I already have a couple of computers in my house that aren't capable
of multi-tasking, or running flash, don't have cameras and are locked
down to exactly what I can run on them. If you were to go into my
garage (which I don't recommend you do, it's a bit of a mess in
there), you'll find various other examples of this that I've had over
the years, used to obsolescence, and moved on from. I'm willing to bet
that many of you reading this are in a similar position.

They're called game consoles (thanks to my brother for that analogy).

The majority of the complaints I've seen concern the fact that people
already have laptops, and those laptops do more than the iPad, and
therefore, that makes the iPad worthless. Those comments centre around
the idea that because the iPad has limitations in what it offers, it's
been hampered, or neutered, rather than the bigger picture that it's
simply made different trade-off's. I made this point in my last post
and Steven Frank makes a similar argument here (albeit more eloquently than myself).

Nobody would ever deride a games console for it's lack of abilities
when put next to a PC. A games console is no good for browsing the web
(even if the PS3 does have a browser), doing spreadsheets, writing
documents, doing multi-tasking, or balancing your home accounts. Heck,
it doesn't even have a keyboard! I can do all of those things on my PC
and STILL play games, why would I ever want to buy an Xbox?

The answer to that is obviously a simple one, because it's really good
at playing games. You don't need to worry about whether or not the game you've bought is
going to run well, because all the systems are the same and developers know
what they're targeting. You don't need to upgrade the graphics card,
download the latest drivers, make sure you've got a compatible version
of Direct-X and disable your virus scanner while you play so it
doesn't reduce your framerate. You just put the game in the slot, or
download it from their "app store" and get on with the business of
having fun. Games consoles aren't sold on the basis of how much memory
they've got or how fast the processor is, and why should they be,
people buy a Wii because they're promised the ability to play games,
they don't care how the machine is making that happen, any more that
they care what kind of bearings are making the drum in their washing
machine spin.

For the hardcore, the people who want to play complex RTS games, MMOs,
and even enjoy the act of building a new gaming-rig and reading
Extreme Tech, they go down the PC route. Just like car enthusiasts go
for the manual-shift car. If this is your thing, then carry on, do what you've always
done, carry on buying your laptops and desktop PCs, and carry on
dealing with all trade-off's that lifestyle brings. The iPad simply
brings more choice to the people who are willing to trade-off their
ease of use against a lack of Flash and USB, just like iPhone users
trade-off multi-tasking with the fact that they never need to bring up
a task manager to find out why their phone is running so slow.

Oh, and finally, Merlin Mann always has the best ways to make a point.

I got a lot right, I didn't get the multi-tasking, or hardware
keyboard, and thought it might have force feedback, but other than
that I got the screen size, the iPhone apps, the input, the features,
and the wi-fi with optional 3G connectivity. So not too bad.

Having watched the keynote and read the specifications online, I do
want one. I don't think I could 100% justify why, but I do want one.
Apple ship lots of products I don't want too, like the Mac Pro, or
their monitors, or their hi-fi, or any of their mice. They get it
wrong, and I can see that. But for the iPad, I can see so much that's
right. Reading the comments online however, mostly on mainstream sites
like the BBC, few seem to agree.

The complaints are essentially that it's nothing but a big iPod touch,
that it doesn't have USB, no multi-tasking, no flash, no GPS (it does,
in the 3G versions), no camera and in some cases, even that it doesn't
have an upgradeable battery, memory, hard disk, etc. I've even seen
people get so picky as to complain that the bevel around the screen is
too big. I'm assuming those are people without hands, and therefore
won't need somewhere to put them when holding the device.

Some of these complaints have merit, such as the lack of multi-tasking
(although I still expect a free OS upgrade to bring that in the Expose
style I mentioned), but most of these complaints are comparing this
directly against a PC and expecting all it's features to be the same.
I think it's quite clear that this isn't meant to be a full computer,
it's not meant to replace their existing Mac Book line, it's a new
product line, and therefore shouldn't be held to the same standard as
what came before. Traditional news sites are still calling this a
Tablet PC, which shows an immediate misunderstanding of what this is.
The lack of camera is also a big cause of complaint for many, but can
you imagine taking a photo with this thing? It's not exactly the most
elegantly shaped device for that. And as for a front-facing camera for
video-conferencing, the next time you're doing one of those on Skype,
try to hold the camera in front of you the whole time and keep it
pointed at your face. I don't think you'll find that too easy.

I come back to what I originally wrote, which is that for a lot of
people, computers are hard. They're complicated, they take a long time
to start up and shut down, they're a festering hole for viruses,
spyware, and often require to be wiped every year to cure the system
bloat. Older people need their kids and grandkids on standby to talk
them through how to do things. People buy laptops loaded with
advertising crud, and have poor experiences after just 6 months of
buying a new machine. I had somebody today with a year old laptop
wishing they could use it for target practice, so frustrating was the
fact it just seemed so slow.

With the iPad, say goodbye to all of that. It's as simple as a big
single screen that you touch. It's immediately tactile, immediately
understandable. It switches on instantly, it's there when you need it.
No more waiting for the computer to shut down. There's no viruses, no
spyware. Every one of them is the same, which means no compatibility
issues. Yes, it doesn't run multiple processes, but in return, that
means you're not going to have something that's starting in the
background and making everything slow down. The app store means
everything you can install on it has been checked over by Apple
beforehand, so it works, it's safe. No USB? No drivers to manage and
install.

These are trade-off's. What you get in return for having less control
and no user-installable apps is a system that simply works. It's an
appliance. Like a TV, or your washing machine. And if you're a power
user, and you want to run IRC, and IM, and a browser and listen to
music from Pandora all at the same time as browsing the web and
writing a blog post - then buy a laptop. This isn't for you. But if
you're an average user, and you do some browsing, and a little bit of
email, listen to a bit of music and work with an occasional
spreadsheet - this could be the thing for you. It's likely to redefine
how you think about a computer, and we should think of that as a good
thing.

Finally, I must mention Flash. The number one complaint I've seen is
the lack of it. Flash is the number one cause of browser crashes on OS
X, it's a proprietary Adobe technology with an expensive creative
suite and often does nothing more than slow things down. The two main
reasons for it - games, and video playback. For the games, the best
ones are likely to be converted for the App Store anyway (and many
already have been for the iPhone). For video, there's HTML5.

In existing HTML4, which is what browsers have been supporting until
now, video is not natively supported. That's why there's Flash, to
fill that missing hole. In HTML5 however, completely supported by
Safari, there is both now native support for video and audio. So if
you're a designer that wants to put video on your site, you can put it
right on the page without the need for Flash. That means faster
loading pages, less crashes, and more design control for the designer.
It's going to take a little time for sites to start swapping out their
Flash players for native HTML5 versions, but YouTube already announced
they were testing it last week, and many others will follow over the
coming months. So if you were Apple, and you knew Flash caused so many
crashes and problems, and you'd created all the hardware and software
in your new device yourself, would you want to include the proprietary
technology from another company in every box, or simply wait a few
months while the open standards of HTML5 took their rightful place?

What if Apple were simply to go to the cell carriers, whom I'd expect
to be Verizon and AT&T in the US (because you'd want to combine them
for the best nationwide coverage), and offered them a cut of
everything sold through the iTunes store in return for a free ride on
their networks? For the consumer, free internet, no contract. For
Apple, an always connected gateway to their store. For the carriers, a
cut of the most popular online media store.

The rumours also say that if these were the two carriers then Apple
would produce both CDMA and GSM versions of the tablet, but that seems
unlikely, and it's not Apple's style. There'll be one device, and both
chipsets will be included. Apple's friends at Samsung already have a
number of dual-band phones, and producing two devices seems like an
expensive overhead and bound to cause customer confusion.

Windows is a user experience designed around the keyboard and mouse,
so the idea that you can just remove those two elements and everything
will still be OK is exactly the reason why their tablet idea keeps
failing. You can't train your users to use your software in a certain
way and then take away what they used to interact with it. Nobody
would think to release a car that had everything except the steering
wheel and then ask you to just drive with your feet.

This is exactly why I said the Apple tablet would be something
completely new, why I think it will be nothing like a laptop, nothing
like a PC or Mac experience. If you wanted that, you'd go buy a
netbook, you'd buy a laptop. A tablet has to be something different,
otherwise, why am I buying it? What exactly is the benefit of
Microsoft's slate computer? Why would anyone want to give up the
convenience of the keyboard and mouse in order to use software that
was designed precisely for those two input methods?

Then write a 500 word essay on why after 40 years since it was
recorded, it still sounds fresher, more creative, and more fun than
anything we're currently able to produce as a planet of musicians.

Putting Joe McElderry up against this is like putting a kitten up
against Ali and thinking that's a fair fight.

Like the others, I have no special knowledge (like anybody would tell me), but I do have a good idea what I would put in a tablet if I were designing one.

To start with, I think a lot of commentators (Joe Wilcox included) are starting with the idea that tablet computers are laptops without a keyboard, which you most likely control using some sort of stylus, and they run essentially the same operating system and applications as your laptop did before you hacked the keyboard off. Since the term up until now has been largely dominated by Microsoft's interpretation of what a tablet should be, this can hardly be surprising, but that's no indicator to suggest we're never going to get anything more. To say that an Apple tablet is simply going to be a MacBook with the keyboard cut off simply suggests you think the people in Cupertino are morons. So just because they haven't been a success before, doesn't mean they can't be a success now. Everybody thought they knew what a mobile phone was until the iPhone came along and showed you what it could be, and I have no doubt that the tablet will do the same.

The other common thread is that the tablet will just be an iPhone with a bigger screen. It's not surprising really, those that have already discounted the idea that it's a MacBook sans keyboard are logically going to move on to the next possibility, that Apple will simply take their existing hot product and make it bigger. Never mind the fact that the iPhone's UI buttons and switches would look pretty tiny on a 10 inch screen, or that there would be an awful lot of wasted space if it was just scaled up. That's not to say that it won't run something similar, I think the chances of it being like an OS that they've already designed to be controlled by touch are far more likely than being like an OS designed for keyboard and mouse. Apple are also control freaks, and giving you an app-store where they get to pick exactly what you get to install on it, not to mention the possibility of another 30% commission as developers sell you tablet versions of each of their wares, seems like something they'd like. But while the underpinnings are still going to be OS X, and the development environment is still going to be Cocoa Touch, expect a UI designed specifically for a 10 inch display.

The most common question of all however, is why would you buy one? What exactly can a tablet offer that a laptop doesn't, and what use is it otherwise if I can't keep it in my pocket like an iPhone. These are reasonable questions, but most of them are coming from geeks who are already carrying around laptops and Kindle's anyway, and more often than not they're also coming from the person whose view of tablet is based on the Microsoft ideal covered a couple of paragraphs ago.

But before I answer that, let me just say what I think an Apple tablet is going to be.

I expect it to be a 10 inch full colour screen (not e-ink), be half an inch thick, have wi-fi with an optional 3G module (or tethering via your iPhone), and be fully multi-touch capable. I think the UI will be custom designed for that size screen and interaction, and I'd expect the screen resolution to be at least 1024 pixels wide (720p probably). It's support multi-tasking (yes, more than one app at a time, it's the future!), and be capable of running iPhone apps scaled up to fit the screen. I don't expect to be dragging windows around the screen as that would be clumsy with a touch UI, but I wouldn't be surprised to see some button in the corner that essentially mimicked Exposé. It'll have access to the app-store, where I expect applications to be tagged as what devices they support. It'll also have access to the iTunes store, where you'll be able to buy the usual slew of movies, music, TV shows and audiobooks. You'll also be able to buy magazine subscriptions, single issues and books. Those books may even be provided through a deal with Amazon, who I believe are in the business of selling books, not devices. Expect text entry to be possible by more than just an on-screen keyboard (but nothing hardware based) and, if I was really pushing my luck, for force feedback on the display to help with this.

So why would you buy one? Mostly because computers are too hard for the average person. Gruber said it right, Apple is "redefining the experience of personal computing". This is Apple's opportunity to make the computer like your TV, you just switch it on, and it's there. No need to boot it up, no need to go through complicated login processes, no need to worry about viruses or spyware - it's just like the iPhone, one button at the top, a quick swipe, and you're done.

Don't underestimate the power of ease of use, don't underestimate the mass-market want and need for a computer that just comes on and works without all the hassles associated with personal computing that everyone has now just taken for granted. And, since Apple is the only manufacturer controlling both the hardware and the software, they're the only company in a position to make this happen. Gruber complained a couple of months ago that nobody else produced their own OS, and those companies are about to get bitten again. We're conditioned to accept that a computer is something that takes a minute to boot up, most likely runs Windows, and which we have to protect from viruses with complex software. But it doesn't have to be that way, and the fact that it usually is explains why tablets have failed in the past, as they suffered from all the same issues.

If you've already got a laptop, and you take it with you wherever you go, including on holiday, then maybe this isn't something you want to invest in. But if you think that a laptop is a heavy, bulky item to have in a backpack when you go to a meeting, just so you can take a couple of lines of notes and maybe show a webpage, or think it's a bit much to take on holiday with you when you just want to watch a movie on the plane (if that's still allowed) or by the pool and think the iPhone screen is too small - then this could be what you're looking for.

People say the Jobs reality distortion field doesn't reach out to the man on the street, who doesn't even know who Jobs is. Maybe they don't, but to claim that they don't know who Apple are, or aren't drawn towards Apple products, is to totally ignore the massive success of both the iPod and the iPhone. They weren't all bought by geeks. Nor is it all geeks who walk into Apple stores across the world each day, it's the mass-market. The iPod is everywhere and bought by everyone, and I've seen the iPhone coveted by people who would never dream of taking a laptop on holiday with them. Give them a compelling product, and they'll go out and buy it. Top reasons why they might? (or alternatively, top things I'd make it do if I were designing it).

1. See your photos in unparalleled clarity, show them to your friends and family easy. Show two at a time. Compare them. Zoom in with a pinch.

2. How about selecting anything on your Mac and choosing "send to tablet" and having it appear on your tablet display. An email, a photo, a webpage, anything that you might want to take away with you and show somebody in another room.

3. Universal remote. And I don't mean for your TV, I mean for everything. It's a blank canvas, expect interfaces for everything. Apple TV is just the start, how about X10 controlling your home? Your alarm system? Your Sonos? Your baby monitor with remote webcam? And once the apps really start rolling in, how about access to your bank account on a device that turns on instantly? Would it change the way you looked at your money?

4. Media. TV shows, movies, music. Gorgeous cover art, full 720p movies and TV shows, create playlists by throwing songs from one side of the screen to the other.

5. Books. Kindle may be selling well, but I don't believe the average user cares about e-ink that much. Most users who are against e-books are against the fact that they're not paper, and that's to do with feel and touch more than it is looks. Since everyone is pretty used to reading on a screen all day already, I'd say that the majority of people would be quite happy to read their books on a big bright colour display.

6. Magazines, and interactive ones at that. Expect to see Entertainment Weekly with video interviews embedded into pages. Also expect to see full screen ads that you have to browse past. No ad-removal software here.

7. Games. With 3D graphics and an unparalleled level of interactivity. Point and click adventure games will never be the same again. With the iPhone and Touch, DS and PSP need to be worried. With this, Wii should be worried too.

8. The web. It seems daft to those already using an iPhone, but the web takes on a whole new meaning when it's just there, all the time. Those whose only interaction with the web is when they're tied to a desk probably haven't realised that. But even those that have don't want to spend much time on it when doing so on a cramped telephone screen. With 10 inches, expect the mobile web to really come alive. Especially if we also get GPS and a video camera front and rear (one click video conferencing is here).

All from something you can just throw in your bag, weighs less than any existing laptop, switches on in an instant, is always connected, and frankly - just works. That sounds exactly like something the average person could be interested in.

Now do you want one?

I'm constantly editing 5,000 line scripts, and it really struggles. On
Windows, it's not anywhere near as slow, although still much slower
than something like Editplus.

If I turn off syntax highlighting then things improve, but that's a
hell of a sacrifice.

I guess it comes back to my usual problem, Perl editors on the Mac are
really lacking.

Exactly which VC thought this was worth funding? I give the company a year.

Starting with Google, I loaded up our single campaign, a simple ad
promoting the site and linking to the homepage. With various keywords
selected, including "wedding forum", "wedding guide" and "wedding
community" (without the quotes) and a budget set at around £0.35
per click and a cap of £10 per day, we were off to the races in
no time at all. Things looked good, my daily budget was spent, we
appeared in the number 1 slot for each of our keyword selections and
traffic was driven to the site. But that traffic didn't do much,
almost nobody signed up, and those that did would activate their
account and go no further.

I then did the same thing with Facebook. I put in some similar text,
uploaded a little image, set the same budget and even bid the same
amount (which also happened to be what they recommended). Instead of
targeting towards keywords that people are are searching for, you're
targeting towards a certain demographic. I was able to target women,
who were engaged, who had said they were interested in weddings, in
the countries we're currently interested in working with (the UK, US,
Canada and Australia).

Within an hour, the Facebook ads were more successful than the Google
ones ever were. There was an immediate spike in traffic, the users hit
more pages, more of them signed up, and those that have signed up have
also started to participate (although admittedly, we still seem to
have a lot of users who signup and activate and never do anything). I
only wish I had a higher budget to put into these things, they worked
so well.

What I think is happening here is a good indication of each
advertising platform. Google is going to be better suited to those
looking to make a purchase, or those looking for specific information.
If you're searching for Sony Bravia TV's and a Google ad comes up
offering you one at a good price, there's a high chance that ad will
be clicked on and an item bought. Since we're running a social
networking site, we don't really have that instant gratification that
a Google searcher is often looking for. Few people go online looking
for a social network to join, you go join the one your friends are at,
or you join a forum because you have a specific question to ask or
because you see a topic that you just must reply to.

On Facebook, an ad for a Sony Bravia TV probably won't work too well.
It's a hard thing to target towards a specific demographic, even those
who say they're interested in Televisions are going to purchase so few
of them that it's not really going to get much traction. Ads that do
well on Facebook much look interesting enough to be clicked on, which
means if you are clicked on, then there's a pretty good chance you're
going to do well out of the user. And since they're targeted towards
the kind of user you think will click on them, it's win-win for the
advertiser.

I think of these as the active user, and the passive user. Active
users want to buy TV's, and use Google. Passive users like shiny
things that catch their eye, and browse Facebook. It's a distinctly
different person.

For us, Facebook is clearly the winner. At least until we have
something to sell.