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Prompted by the journalistic column-yards about the new Apple iPad we got to thinking about what we thought about what they thought. If we summarized the responses into a single phrase, it would be one of two: a phrase over-laded with technicalisms or a distancing born of the need to avoid the bandwagon.
 
Some market analysts have brushed off the hype: “Let’s be clear; this is an iPod Touch on steroids,” James McQuivey Forrester Analysts, said. “That is not a new category,”  Ashok Kumar, Analyst at Northeast, said. “It’s clearly not a game changer (like) the iPhone. The killer application is missing.”
 
The guys at Apple pour forth enthusiasm about "the experience." Overuse leads to erosion; words like innovation, sustainability, and experience are so stretched and worn they have lost their bite. But Apple’s use of this word underplays the importance of what they are saying. The iPad is different from the iTouch by a degree, but philosophically is a difference in kind.
 
I once saw a documentary where an Apple spokesman said that his vision was to make technology invisible—and that’s an interesting statement from someone in the technology business. What he meant was that he recognized that the task is king, and the technology is a tool. The better the technology is, the better the task is performed. Ever since the Industrial Revolution technology has been the servant of mankind, but individual men have been the servants of technology. We needn’t waste too much time re-explaining that the QWERTY key layout was designed to prevent jams and slow typists, and many other examples, conscious or accidental.
 
Do you want to know the future of technology? Do you? Watch Star Trek. The brief for the writers, prop designers, and so on involved no LEDs, no lithium batteries, no multi-touch technology—the only requirement in "Imagineering" is to meet the needs of the user. So in the first series when they spoke remotely and on the move they did so with "mobiles," but the word hadn’t been invented then so they called them "communicators." When Spock needed more firepower he used the Triquarter, a screen based input-output system. When they needed to see more data and finer control, Uhura and Sulu sat at desks.

Image courtesy of alistairmcmillan (flickr); permission being requested.

You might be saying at this point that this is a rather mundane and superficial example, but consider the design principles that underpin it. As human beings we have three main body postures: sit, stand, walk. We have three main input channels; sight, sound, touch. We have two output devices: speech and fingers. We have three work modes: walk and talk, simple input/output, focused input/output. The ergonomic approach is to understand the needs of the task and assign the human postures, channels, and modes to best achieve it. On our technological journey we started with a really big device that required crude inputs, so we had to sit in front of it. Mobile phones—after we got past the "brick" phase—were walk-talk devices whose functionality has (excepting iPhone) grown beyond the capabilities of the format.
 
The point about Star Trek is only that they started, probably subconsciously, with the philosophy that technology would be the servant of man, fitting almost invisibly into his life, and present only to optimize the task.
 
Now back in real life the technologies and capabilities of desktops, laptops, iPads, iPhones, and general mobiles overlap so much that the design should no longer be a function of its technological ancestry, but of optimizing its fit to people and their tasks.
 
iPad, good or bad, is good in one very, very, very, very, important respect. If you want to read a book, you would probably do that on your lap. Desktops and laptops have failed to make paper redundant because they don’t do that. If you want to scan a newspaper without the paper you need a big enough screen, if you want to be in a role-playing game, how better than to point and go? The iPad seems optimized for so many of its tasks. It is the first piece of kit to start with the person’s mode, capabilities, and task and work backwards. It is missing only one optimizing feature, keystroke feedback—clicking to you and I, but I guess Apple are working on that.
 
I have no idea if it will be a commercial success, but in my mind it is the beginning of a new way and I have no need to try to distance myself from that. Live long and prosper.