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And so it happened: on 28 of May, I entered the realm of the fanboy. Early morning saw me queueing outside the Apple Store in Bath, eager to get my hands on one of the first British iPads. As the utterly incongruous whooping and hollering began to emanate from the bowels of the store – and those in the queue looked around sheepishly, hoping they wouldn’t be expected to HIGH FIVE! – we knew we were just seconds away from the doors being thrown open to… yet more queuing. This is how these things tend to play out. It was a bit crap, really – especially considering that over the following few days, I couldn’t move for sodding iPads. Still, unfounded fears of gadget scarcity aside, what the queuing did reveal was a serious amount of excitement about a bit of kit that most of the assembled shoppers hadn’t even played with yet. iPad fever appears to have landed in Blighty, too.

For the past few weeks, I’ve had to listen to gushing accounts from our American cousins about how great the iPad is (as well as a few crowing importers who couldn’t wait to experience the joy of Apple’s new device). At last, I can finally make a few observations based on more than blog posts and Twitter witterings myself.

1. The iPad is going to be huge!

I’m not really saying anything new here, but there were reports that claimed the iPad wouldn’t resonate with the British. Simpson Carpenter’s qualitative research concluded that the iPad “won’t be mass market in the UK”. ‘Mass market’ is a very vague term, but the report did get more specific, claiming that “the iPad will take longer to achieve the sales growth and wider market impact of the iPhone”. My qualitative observations don’t quite reflect those of Simpson Carpenter. For instance, the last time I visited an Apple Store, around 100 people were assembled around the iPad display area, leaving the flashy new MacBook Pros feeling like Woody in Toy Story! The people responsible for this research may need to rethink their esteemed judgement, given that the iPad has already pushed past two million global sales.

2. March of the web apps

The iPhone’s big story was the sheer number of apps you could download from the App Store, which was perfectly summed up in Apple’s ‘There’s an app for that!’ marketing campaign. But I think the iPad’s 1,024 x 768 pixel resolution will provide a great canvas for developers wanting to create web apps that utilise the strengths of the next generation of web standards, such as CSS3 and HTML5. The iPad version of Safari doesn’t have full support for these technologies just yet, but you can see some great examples of what it does support.

If monetisation isn’t your primary focus, then the simpler development route (using web standards, rather than Cocoa Touch) and cross-platform support should see a big increase in optimised web apps. Gmail is already optimised for the iPad, but there are still issues for developers: take Google Docs, for example. As things stand, Safari for iPhone OS does not support ‘contenteditable’ (which is used to enable text input within a styled element), but contenteditable is an integral part of the code that powers Google Docs (and many other web apps). Bummer! There are claims that version 4 of the iPhone OS will support contenteditable, and this will be an important addition – requirement, even – if web apps are to take off in earnest on the iPad.

Is the iPad a laptop replacement?

No. It’s already become patently obvious to me that trying to execute certain processes just doesn’t work on the iPad. Tasks such as heavy word processing, and any editing job that requires precision mouse control, are severely limited by the iPad’s design (and the need to navigate the device using a chubby skin stylus, otherwise known as your finger). But what you have in the iPad is a perfect bridging device: one that enables you to take care of day-to-day tasks for which a laptop has become overkill. Watching videos, playing games, checking email and browsing the web no longer require a laptop, and the iPad looks set to launch a new wave of optimised sites and apps that address the challenges of designing for gesture-based tablets. It’s only once you’ve had the device in your possession for a while that you begin to realise the impact it could have on the development, design and consumption of digital media.

 

Tags: Apple, apps, blog, developers, Development, device, email, gadget, generation, google, ims, iphone, iss, laptop, marketing, patent, requirement, Research, web, XP

Right on the same day that the pathetic squealing technochildren around me flittered through the streets of Bath waving their newly purchased iPads like a pagan fertility stick in a 21st century Morris-dance, I took advantage of a related fluctuation in the market: I bought a second-hand Kindle 2 for a song. And while the hypnotised Jobzombies attempted to show me their Angry Birds high scores on their nigh-identical iPhones (as if I would care for even half a picosecond about how good they are with a touch-screen catapult and random chance) I pulled my simple, effective and – most importantly – buttonised Gameboy Advance out of mothballs.

It’s not techno-fear. The just-announced and extremely fancy looking iPhone 4 doesn’t tickle my fancy either, because I don’t want a million things crammed in to a tiny package. Consolidation of devices is not the way technology needs to progress. I shall explain, as usual, through the gift of over-laboured metaphor.

I’ve got some really great shoes. I also have an excellent pair of jeans, and my collection of pseudo-hip T-shirts is frankly huge. Each item of clothing serves its respective purpose perfectly: my trainers protect my feet from the world, my T-shirts protect the world from my blobulous upper body. So why would I shell out for a New Improved JeansShoesShirt from ClotheoCorp?

It just wouldn’t work for me. You’re forced to start with JeansShoesShirt’s default GarmentSet, the superclothing equivalent of wandering around normal society in a Star Trek Klingon outfit complete with Cornish Pasty forehead. I’m quite capable of identifying myself as a high-level nerd using my own clothes, thank you. In order to facilitate a change of outfit, ClotheoCorp insists that you purchase the limited, restricted right to wear replacement GarmentChunks from its exclusive private store. But you won’t be able to find the T-shirts amongst the mountainous pile of awful tartan trousers and novelty clown shoes, and those shirts that are visible lack any imagery that displeases ClotheoCorp – which is precisely the sort of imagery I wish to adorn myself with. What’s worse, if you’re away from home and the weather turns, you can’t borrow a coat from a chum or share an umbrella. You’ve got to buy your own GarmentChunk or BrellaCessory. Rubbish.

And then there’s the extra rigmarole involved in actually donning the JeansShoesShirt in the first place. It requires a special wardrobe (the ClotheoCorp Dressulator 2.41) and, to be frank, it doesn’t work properly. It will swallow the majority of the clothes you attempt to ‘import’ and re-tailor others to the point that they no longer fit you. It will hassle you every single day about its seemingly never-ending need to update. And an all-in-one romper-suit is a truly ridiculous thing for an adult to be wearing, even if it does have chrome edges and a glass screen.

I have run out of metaphor at its flimsiest point, you’ll be glad to hear. But I’ll never run out of love for my collection of varied toys, each of which was chosen based on the qualities I personally admire in a gadget that is fit for purpose. If Nintendo had put a piece of greasy glass where the buttons were supposed to be, there’s no way I’d still be playing games on a 10-year-old console. If Amazon had insisted I install nasty software rather than leaving the Kindle open for straight USB file transfers, I absolutely would not have bought one. That simple freedom was a selling point, but more people need to be like me for sensible to become normal. There’s still choice out there. Follow your brain, not your shiny-gland.

Tags: cell, consolidation, cores, device, gadget, ims, iphone, nerd, Personal, Software, Technology, weather, XP

There’s a crushing inevitability weighing upon my shoulders: I am not notable. Ignoring the fact that I don’t turn up until page n of Google thanks to several actually-famous people sharing my apparently common name, my achievements as a journalist have amounted to, basically, nothing. I will not be archived.

Well, perhaps that’s not entirely true. The Library of Congress is currently hoovering up Twitter dust – including mine – and shelving bags full of the stuff for future generations to sift through. Won’t that be great? In 2020 you can relive the fun of me swearing at the Post Office or giving tedious updates on my yo-yo weight. My pathetic online rambling will live on, unsearched, unviewed and unreferenced, for eternity! Hooray!

Then there are the yellowing boxes of old PC Plus and PC Format magazines locked in some obscure basement of Future Towers. If you can get past the spike trap, traverse the invisible bridge and somehow avoid the rolling rock of death, perhaps you can pull out an old issue and cringe at the awful state of my early words. But I still won’t matter. In real terms I don’t exist: I don’t have a Wikipedia page.

I have done precisely nothing of enough note for my legacy to be cemented in a freely editable online encyclopedia, and that hurts. Computer badge at Cubs? Not enough. Appearing behind Terry Nutkins in the audience of the Really Wild Show? Pah. Even if some kind soul did add me – I’m desperate, but not desperate enough to write my own entry – I would be stricken from the database by someone so notable that they sit at home removing things from Wikipedia all day.

So, I would like to put forward these facts which prove I am deserving of an online legacy. Their value may be questionable, but that obviously doesn’t mean you shouldn’t add them to Wikipedia. They’re written down now. You can cite this column.

1) My fingers squirt butter out of the end. An unusual mutation, granted, but a look at any touchscreen that I’ve handled will conclusively prove that my digits spout greasy ghee at the slightest provocation. Bring a soft cloth if you’re planning to let me near your gadgets.

2) I am very tall. Some say I can dust the top of skyscrapers without having to stretch. Others just say ‘Oh, you’re tall when you don’t slouch’. How tall am I? Taller than you. Probably.

3) I am a master hacker. I once hacked into NASA. Sort of. I went to the website. Is that good enough?

4) I am a certified star-magnet. I sat in front of a bedraggled Richard E Grant on the tube. I saw Noel Edmonds – orange and suspiciously smooth-skinned – at a village fete. My wife and I hounded a rough-looking TV’s Nick Knowles out of a posh Bristol bar using the time-honoured technique of repeatedly pointing at him and shouting “It’s Nick Knowles off the telly! KNOWLESY!” Heck, I once peered at Philip Schofield through a restaurant window. I have connections, man.

5) I have released an album of painful electronic wibbling music. Well, I say ‘released’. I gave a copy to my mum, and a few to friends. I am almost certainly the only person ever to have listened to it. But that counts. IT COUNTS.

Finally I think my Wikipedia entry should end with a paragraph detailing my unmatched ability to talk myself out of a concept I was previously excited about – my own notability, in fact – in the space of about 600 words. It’s a talent. A notable one.

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Tags: Computer, Computing, database, device, electron, email, gadget, Gadgets, generation, google, iss, rms, space, web