Comparing the iPad to the First Macintosh
Apr 7th, 2010 by David Svet
Do you remember seeing Apple’s 1984 commercial during the Super Bowl? I do, it was an amazing thing — totally groundbreaking hype. Steve Jobs has been at this a while and knows the game. The launch of the iPad was no less monumental in generating buzz in a different time. What strikes me as the most interesting aspect of both launches isn’t the hype around the products but the technology delivered by the two products.
I didn’t buy the first Macintosh. I bought the second one. The first iteration came with a paltry 128k of RAM and one single side floppy disk drive. Mine had a massive 512k. The screens were tiny, low resolution and monochrome. MacWrite and MacPaint were the exciting apps that ran on it. I was teaching in the Industrial Design program at The Ohio State University at the time where everyone was working on the birth of computer graphics. So, I knew what real computer graphics were. But I bought a Mac anyway — not for what it was, but for what it could become.
In the meantime Apple became the darling of the publishing and advertising world ushering in the demise of typesetting, then color separations. The emergence of multi-media followed and has been on a roll ever since. I know it didn’t all happen at Apple or even because of Apple related products. But I think they were a major catalyst for changing how we create and consume information. Today I scoped out the biggest Mac currently on Apple’s site: Two 2.9GHz Quad Core processors and 32 GB of memory plus applications for everything from video production to 3d animation and theoretical physics. That’s a big change from 25 years ago.
Enter the iPad. Aside from having the worst name ever, I think it is as big as that first Mac. It comes with all of the same problems and all of the same promise. All of the criticism of its lack of technological prowess is true. But one look at the Sports Illustrated Tablet Demo on YouTube and I see the next 25 years of the iPad as something more miraculous. I see a seismic shift in publishing, again.
Will I buy this iPad? Looking at the pile of iPods discarded on the counter, left behind for newer models by everyone in my family, I am inclined to say no. I will wait. But I fully expect the same kind of change that the Mac ushered in over publishing and I fully expect my pile of discarded Apple products to grow in the process. Everything changed. It’s déjà vu all over again.
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question is what would you do with the discard pile..or better yet, would you stick to apple to get your first tablet device or wait to see what competition will usher in..aha!
Two great questions! The discard pile concerns me and I don’t have an answer. It’s expensive and wasteful. I have a similar problem at my office with old computing equipment. I pay to have it recycled.
iPad or wait and see? Hmmm. iPad SHOULD be compatible with most of my world and SHOULD evolve quickly. That being said, some of the netbook makers and content providers will have a huge impact on adoptions. Remember how VHS beat the better Beta video format when the porn industry standardized on VHS? The most popular application for tablets will probably have a big impact on tablet sales.