I'm a Neanderthal sitting in the audience at the Wall Street Journal D Conference. It's a sea of iPads and I have a MacBook Air in my lap. Steve Jobs is talking about the end of the PC era.
"When we were an agrarian nation, all cars, were trucks. But as people moved more towards urban centers, people started to get into cars. I think PCs are going to be like trucks. Less people will need them. And this is going to make some people uneasy."
One of the people most responsible for giving birth to PC's and to the personal computer industry, was saying: "It's over." I texted my friend, John: "Jobs is saying that iPads will replace PC's. What about for us? For people who write a lot."
That question was answered a few hours later. I ran into Chris Sacca at a conference party.
"I've switched to the iPad. Everything. I have a 3 book contract. I'm doing everything on the iPad now. Spreadsheets. Writing. Everything."
Incredulously, I asked, "You can type an entire book on an iPad??!"
"Watch me!" Sacca proceeded to demonstrate astonishing typing speed, using only his (two) thumbs.
In the morning, Katzenberg took the stage, and enthusiastically proclaimed that he'd given up his laptop and was only using an iPad. Speaker after speaker has confessed to Walt and Kara, "I just don't use my laptop anymore, now that I have an iPad."
In Walt Mossberg's March 31, 2010, Apple iPad Review, he predicts: "...this beautiful new touch-screen device from Apple has the potential to change portable computing profoundly, and to challenge the primacy of the laptop. It could even help, eventually, to propel the finger-driven, multitouch user interface ahead of the mouse-driven interface that has prevailed for decades."
A million iPads sold in the first thirty days. Not such a big deal since enthusiasts, developers, and competitors all raced out to get one. The bigger deal is that, in the second thirty days, another million iPads sold. Apple can hardly keep up with demand.
Lisa Gold, a Seattle-based researcher familiar with my work on email apnea, told me recently, "With my iPad, I don't have email apnea. I sit anywhere, comfortably, doing whatever I want to do. And I breathe."
Children have a natural ease with it. Louis Swisher, age 9, loves his iPad so much I wondered if he was going to eat it. He lives in it: playing both actively and passively with youtube, music, racing games, reading and more.
In the early days of computing, both Steve Jobs and Jeff Raskin had visions of an information appliance. The iPad appears to express that vision from decades ago.
At D, you know someone is talking about the iPad when you hear the words: "It's magical."
Follow Linda Stone on Twitter: www.twitter.com/LindaStone
Steve Jobs: iPad Suicide Factory 'Pretty Nice'
Check your AT&T data usage to keep within new iPhone, iPad plans
Kindle Isn't Dead Yet, and Other Reflections on Apple's iPad
What Computex's Android Tablets Mean for the iPad
Apple IPad Sales May Hit 5.5 Million, Analyst Says
Dell Streak: the Details...and the Reviews
Mayor Bloomberg ditches index cards and touts iPad at speech on Wednesday
i'm an "iaddict". i had the iphone, the laptop, the desktop, the itouch...no way i was going to buy the ipad. no flash, no camera, no keyboard, nothing it did i couldn't already do....moreover, 1st generation, no way.
then i touched it, played with it and had to have one. it's not going to replace my laptop, yet. i think jobs went too far when he said it's "replacing", but eventually it will. it's not just a smaller, cooler laptop. it's all about the cloud and the apps. i keep my docs in the cloud so i can start with my phone, then add to it on the laptop then finish it off in the ipad. it's simply awesome and you need to experience it, but it helps to be an "iaddict".
more about my ipad. it's really made my laptop my desktop and converted my iphone back to a phone. i don't use the ipad so much around the house, it's just still easier to use my keyboard, but I almost never take my laptop with me anymore when day tripping and i took only the ipad to D8 and fiji (apple still has to figure out the ATT issue, though 3g worked for my iphone it didn't for my ipad there). also, the battery life is beyond belief, 4 movies on one charge.
i love this thing. i'll upgrade as soon as i can.
great post linda, thank you
The IPAD is going to be like the Segway human transporter...it will carve out a niche, but not replace the main ways of computing.
1. physical stability. Using an IPAD in your lap, on the go, might be OK for some situations...but it's NOT productive when it comes to office work, or even home-office use. As I'm typing this message right now from my home PC, it's located on a DESK which provides foundational support.
2. The mouse. One of the main problems with computing devices is when they falsely assume you want to do something. The great thing about the mouse is it separates pointing from clicking. Touch-screen apps have the disadvantage of combining these two operations, which means you might accidentally do something you didn't mean to do.
3. Keypads. Even a lot of phones, such as the LG, now have keypads for texting, but not the IPHONE. Pathetic. All you Apple fans are missing out on a basic truth, which is that the keypad has survived from the typewriter to the old PC to the laptop and notebooks and now even phones. As long as we use a language that requires 26 letters, numbers from 0 to 9 and symbols, the keypad is going to be very needed. In fact, it made a comeback with texting. Who wants to hit CCC to when they can just hit C?
Show some vision. It's funny how people can only what exists now and not what could be 5 years from now. What could possibly limit this device from not having all the features of a Mac or PC?
Here are a few more thoughts about my iPad experience. When I use it, I don't have email apnea because I sit or recline comfortably, I'm relaxed, and I breathe. When I'm sitting at my desk, in a chair, staring at my computer screen and clutching my mouse, I'm physically uncomfortable and I often find myself holding my breath and feeling slightly anxious. Instead of forcing my body to adapt to the demands of the computer, iPad adapts to me and the different ways I want to use it. My iPad can't completely replace my computer, but I find myself using iPad more and the computer less. And it has made me much more aware of how using a computer affects my body.
It's not just about Apple. Dell and Kno also showed Pad products. Both interesting. Both offering some potential for certain audiences. Mossberg and Swisher indicated that we'd see many more Pad products coming.
Except, of course, for those that find AT&T service unavailable.
For those of us that do, because of Apple's idiotic and obstinant monogomy with AT&T, we'll have to find other tools.
I have nothing against the iPad, though I am one of those people who still views it as mostly a catalog for buying other stuff or a toy, but all this silly hysteria declaring it to be the killer of all things PC or laptop or desktop or what ever has gotten absurd. Beyond absurd.