It’s certainly made the horn since The Talk Show podcast, but this is big news. Weight and heft has been the big pain points for iPad usage; it’s why my iPad generally stays in its case while my Kindle and iPhone get very heavy use. A (cheaper?) 7.85″ iPad could change all that, especially with full compatibility of existing iPad apps.
With HP cutting its losses on the Touchpad and PC markets, the “post-PC” era begins with Apple firmly in the lead. The evidence is overwhelming: HP’s exit leaves Apple as the only major consumer PC maker with increasing profitability. Yet even with its leg up on the competition, Apple is shifting away from PCs. Over 70% of its previous quarter’s revenue was wrapped up in iPhones and iPads; it’s fair to expect that percentage to only increase in the future.
However, I disagree that the failures of HP, RIM and other companies in the tablet sphere make a long run Apple victory inevitable. In actuality, the post-PC era is divisible into two eras. The first is a transitional, “tablet as entertainment” era that we’re in now in which Apple clearly dominates. Yet there’s a final, longer term “tablet as PC” era of the future where I doubt a single company will control the market.
Technology gives us an amazing breadth of information, from email and Twitter to task lists on OmniFocus. Yet the sheer size of what’s out there comes at a cost; the decisions of what to tackle next can be overwhelming, stressful and, given the frequent contextual switches between programs, inefficient.
As a result I’ve lately found myself turning less and less to news sites, RSS and Twitter to catch up with what’s happening. Instead I’m increasingly relying on information sources that eschew decisions, pare down content, and make a conscious effort to slow the user down. Two iPad reading apps fit this goal perfectly: Zite and Palimpsest.
Both apps intentionally limit what’s on screen at once, emphasizing a “lean back”, more methodical browsing pace. Zite packages information from the user’s Twitter and RSS feeds in a magazine like format; each page rarely has more than five or six articles. Palimpsest takes this limitation even further, presenting only a single curated article to the user at a time. The experience is a welcome contrast to the “lean forward”, rapid scanning behavior that predominates nearly all RSS and Twitter clients.
Given the high volume of content I read online, Readability, a new subscription based web and mobile reading app, seemed like a good fit; I decided to sign up for a month and try it out on my Mac, iPad and iPhone. Four weeks and over a hundred read articles later, while the experience isn’t perfect, I’d recommend it to almost anyone, especially those that read frequently from blogs and other online sources. The HTML5 mobile app has some bugs, but my current pairing of Readability on the desktop and Instapaper for mobile makes for an excellent experience.
Readability is a twist on existing apps like Instapaper with a built in compensation scheme for content writers and publishers. The app’s foremost objective is to deliver an uncluttered reading experience for what’s online. Users find any web page article of interest (e.g. blog post, news story) and use a browser based extension or bookmarklet to strip the article down to its essence: No ads, ample white space, clear typography, and sparse imagery. In addition, 70% of subscribers’ membership fees go directly to the publishers and writers behind articles read through Readability. That often translates to pennies to the writer per article read, but cumulatively it adds up. I see Readability’s payment system as one step closer to a paid ecosystem that doesn’t rely on traditional sources of revenue like banner ads and paywalls. The whole process also requires almost zero commitment on the part of content publishers, just a registration with readability.com to receive revenue.
The enthusiastic response to this month’s iPad 2 launch made me reflect on how far technology has come in recent years: First smart phone computing went mainstream with 2007’s iPhone, followed by tablet computing’s exponential growth years later in 2010 with the iPad. The emergence of these new markets caused many web sites and apps last year to cater to three distinct platforms: desktops, smart phones, and tablets.
I’d argue in recent months we’ve reached another turning point: With advances in technology like cloud syncing and fast mobile processors the wall of separation between each aforementioned platform is breaking down. Whether in the office with my 30 inch display, at home on the couch with the iPad or on the subway with my iPhone, I’m not just doing work (writing, code editing, news consumption), I’m doing the same work. That’s a big paradigm shift from 2009 or 2010. Put another way, in 2011, cross platform coverage isn’t enough; consistency between those platforms emerges as a more critical factor.
This month: Obama 2.0, Apple’s culture of innovation, the rise of Nick Denton, and iPad user interfaces.
Education of a President
New York Times Magazine
Though Obama clearly electrified the American public back in his 2008 election run, since taking office the press have often portrayed him as a more enigmatic figure. It’s become something of a journalistic clich? to portray the “real” Obama as a cool, cerebral and inward focused president. That’s precisely why Peter Baker’s New York Times Magazine profile of Obama is especially fascinating; Baker reveals a lot of nuggets on Obama’s steps ahead (“Obama 2.0”) and little insights of Obama’s day to day (basketball trash talking, bewilderment at today’s polarized cable TV climate.) Required reading for almost anyone with even a vague interest in U.S. politics.
There’s something paradoxical about the current state of the iPad that I find both thrilling and disturbing. On one hand, the iPad is clearly a commercial success: Sales are very high and the device has been almost universally praised by the tech press for its hardware. Yet what about the software? While the iPad app market has increased exponentially, I find the often conservative design and nature of what’s out there a bit disheartening.
Too many purchases are simply an upscaled version of an existing iPhone app with the surface area quadrupled, an “HD” slapped on the title and a doubling (or more) of the price. The UI can often be slower, more cumbersome and at times flat out boring compared to a similar iPhone counterpart.