1. On this iPad thing…

    “Why do we do it like this on the desktop?”

    That’s the question I imagine Apple asking, again and again when looking at the desktop-like features they wanted to bring to the iPhone OS and create the iPad OS. The iPad OS isn’t an entirely new re-envisioning of computer OS - if only because it is based on the iPhone OS that preceded it - but it’s as scathing and questioning as an all-new OS in some regards.

    I spent this morning re-installing Mac OS X, iLife and iWork on a MacBook Pro that I’ve sold. As I watched the OS X installer display things like “Writing Package Receipts”, “Moving Things Into Place”, and “Running Package Scripts” - things that are utterly meaningless to the average Ma-and-Pa computer user - I came to the realisation that the iPad OS makes Mac OS X look old and confusing: and I’m not even talking about the visual design. I’m talking about the assumptions the designers made when deciding what really needed to be shown on OS X.

    Do we need to display a textual update saying what an application installation is actually doing on the iPad, when a moving progress bar and activity indicator to reassure the average user that something is going on is all that’s needed?

    Of course not. Does the user even know (or care) what a Package Receipt actually is?

    Does an iPad user really need to know where their files are stored beyond “In the Pictures Folder”?

    For a mainstream user: absolutely not. Mac OS X and Windows have both, for some considerable time, shipped with Photos, Music, Videos and Documents folders. But their intended use as a central repository for a specific type of file was undermined by the fact that people could place files anywhere, and create new folders galore (not to mention the fact that, in all likelihood, they’d be using an application like iPhoto to manage pictures which to some extent, nested the content further). In the iPad OS, you really can say to your parents: open up the Photos application, safe in the knowledge that all the media they’re itching to view and email is right there. With the iPad OS we’re now looking at the merging of an iPhoto-like experience with the filesystem itself.

    Yes, it’s an entirely prescriptive way of computing - one that the hackers, tinkerers and geeks will find alien and protest about its lack of openness. But here’s the thing: for the people who the iPad is aimed at it really doesn’t matter that this experience is prescriptive - and the more you look at the decisions Apple seem to have made in building the software on the device, the more you realise that the iPad is perhaps the first high-technology product ready for - and entirely aimed at - a mainstream audience right from the get-go.

    Posted on Saturday January 30th, 2010