Is The iPad The Disneyland Of Computers?
from the nice-place-to-visit,-but-you-wouldn't-want-to-live-there dept
It's been interesting to watch the extreme arguments about the iPad fly by over the last few weeks. As I've said before, I think the device will sell quite well and make tons of money for Apple. I just don't think it will "save media" the way some media companies believe. For some reason, a lot of folks interpreted this to mean that I don't like the iPad. That's not true at all. It looks like a beautiful device, and while I don't see a need for one for myself right now, I could see getting one at some point. I have nothing against the device at all -- and just because I don't think it will be the savior for media companies, doesn't mean there's anything wrong with the iPad.That said, Ed Felten, has put together what I think is the best explanation for how I feel about the iPad: it's the Disneyland of computers. That is, "I like to visit Disneyland, but I wouldn't want to live there."
To me, the iPad is Disneyland.It goes on from there, and it's about the best explanation I've seen. There's lots to like about the iPad. It really does look like a great device for some stuff. But not everything -- and that's by design. Just like Disneyland isn't designed for people to live there permanently, the iPad isn't designed to take over all your computing needs. And that's fine.
I like Disneyland. It's clean, safe, and efficient. There are lots of entertaining things to do. Kids can drive cars; adults can wear goofy hats with impunity. There's a parade every afternoon, and an underground medical center in case you get sick.
All of this is possible because of central planning. Every restaurant and store on Disneyland's Main Street is approved in advance by Disney. Every employee is vetted by Disney. Disneyland wouldn't be Disneyland without central planning....
There's a reason the restaurants in Disneyland are bland and stodgy. It's not just that centralized decision processes like Disney's have trouble coping with creative, nimble, and edgy ideas. It's also that customers know who's in charge, so any bad dining experience will be blamed on Disney, making Disney wary of culinary innovation. In Disneyland the trains run on time, but they take you to a station just like the one you left.
I like living in a place where anybody can open a restaurant or store. I like living in a place where anybody can open a bookstore and sell whatever books they want. Here in New Jersey, the trains don't always run on time, but they take you to lots of interesting places.
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Filed Under: disneyland, ipad
Companies: apple
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Preaching to the quior ...
Personally I think the iPad is a very cool device not a chance I am going to buy one though. It is for media consumption not much more. The belief that the iPad will save the media distributors is a false belief based on a need for hope and the five stages of grieving. They are constantly grasping at straws to find something to save them. This is just the latest incarnation of "HOPE", and this to shall pass ...
... until the next magic bullet comes around and they psyche themselves up again.
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Re: Preaching to the quior ...
(or, what's a "quior"?)
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Re: Re: Preaching to the quior ...
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Matt
It is exactly why I don't buy em, though.
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Re: Matt
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Re: Re: Matt
Yeah. And I'm fine with my iPhone being locked down (OK, not completely fine, since I want to have the *option* to jailbreak it.) But the iPad is sort of a laptop lite, and while the UI may scale from iPhone to iPad, I'm not sure the App Store does.
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Re: Re: Re: Matt
I don't think letting Apple control it's own store is bad either, but there should be an approved back door for anyone who wants to load unapproved apps.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Matt
Yeah, didn't mean to imply that you did. I was just making a distinction of my own. Super-locked-down phone? Fine. It's a phone. Anything else it does is a bonus.
The problem is when you start getting into laptop-replacement-or-at-least-supplement territory. Hopefully this is just a function of the porting of the OS, and they'll start differentiating them.
And yeah, allowing a backdoor (e.g., jailbreaking) would make their devices much more attractive. I've stopped upgrading my iPhone's OS just in case I ever feel the need to jailbreak.
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Re: Re: Re: Matt
It seems more like an iPod Mega to me.
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Devices? (was Re: Matt)
If you include the laptops and desktops, then I'll have to point out that there is no closed ecosystem for those devices.
They're as open as any other general purpose computing system.
OS-X even comes with GCC. Can't get much more open than that.
Scott
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It looks nice but frankly this thing looks like:
iPhone - phone + super mushroom from mario bros. = iPad
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Re:
Let iPod Touch = iPhone - phone. Therefore,
iPod Touch + super mushroom = iPad.
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@Designerfx
I guess you don't attend many developer conferences. Go to PyCon. About 65-70% MacBooks. Attend RailsConf. About the same. Attend most web developer conferences. MacBooks are the standard, not the exception.
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Re: @Designerfx
Most people are still trying to figure out what this actually is. I haven't heard a good description from anyone. Steve is throwing this 'thing' out there and seeing what happens. It's either completely stupid, or a master stroke of genius. We'll find out which, in the next year.
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Pretty Vacant
And Netflix does not charge extra for the client, as usual.
Still, not my cup o' tea.
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Re: Pretty Vacant
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Re: Re: Pretty Vacant
True, heat dissipation could be crippled with a stick-pad. Perhaps the true purpose of the iPad is to popularize the euro style man-purse in the U.S.?
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Re: Re: Re: Pretty Vacant
That was funnier the first time I read it... on another blog.
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Save the media?
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Re: Save the media?
/sarcasm
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Dictating what the user does, doesn't always work
With the iPad, the form factor benefit has been removed. The iPad will need to do more to make up for it. If that is more general computing functionality, or a 'killer app', who knows. Jobs would be wise to find out what the users WANT to do with it and work from there, instead of what he did with the iPhone.
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iApple and their toys for adults
I don't have an iPhone. I have all sorts of friends that brag and go on and on about their pretty toy and all the 100's of apps they have and such.
I have a Blackberry that I got for free from my service provider that can do more than I need it to do, and I'm not one of those that download any and every app that comes along just to say I have it. I mean come on, do you really need an app that tells you how to spread peanut butter on a sandwich? My friend Mike thinks so. Yeah it's pretty and has a touch screen. Oooooh, Aaaahhh, big friggin deal. It's like buying a fully loaded Cadillac and coming over to show off to me. I don't want one, and I can keep a little cash in the bank with my semi loaded vehicle and be very happy with it.
The iPad is just another pretty toy to brag about and that's all. I don't want to support Steve Jobs and his evil little ego trip. I can afford to build or buy a few pcs and laptops for what I'd pay for one of his macs.
Then there is the fact that if it's an Apple product, it pretty much only interfaces with Apple only products.
Yeah, my friend Mike is always bitching that he can't sync his iPhone to his pc, or the fact he can't multi-task on his iPhone. But wait they are talking about it happening, hmmm all that fancy sparkle but a year or few behind on something a lot find important.
And I live in West Texas, and all that dirt in the air everytime there is a little 40 mph breeze, his touchscreen gets scratched in his pocket. He's had to send his phone in 3 times to get it fixed, and of course pay for it and get a refurbished iPhone, and loose all his precious apps and info stored on his phone.
I see the iPad that he just bought having the same trouble, but Mike thinks it's the best thing to ever happen in human history. I was laughing so hard when he went to install World of Warcraft on his pretty little toy and then say, "wait, I need a keyboard and mouse for all the controls I need to play," and had to give up that wonderful plan. He didn't find it was too easy to handle the game with a keyboard taking up half the screen.
Oh well, have fun all of those who are foolishly building Apples new fortune. I'm not loosing any sleep because of the fact I don't care to keep up with the Joneses.
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Re: Flash support
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Re: Re: Flash support
And yeah HTML5 might be a great change, but that is if and when all the players settle down and decide on what stays and what goes. So, don't expect it to go anywhere for years.
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Re: Re: Flash support
I don't know if it's fair to compare this to when Apple lost the floppy drive, declaring it outdated technology well before the mainstream thought it was. Eventually, the mainstream caught up to them.
I'm not arguing for/against. It's just an interesting thought. :)
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Re: Re: Re: Flash support
The iPxxx market is getting bigger and bigger, and more and more video sites are accommodating it because they don't want to lose viewers.
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Re: Re: Flash support
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It won't save those who won't save themselves
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Perhaps you see some kind of need for lots of other people since you predict high sales ? or do you just feel the need to make sure everyone knows you are aligned with Mr Jobs ?
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hallelujah!
The thesis of this post is great: Disneyland, as explained, is a great metaphor for the iP* platform. And I think it gets at why the newspaper industry is excited.
That industry is looking for a platform that has several characteristics:
1. They want a platform that is dead simple to use and (usually) degrades gracefully;
2. They want a platform that is fairly closed so it is at least difficult to jailbreak from their prescribed revenue model;
3. They want a platform that is controlled by someone who will be a willing partner to their prescribed revenue model.
So the iPad looks like manna to them. But as Mike continually points out: if their revenue model is flawed, none of this is going to save them.
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Re: hallelujah!
Or is journalistic integrity not as important as your bottom line?
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Re: Re: hallelujah!
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Re: hallelujah!
But the point is that what the newspaper industry wants is bad for society & "consumers", and therefore won't be adopted on the scale they need. What they want is not what they need. It won't save them.
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Alternatives
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Re: Alternatives
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Re:
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So the iPad is disneyland...
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Apple fans and haters are both wrong
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The comparison to Disney is surprisingly relevant, and I agree. Mostly.
But it's not intended to be a computer (despite duplicating some functionality) - it's a web browser. One that you can hold; one that lets you touch the internet.
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Apple fans and haters are both wrong
For those people that say Apple is late to the tablet game or only for those people that worship at the feet of Jobs I say you are wrong.
I have been involved with the Tech industry for over 25 years and have seen many ideas come and go. I was a selected beta tester for the UMPC pre-market. I have worked with and deployed literally thousands of tablet PC's and even worked on an Apple "tablet" made by an aftermarket maker. The issues all those faced were that the touch capabilities were always an add-on layer or just a fancy way to move the cursor or arrow. The other issue was and still is cost. They are at least 1.5 times the cost of a non-touch computer and many times a lot more.
So to dismiss it because of what it lacks (which honestly is quite a few things) is short-sighted. Instead, look at what the target market is and what they will be doing with it. If you look without bias at that market you will see that the iPad satisfies at least 90% of what they want from it. Plus it is cheaper by at least $500 than the next touch PC.
It pains me because I have been involved with technology for so long to see how little the average computer is asked to do. Most people (65+%) want to check there email, view websites, look at a video or 500, post to facebook or linkedin, write a doc or two, play some games and that is about it. Which of those things is the iPad not able to do?
My opinion like the iPhone the iPad is a gateway drug for the masses. Experts were all over the iPhone when it first came out screaming about what a piece or crap it was. But the thing they missed was that although Apple did not include something's it should have, it did include what it needed to.
What Apple did right was create an environment where it was easy to use only a finger to do everything. I have had at least 10 Windows mobile PC phones with touch and they just never were all that good. They were pretty much the only game in town so they had to be good enough if you needed that kind of functionality. I now own an iPhone but only after my Wife had to have one (because it was cool!) and I got to play with it a bit. It was the first cell phone I could actually use without a stylus. (Of course I waited until the 3g one came out, I could give up the speed I had with my WINMO phone which did 3g.) Are there things I hate about it, YES, is it everything I could want, NO, but it does enough of what I need to keep me happy.
And that is why the iPad will sell at least 3-5 Mil units by Christmas. It is is good enough.
I will not be buying an iPad on launch day but will probably buy one after the next model comes out.
I think that the main things it will do is increase video rentals through the iTunes store, increase ebook/epub sales (the two reasons they actually made the iPad IMHO. They make 10 times the profit after the device is sold they from the device.) But I also think it will push more publishers to create new creative ways for people to enjoy their publications. Link below is a good example. Links: http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid56328629001?bclid=101750010...
Also I wold like to add that I am not an Apple Fan. There are a lot of things that I do not like about the way they handle customers. I won't go in to the long list of problems I have with them, but that does not mean I can't look at what they ARE offering to the masses that will be successful. I have owned many Macs over the years and even started working with computer on an Apple II+ but don't own any now. The only Apple product I own is the iPhone.
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Re: Apple fans and haters are both wrong
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Re: Apple fans and haters are both wrong
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Re: Apple fans and haters are both wrong
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Yes... Pretty much
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And no flash? Come on now, that's just stupid.
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Those who can do, those who cant, erm teach..?
And in some cases, you can find a gem- like an article about someone else who wrote about it being Disneyland even though they teach doing it.
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Re: Those who can do, those who cant, erm teach..?
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analogy fail
I think MM is right that it won't be the savior of Big Media. (jfgilbert also has some insight into what Apple may be developing.) He gets it that any premium-priced media app is going to compete with its own free Web site (and everybody else's). So why doesn't Ed Felten understand that?
Maybe Felten knows something we don't know -- maybe Apple will block Safari on the iPad so it only goes to Disney and Apple (and maybe the New York Times on alternate Mondays). Or maybe he thinks the iPad experience is so intoxicating that its users will end up like monkeys with their pleasure centers wired to a button, pressing it again and again until they wallow about in their own filth. (Rather like the more unhinged of the haters here. Clue: If the term "fanboi" is your favorite insult you probably are one.)
Even if we grant the analogy, Felten would seem to be unaware that there are a lot of people (not me) who revere Disneyland. They remember it fondly, they appreciate all the behind-the-scenes work that goes into that excitingly bland exterior. They read and share books and websites about it, some even write novels based on it. People like fellow iPad-phobe Cory Doctorow.
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Re: analogy fail
Actually I know a few folks who fall into this category. They just sit there all day on the couch pressing buttons on their iPhone. You try to talk to them, and they either ignore you or tell you to shut up. They keep pressing buttons with a big smile on their faces about all the fun they are having.
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Re: Re: analogy fail
I see ads for Playstation 3 that hype some game to be so good you won't even pay attention to your girlfriend once you start. People in Korea play so long they've been known to have seizures and die. Is there a difference? Both kinds need to get a life, as do some of us here.
I just find it bizarre that this piece of consumer electronics has acquired the reputation, even before its release, of being able to separate humanity into touch-panel Eloi and Apple-fearing Flash-loving Morlocks. It's just a freaking tool (though a useful one, unlike some commenters above). A new kind of screwdriver isn't going to make pliers and crowbars and hammers go away, no matter how scared (or secretly hopeful) you may be that it will.
This is starting to sound like opening of 2001, with the iPad as the monolith . . .
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Re: analogy fail
Felten completely gets that. His analogy is sound. While he likes Disneyland (as most people who have experienced do), he wouldn't want to live there. Most people tire of it after a few hours/days. Those same people will return at a later date, wanting to experience it again.
The fact that people enjoy it, and return to it, does not detract from the fact that the environment is controlled, mostly static and overly sterile.
That's the whole point. Cool to look at and play with for a while, but wouldn't want to give up deeper experiences in life to be exclusively in Disneyland.
Of course, people can have both world's if they can afford two devices. However, the only reason that both the iPad and Disneyland are static and sterile is by the choices of their gatekeepers.
Felten isn't looking at the device as a "support business models" device. He's looking at the "limits consumer capabilities" aspect of it.
And, as many threads on Techdirt rightly point out, that might be a short-term hit but it will become a long-term loser. EXTREMELY few closed systems continue to outlast competition with open systems. And history has shown that extremely few closed-system companies know how to open up and adapt as the competition catches up to them.
Would you rather the iPad as it is, or the iPad that allows you to install whatever apps you choose? The development difference between the two is incredibly small, but the functional and usable capabilities between them is nearly unmeasurable. Apple has decided to make the device extremely limited, customers be damned.
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Those who can do, those who cant, teach... at Princeton...
"Those who can do, while those who can't write about those who do." And in some cases, you can find a gem, like an article about someone else who wrote about it being Disneyland even though they teach doing it.
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Re: Those who can do, those who cant, teach... at Princeton...
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Very nice post!
In my opinion, the iPad is a very cool gadget to own. It has all the best aspects I can ever find on a social gadget. Great apps, great games, mobility, stylish design, etc., etc. But I do agree it's not for everyone. Some hates it simply because it was made by Apple. Some hates it for what it represents. But they should just really relax a little bit, take a look at the device and its uses in our daily lives and not be too personal about it. Steve Jobs really isn't gonna lose any sleep over them hates anyway...
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It won't save old media, but...
I have another analogy for the iPad. It's like a Tesla. Good-looking, expensive, proprietary, advanced, and initially limited. Great in the city, not great for a drive in the country. No gasoline support is like no Flash support. Both are at the leading edge of something new. We've had crappy electric cars before and we've had crappy tablets before. The Tesla and the iPad represent the first versions that people actually want to use, despite the initial limitations. Not for everyone... yet.
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Part of an evolution in user interface
It's kind of like the transition from command line to GUI. It's one more step toward a more multimedia, less text-based system. Where it's all headed isn't likely to be seen for awhile yet. But I anticipate that the ultimate product will be so simple and responsive that it will be extremely user-friendly, allowing people to pick it up and begin creating something immediately.
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Yes, Disneyland, good and bad of it
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