My mom is totally going to love the shit out of this thing. Off the top of my head:
- She can read her books in the dark.
- She can use it in the kitchen to look up recipes and watch cooking videos.
- She can use the GPS to help my dad drive their RV around the country.
- She can be better connected to her iPhone wielding grandchildren.
- She can play Words with Friends on a bigger screen.
- She can browse the web on a readable screen. While in the RV.
- Watch all of her NFL games while sitting on the porch.
And that’s just to start. Later down the road, maybe after revision 2, she’ll also be able to:
- Draw her knitting patterns and sync it with her knitting machine via Bonjour over WiFi.
- Have video chats with the kids.
- Augmented reality tour guides for the new places they travel to.
- Telemedical (god forbid) monitoring to save trips to the doctor.
- Control surface for manipulating certain controls of the RV.
The best part? I won’t have to show her how to do those things, not most of them anyway. So to do 80% of what she uses her laptop for, she can do all of those things without having to lug the thing out, plug it in, hook up the mouse, etc. She’ll be able to take the information she is looking for to the place where she needs it to be: the kitchen, the sewing room, the co-pilot’s seat.
So thinking about my mother using it, and loving it, I started to think how I would use it. My list is almost equally as long.
- Control Boxee.
- Use it as a control surface for Final Cut or Ableton Live or Traktor via Bluetooth or WiFi.
- Home automation.
- The ultimate universal remote (extra hardware required)
- Pornography
- Better in-flight DVD viewing experience
There are so many more integration points the iPad can make with day to day living and day to day information needs. The key aspect of it all is mobility and portability, having the information you need not only when you need it, but where you need it.
I understand the let down from the perspective of people who were wishing for a multi-touch Mac Book. But I think they are thinking about it wrong. People are thinking about it as if it’s a computer, but it isn’t just a computer, it’s a whole new category of device, a whole new definition of what a computer is.
I also agree with most that the lock down to the App Store is a let down, though you don’t have to think too hard about it to understand it’s a necessary evil. It reduces any potential confusion on how to make the thing do something new. My Mom and I were playing Words with Friends without me having to walk her through how to install it and get it running. Now compare that with what it was like to show her how to do something similar on her Windows laptop … yeah no thanks, I’ll take the App Store. Not to mention not having to run that crappy antivirus and anti-spyware junk – the stuff that sucks the performance out of her laptop and yields endless complaints about how slow everything is. Perhaps it’s a false sense of security, but I can live with that.
Some of the complaints about usability and related things are complete nonsense and even defy logic. I’m pretty sure Apple did some usability testing on this thing … but maybe that’s just wild speculation on my part.
I think Apple is definitely onto something, maybe it’s not quite there yet, but they’ve definitely accomplished more than bringing an oversized iPhone to market. But only time will tell.
And, yes, she does kick my ass in Words with Friends. She hit me with two 70+ pointers yesterday.
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