OK, let me begin this post with a disclaimer: I am an Apple fanboy, there’s no denying it. I’ve been using their products practically for all of my life and, professionally speaking, I’m not sure what I would be doing without them.

After the iPad announcement there has been a lot of posts in the blogosphere about the apparent shortcomings of Apple’s new tablet computer: no multi-tasking, no voice calls, no built-in camera, thick bezels, no flash, no 16:9 form factor, no OLED display. Personally, I was completely thrilled about the feature set of the device. Frankly, I am a bit surprised that so many people are concentrating on minor details that are completely irrevelevant, in my opinion. This is the first generation of a completely new class of device and adding a voice call capability or a camera would be completely trivial from a technical point of view. If you think about it for even a second, there is completely rational explanation to all of the shortcomings. They didn’t make these engineering choices because they didn’t know how to add the missing features, but because they chose not to.

I am excited about iPad precisily for the same reason that some others are disappointed in it. A lot of the excess crap has been shaved off and a brand new platform for truly elegant computing solutions has been created. There are no bootloaders, no trashcans, no display drivers, no extra ports. Some of the other companies that have tried to make this happen like to slap on all kind of extra goodies on products without really thinking that much about the entire pipe-line of events and files in the life of people leading a digital lifestyle.

I, for one, don’t listen to FM radio broadcasts anymore, I don’t like looking at snapshots taken by a crappy $10 cell phone camera module, I do not want to download themes to customize desktop. I think Apple did a superb job of simplifying both the user experience and the channels for both content and software developers to deliver products on a platform that is lightweight, stable and fast. Windows Mobile, Mameo and Symbian are literally years behind with this stuff.

I don’t really need an iPad, but I’m getting one anyway. I think that choosing a computing platform or game console is a lot like buying a hand bag or a bottle of wine or a sports car. You are not only buying a physical product, but an entire philosophy and lifestyle with it. This is something that the pixel counters often miss when they get a knee jerk reaction because of a missing feature. More than anything else, iPad is about simplicity and minimalism.

In the words of Bruce Lee: It’s not the daily increase but daily decrease. Hack away at the unessential.

Posted by api in Wonders of technology

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