rishad_ipad_evolution

The iPad will be a home run.

While it is unlikely to sell at the volumes of the iPod, iTouch and iPhone, due to its high price point, it will be a successful, industry-impacting product.

And the absence of a camera and flash and all the stuff the “gizmo-gadget-geek-hood” berate will be a significant reason for its success.

People around the world spend their waking hours in three spheres. These are:

a) working / creating in which the dominant posture is sitting,
b) communicating/travelling in which the dominant posture is walking or standing, and
c) consuming/relaxing where we slouch.

The computer is optimized for working/creating while you sit. The mobile phone is ideal for communicating/travelling. However in the area of consuming/slouching, there has been no dominant multi-purpose electronic device.

Yes one can watch television on the computer and read books on the phone, but these are tertiary benefits of the dominant role for each device, which are creating and communicating. They fall in a usage gap, as discussed here.

The iPad is optimized for consumption of electronic media, and for slouching. It is perfect to consume books and magazines and online video and Facebook and Twitter.

It is about a state of stature and a state of mind, not a state of technology.

In a slouching device, I do not want a stupid camera or anything (including buggy flash) to remind me of work or technology.

Forward understanding of human needs combined with design elegance is what makes Apple successful. Not creating Swiss army knife technologies that only the small fraction of us that read the tech crunches, gizmodos and mashables of the world lust for.

Technology usage has been freed from the geeks. (Though, happily technology creation still lives with them.)

We want the technology to go away so we can get on with creating, communicating and consuming.

And Apple understands this better than anyone else.

 

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