John, another excellent piece of yours. Thank you. This is good stuff and I like to read more of this.

I also would like to share my own humble take on the iPad. I think this is a revolutionary tool, not so much for the positive aspects (and risks) which you have already outlined so well, but in particular because, like the original Mac, it opens up access to the Web and many of its features and communication abilities to a whole new huge group of people who have no interest or desire to have, own and learn a computer but who would love to be wired themselves.

My mom is a great example. It is over ten years that she would love to be more in touch with me and my brothers who are all connected and wired, but the cost and complexity of getting into having a computer, even a Mac, was just too much for her. Too much complexity to get what she really wanted.

The iPad revolutionizes all that, again, just like the Mac did in 1984. This is the great revolution the iPad carries with it, and though this revolution will be extended and augmented by other brands and similar products, I feel that Apple has once again opened a new huge marketplace that is going to extend very significantly the opportunities for content and media publishers online many times over.

from sunny Rome,

Robin
 

Robin,

Thanks so much your your comment. I agree that Apple deserves a great deal of credit for its willingness to rethink computer interfaces in ways that make content more accessible and usable. I recall seeing the Apple Lisa, the forerunner of the Mac, many years ago at Bell Laboratories. It was the very first personal computer with a graphic interface and a mouse that allowed people to point and click digital "objects."

Certainly the features of the iPhone now being expanded in the iPad to accommodate a larger interface are important incentives for people to use electronic content. I also think that multi-touch computing is just the beginning of a capability that will provide touch-aware content and services as we move into what I am terming "The Sensor Society," people who are using and manipulating content as an extension of their senses as never before. These are good and important developments.

Unfortunately for the content industry these developments will not enable them to hold on to older business models through whatever unique advantages iPad technology may offer. From a content industry perspective, that's the key concern from my standpoint. If a tablet is just a device to allow people to watch television in their lap, which is the type of behavior that many seem to focus on with iPad, then it will have achieved little.

What I am suggesting is that iPad will be revolutionary only if it results in new methods of information and experience delivery that really add new and unique value. The Mac was revolutionary in that it resulted in software that responded to the capabilities of a small graphic- and mouse-driven computer. I see in the iPad baby steps beyond what has already been accomplished via touch screens in the iPhone or Android.

I doubt that much of this will change because we can touch a screen on our lap. Touchable content simply doesn't do much yet today beyond what a mouse can do. The potential is there, but far from realized. By the time that content producers can develop those capabilities, it's likely that other platforms will begin to dominate also, just as the PC came in and overwhelmed the Mac with its cross-vendor approach to software development. Macs still do it better overall in terms of the experience, but the market share battle was won by Microsoft years so. Being revolutionary is great, but it doesn't mean that you'll wind up being the winner.