The iPad is the first Personal Computer-- what you have is a work computer.
I think that the iPad will be one of the fastest selling products in history- here’s why.
Over the past decade most of us have shifted to using laptops, making it possible to work on the go, watch YouTube videos in the living room, watch a tv show over dinner, and catch up on Charlie Rose in the morning. There’s a problem with that, though. It’s awkward to have your laptop in the living room- you can’t kick back and relax with a laptop. No matter what you do, no matter what the form factor, it’s a work computer, with a capital W and a capital C. Email beckons, Photoshop files cry out for attention, assignments are in need of completion, IM windows chatter, Skype calls ring. You cannot relax with a computer, because we all have work computers.
People have asked what the killer app of the iPad is. It’s obvious! The killer app of the iPad is chilling out. You don’t sit it down in your lap, the screen doesn’t come up and block reality- it’s something you pick up and hold. And, like a book, you can simply put it down.
Reading a Kindle in a coffee shop is a casual thing, you can sip your coffee as you linger over the words, taking breaks now and again to people watch a bit. Reading on your laptop is intense- you fall into the world of the glowing rectangle, and shifting away from that world feels awkward, stilted.
The iPad lets you use a computer like a book. You pick it up. You watch a YouTube video. You watch a tv show. You play some music. You check your email. However, each of these things happen in isolation. You are checking your email, you are watching a YouTube video, or you are reading Huffington Post. There’s no in-between. You aren’t consumed by the device, because there’s no ability to be efficient while working on it. It is a device that’s functional enough to be useful, and stilted enough to be inefficient. It’s the first Personal Computer- good for hanging out in the living room, terrible for ‘real’ work. That’s why it’s fantastic! You can leave your ‘pad on the kitchen table, wake up, make yourself a cup of coffee, and browse a couple sites as you sip coffee. Then, when you’re done, you walk away and go to your ‘real’ computer to get work done.
The iPad is there for 1 or 2 hours a day, after work, before work, at the coffee shop, on a plane. Everywhere that your goal is specifically not to be efficient, but rather to chill out. The iPad’s a personal computer. Right now, we only have work computers.
