SketchBook for the iPhone, and it’s about as good as a drawing program can get for a mobile phone, which is to say not very. Sure, if you already good at what you’re doing, you can probably get good results. If you’re a normal human with limited motor skills, then it’s frustrating. Because it’s not drawing, it’s finger painting.

And all this is leading me to suspect that the tablet won’t be about input at all. Apple’s had the bulk of its success not just by targeting the consumer market, but by targeting the consumer media market. The iPhone was originally described as three devices in one, but it’s really become one and a half: a communication device with a media player. (Or if you’re like me and never get or make phone calls, it’s reversed: a personal media player that can occasionally send text messages). All of the speculation about the tablet that I’ve seen seems to be gravitating towards its being a portable media player more than a personal computer — the talk is about how it’ll compete with the Kindle but add color and let you watch videos and revolutionize the newspaper, magazine, and/or comic book industry and even redefine page-based multimedia.

Which is all stuff you can do with a tablet PC. People complained about the iPhone being nothing but hype, because their existing cell phones could do everything the iPhone did. And the new smartphones coming out prove that there’s nothing inherently magical about the technology. But that’s missing the point: what was revolutionary about the iPhone wasn’t just the technology but the way the technology was used. The entire thing was designed with a purpose in mind and a specific interface in mind. The whole UI was designed around finger presses on a small screen, and all the functions from making phone calls to listening to music were designed to work in conjunction with each other (more or less). The reason things like the HP Slate won’t have the same mystique as the iPhone is because they take existing software and shoehorn it into a new form factor, instead of treating the whole thing as a single, unified device. All the new tablets coming out of CES aren’t ever going to be as big a deal as whatever Apple’s got planned, simply because they don’t take the same approach to their releases as Apple does. (A hybrid laptop/tablet running two separate OSes seems like a particularly goofy idea).

There’s no reason to believe that Apple wouldn’t do a fine job delivering another glorified ebook reader or “larger iPod touch,” or that it wouldn’t be every bit as polished as the iPhone and iPod Touch and the new iMac. I’d probably get one and use it and like it, and may even start reading again. But it wouldn’t be the “infinite notebook” I’m looking for.

The Microsoft Courier tablet — if it actually exists and ever comes out — could be just that. Looking at their demo video, I think that’s about 90% of what I want, minus all the shoes. They even use the term “infinite journal.” But there’s little indication of how long it’d be before something like that could get released, or how feasible the concept videos even are in the first place (I’m still highly skeptical about being able to drag things across two separate physical screens with a finger, for instance). And the whole thing, even in concept form, feels vaguely Microsoft-ish. Everything feels somewhat disjointed, and as if there’s more attention to slickness than usability. Even though I’m an admitted whore for all things Apple, I’ll more than gladly acknowledge when Microsoft gets stuff right: Windows Media Center blows away anything available for the Mac, and even the Zune appeals to me a lot more aesthetically than any of the iPod/iPhone variations. But nothing from Microsoft ever has that feeling of being a Grand Unified Vision; it all seems designed by committee, and the seams become more and more apparent the more you use it.

At least the Microsoft version would be guaranteed to have a better version of Solitaire. But at this point I’m thinking the device I really want to get will only ever exist in concept videos and in science fiction.