Here’s something that Apple is really good at: making me desire a product that I had no desire or perceived need for prior to its existence.
The Apple iPad, Apple’s revolutionary device at an incredible price is a perfect example and the most recent.
I am a self admitted Apple geek. I love their products, I love their image, I’ve bought into the monster big time. I love my iPhone, my MacBook, and I have owned 6 different iterations of iPods (not including my iPhone). I follow the Mac rumor sites, read the leaks, the patent applications, etc. Needless to say, I had a fairly good idea of what to expect last Wednesday at Apple’s big event.
I knew we were going to see a tablet device. From what I had read it was supposed to be an iPod touch on steroids. That’s exactly what the world saw. Some people hate it, they don’t see the point. They see what is missing: a camera, true multitasking, OS X. These are undoubtedly the same folk who wanted those first two in the last iteration of the iPhone. The complaints are always fairly similar, and they did not surprise me. What did suprise me was a few things: iWork looks pretty good on the iPad, and so does the iBookstore. Everything else works the way we have come to expect. There were no gasps at Jobs’ keynote when interacting with the iPad because for the most part we had seen all this done on a smaller device for the last 2.5 years. We are familiar with how intuitive Apple has designed multitouch to be, and so that is the baseline expectation.
Is the iPad magical? 3 years ago, absolutely! At this point, not so much. What we saw as magical 2.5 years ago, is simply expected now. Apple has placed themselves in a position where they are expected to deliver some real ‘revolution’ to wow people. The iPad is not a revolutionary device, so much as it is evolutionary. It is the natural progression from iPhone to quasi-netbook/tablet.
I never understood why people bought netbooks. Sure, they’re cheap, but generally they are unattractive, have cramped keyboards, and small screens. Netbooks fill a ‘need’ for an ‘in-between’ product between a smartphone and a notebook computer. What Apple did, was see that ‘need’ (read: desire) for that device, and give it to them in a package which is far more attractive, intuitive, and opens the door for great potential. Yes, I know, you can’t run Photoshop on it. Or your other OS X apps, but netbooks were never designed for heavy application use. They are good for web browsing (to an extent), checking email, pictures, maybe music and movies (though they usually have limited storage space), and word processing. The iPad delivers a device that can do all of those things well. It does them better than most netbooks (though one could argue in terms of word processing with an onscreen keyboard) and it delivers it in a package which people find attractive, with an interface that is both accessible and familiar. That is the genius of Apple.
Prior to Wednesday I had no desire for an ‘in-between’ device. But I have caught myself in the last few days thinking of how nice it would be to have one. Usually this occurs when I am looking at a website on my iPhone, wishing I had more screen space. Or, most recently after a dangerous installation of the free “Kindle for iPhone” app, I find myself browsing through free sample chapters of ebooks thinking about how much I like the idea of ebooks and how convenient it would be. Apple has placed a seed of desire in me, and it will be watered for the next 54 days before they even release one into the wild.
I kept telling myself, as I watched the keynote, about how I thought it was wonderful that Apple had designed this product. I thought it would be an even better one in its second iteration, thinking my need/desire is not strong enough at this point.
Now I don’t know if I’ll make it past April without one in my grubby little hands.