Corvus Consulting

Last week I got into a discussion on the blog for Spark, a weekly CBC radio show about technology and culture. From the comments came an interview with Dan Misener, and part of that conversation made its way into an episode that asks why computers are so hard to use. The segment starts at the 40-minute mark, and should you be disposed to listen you can do so.

As with most interviews there are parts that get cut. While I liked the parts Spark included, one part I wished would have made it on was about the importance of the iPad’s adoption of unmediated input. The following is a tidied-up crib of those thoughts.

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Just over three years ago Steve Jobs closed a keynote with notice that Apple Computer had changed its name to Apple, Inc. My first reaction was that they were taking the business more towards the iPod model and away from Macs. Later, I wrote that I saw Apple taking the direction towards digital appliances and what that meant for watching movies at home. I’m happy the Mac is still central to their strategy, but in the iPad we see more of what Apple sees: the general purpose computing paradigm is a dead end.

Lots of techies are upset, seeing the future of making software as a Facebook experience: whitewashed, right angles and the turfing out of anything not deemed to fit by corporate interests.

How did that happen? There were plenty of chances to make things easy and for everyone, like the marketing copy we keep slapping onto our product descriptions. But we blew it.

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Like many, I watched the iPad announcement on Wednesday and then went straight to discussion forums to see what people were saying. As with any disruptive product, there’s a mix of reactions ranging from lust to uncertainty to outrage. What gets missed in the excitement for or against is the comprehensive and disciplined innovation strategy that Apple has used three times now, most recently in the iPad.
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