Overheard: “Only Apple can get away with calling something ‘magical’ and not have people call bullshit.”
(Image from Apple’s iPad product site.
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
—Arthur C. Clarke’s Third law of Prediction
Hmm… I guess this explains Steve Jobs’s Reality Distortion Field—he’s just using a Confundus charm.
I showed my 93 year old grandmother pictures of my holiday on the ipad. It worked quite well, but she started getting confused when she would tap a picture just to point out something and stuff would zoom/move. Touch interfaces seem intuitive but not everything is meant to 'do something' when touched, a photo is one of those things.
My recent post Twitter Takes Tweetie. Good or bad?
I noticed a problem for a lot of small children and touch screens regarding that it seems natural to rest the palm on the surface. But both points are registered by the iPad resulting in a mess. Apple probably should improve the interface to recognize palms and filter out them. (It's very possible. Check out the original Fingerworks patent.)
My blog post on the subject: http://www.fidei.org/2010/01/ipad-idont.html
The weakness of this argument (same functionality for less price) is the slashdot review against the iPod when it was introduced
While true in spec, and certainly not the best value, the feature set Apple does offer is unique and not offered by others. And while it may not be a good deal for some, I’d hazard that saying it is not a good deal is a rather lack of imagination. I probably should explain in a later post what I mean.
…and my blog post, http://www.dotevan.com/2010/05/04/its-not-magic-a…
My recent post It’s Not Magic (Anymore)