Steven Johnson getting things right
Steven Johnson is one of my favorite writers. With the exception of Interface Culture, I would gladly see every one of his books (Everything Bad is Good for You, EMERGENCE, Ghost Map, and even The Invention of Air) be made mandatory reading people in digital design, digital strategy, digital marketing. Johnson goes deep into cognitive patterns, longer arcs of human behaviors around entertainment, information-seeking, and learning and provides great frameworks for understanding the features and technologies that are usually the center of gravity in digital discussion.
His Time article on the iPad does a nice job of setting the right tone for discussion. Rather than being millenial (Apple fanboys) or crotchety (iPad haters), he grounds the conversation in the longer arc of how we’ve envisioned computing in the last ten or so years:
If you time-traveled back to 1995 and asked the leading futurists of that time where our machines were soon to take us, you might well have heard just as much rhapsodizing about document-centric interfaces as that about hypertext and the World Wide Web. The first generation of software interfaces forced the user to think too much about the tools, the story went, and too little about the task. …
The weird thing about the iPad is that it has landed us 180 degrees from where we thought we were heading. The iPad interface — like the iPhone’s — tries to do everything in its power to do away with documents and files. There is no Finder or root-level file navigation. It’s apps, apps, apps, as far as the eye can see. According to the demo last week, the main way to launch iWork documents is by an internal document-selection process after launch, where your files are presented to you in a gallery format.
I truly don’t know how I feel about this. It might be genius. Maybe most users are more confused by Finders and File Explorers than I’ve realized. But I can’t help thinking that if the iPad really wants to be a device that you might take on a business trip instead of the laptop, it’s going to need a little more document-centrism.
Couple things to love here:
- pointing out that there is a widget-centricity to the iPad. Hadn’t noticed it, but now that I think about it, it sounds like a bad way to make netbooks suck less.
- The comment that “most users . . . might be more confused than I realized”, highlights another weird dynamic in the discussion — just how bad do laptops and netbooks suck? Aren’t hundreds of millions of people living with these supposedly “fatally flawed” devices? A lot of the dialogue about the iPad as netbook talk about how unpleasant people find computing, but is the problem of OS stability and feature bloat so bad that we need a neutered appliance to replace it?
And what a great writer Steven Johnson is. I’ve been scribbling in my notebook, in evernote and two blog entries (this’n and this’n here) to get this idea across:
The iPhone revolutionized smartphones, but I think we all accept that smartphones were in our future. There is no equivalent consensus that tablets or couch computers or casual computers are inevitably on the road ahead. We don’t even agree on the aims here: Is the iPad replacing the laptop or supplementing it?
Anyway, a great article.
February 9th, 2010 at 7:02 pm
I thought I’d jog over to your blog to respond to your comment on mine (and the above). *thought* Shouldn’t there be an easier way to do this?
Apple could be creating some consumer confusion here, as I don’t think that they’re really looking to replace netbooks. The iPad will never be that type of device. I think Jobs’s comment that “Netbooks are just cheaper PCs” was more or less just a jab at PCs.
I think in some ways you need to look at the buying decisions that drive these products.
Why am I looking to buy a netbook?
- I can’t afford a more powerful computer
- I travel a lot for work and need to be productive when doing so (lighter, easier on the plane)
- I’m a student (cheap, light)
- Cheap second computer to get work done (while watching TV, at the cafe)
None of the above are the real competition for the iPad. Here’s where there’s overlap and where I’d argue that the iPad could better deliver:
- Reading email, casually browsing the web (Facebook, the news, imdb, sports scores)
- Watching movies (in bed, in transit)
- Use in the Kitchen (recipes, watch movies)
Plus, iPad could uniquely deliver on:
- social computing – as in the sharing of the actual device (watching movies, sharing photos, playing games)
- A computer I would buy my mom (she never turned the netbook I bought her on)
- reading a book, newspaper, magazine (I know the display will make me go blind)
- childhood education (or distraction device)
- feeling at home and looking cool in my living room
Imagine seeing a commercial for a netbook next to one of the iPad – do you really think they’d be going head to head? If Apple’s video is any indication they will be positioning this device in a different way in consumers’ minds. We’ll see though.
Now getting to your point on price… It all boils down to how well Apple can convince us we need this device. People of all income brackets will open their wallets. Supposedly sales of iPhone went UP during the recession. People wanted to treat themselves to an “affordable luxury”.
But let’s step back a minute. When the iPod first came out it costs $400! And guess what? It doesn’t really work unless you own a computer. That was a gamble considering who some of their hopeful (and eventual) customers were.
And look at what an iPhone sets you back. No, it’s not $99 … It’s close to a minimum of $1000 the first year and close to that thereafter.
And I disagree with Mr. Johnson’s quote above – “we all accept that smartphones were in our future.” That’s so 20/20 looking back.
$1000/year so that I can upload my mobile photos to facebook and find the closest Starbucks? Would you have put money down on that “inevitable future?”
Apple miraculously made a consumer smartphone happen – I personally think that it would have taken many long years for that to happen without them.
What the iPhone did do is cement tablet computing in our future. And that’s their play here – “see how easy your iPhone is to use … well you’ll be right at home on your iPad”
February 11th, 2010 at 10:47 am
One word … TEXTBOOKS!