More on the iPad

First, some housekeeping.

I have toiled here without much comment, believing that my comments were either so far "out there" that no one could be bothered to comment on what I was saying either to agree or disagree with it, or that my comments were so trivial as to not bother noting. I have just found out that it may be a more pedestrian problem of the blog site not allowing comments to be posted. As soon as I find out the actual problem I will have more to say on this (probably something that notes the implications for people who were trying to learn something). In the interim, if you read something here and wish to comment prior to the repair of the site please email me at Kordel@verizon.net.

What brought this to my attention was a comment from a former colleague who wanted to know what it was that I was doing on the iPad that was so different from what I was doing on the PC. The answer is short, but I believe interesting.

Nothing much.

I have been thinking about development on a course that is targeted for dual delivery on PC's and on tablets (the iPad being the first such device). While the content is interesting it is not bleeding edge, earth shaking or something completely different. It will involve blending some video, some text, and some graphics, hopefully so that the content can be viewed, learned and shared.

So, with that relatively plain setting in mind, what have I noticed? What's the big deal?

There is not "big" deal, but rather, just a collection of small deals. If the content were to be placed on a PC, and only on a PC, there would be no concern about what happened when the screen was turned sideways. Instead we need to work on content to be viewed in a 4:3 format, and the same content converted to 3:4 content. In addition to the plain old formatting issues, the latest issue of Wired on the iPad makes some interesting use of the conversion, with ad copy that changes as the screen is turned (there may be more, I continue to explore).

The more I work without a mouse, the more I like it, but (for me at least) it places the iPad in a very specific niche. The lack of a keyboard means I will probably never use the thing to create much content, (I may answer a short email, but will not create something like this blog entry) but that is OK – I want to use it to consume content. The other thing I have noted is that I sit differently when I use the iPad. PC's (or since Apple Macs also qualify -we now need a word for keyboard/mouse equipped devices ;-) require you to sit up at a desk in order to use them. I notice that I sit back and read it more like a book. I will need to explore aspects of kinesthetic learning and see if anyone else has noted anything here. I also hold the iPad most often like a book, in the vertical format. When I wanted to read on my netbook, I got a screen rotate program. It is not comfortable, although I have used it that way. It allowed me to use the screen as if it were the right side page of a book. Close, but still different.

None of these things by themselves mean much, but as I use the device, other things that keep bubbling up. Taken together, they seem to move the thing into a new class of device.

I hope this answers the question. If you have any follow-ups hopefully I will have the problem with the blog site fixed in the next day or so.

R

iPad First Impressions: A New Medium?

A career or so in the past one of my teachers at film school said that he saw Hollywood movies change when editing equipment moved from the Moviola to the Steenbeck. The Moviola was built vertically, that is, the device had an upper reel and a lower reel, and the film moved between those two locations during viewing. The Steenbeck was a flatbed device, and the film moved from left to right across the table. For reasons that were not quite clear when this mechanical move was made, the pace of cuts, the construction of shots, and the overall feel of the movie changed.

After not touching an Apple device since 1992, I have spent the last week getting acquainted with the iPad. It has been an interesting few days. At first I thought of it as a netbook without keyboard or mouse, but I am coming to the conclusion that it is something new, something that makes me think of Moviolas and Steenbecks. I think that what is new is the conception of space that is implicit in the way the thing works.

First generation PC's showed a page. They were single tasking, text driven devices that allowed you to do some task, usually business related. The archetypical application was WordPerfect. It presented the user with a spare, blank screen that was ready for words. As I recall, as you typed it paged down, and after you had several pages you could page up to review what you had done. There were some applications that fudged this a bit. Spreadsheets existed in a potentially wide space, but even large spreadsheets seemed to assume a page by page format, as if the screen data conformed to how people needed to conceive of it. Space was two dimensional, with up and down the best options.

With the introduction of windowing systems and mice, and more specifically hypertext browsers, the screen added a new, third dimension of depth. Clicking took you into the screen. Underlined blue text implied another page waiting to be accessed (or deeper content waiting to hover over your page). Text boxes floated above the screen, links opened new browser windows that stacked on the existing screen, and unwelcome advertisements covered the screen. Tabbed browsing implied that there was something else, but more often than not, the link would open a new window, which would then add tabs.

As I have explored the iPad what I am starting to grasp is that inherent in the device is a conception of space that is less three dimensional, a la browser based windowing systems, and more two dimensional. It starts with the simple arrangement of icons on the screen, which are accessed by swiping left or right, but it is reinforced with applications like the Wall Street Journal (which appears to be generating a bit of buzz). It is not two dimensional in the old DOS/WordPerfect sense. Rather, it feels like a huge two dimensional space that can be scanned, read, reviewed up or down, right or left, as it passes under the window, in much the same way that a glass bottomed boat allows a window into the large space underneath the boat.

I am not sure what effect this will have on using the device for training - my original motivation was to look at the device for a potential training project. McLuhan said that each new medium starts with the content of an old medium, but then changes it to fit the needs of the new medium. Intel and Microsoft have announced pad projects. If this is indeed the start a new medium, the sooner we appreciate that, and begin to look at how it might be used for training, what will change, what will get better, and what will no longer work, the better off we will be.

R