Counterpoint on iPad angst: usability makes tech geeks nervous

For years we've all held to the belief that computing had to be made simpler for the 'average person'. We have totally failed in this effort...

Real Work is not formatting the margins, installing the printer driver, uploading the document, finishing the PowerPoint slides, running the software update or reinstalling the OS.

Real Work is teaching the child, healing the patient, selling the house, logging the road defects, fixing the car at the roadside, capturing the table's order, designing the house and organising the party.

If the iPad frees people to focus on what they do best, it will dramatically change people's perceptions of computing from something to fear to something to engage with enthusiastically.

This isn't a computer for geeks. It's a tool for humans.

Snark on iPad "missing" Flash, from surprising source

Okay, the source isn't that surprising. Adobe's Flash Platform Blog calls Apple out for "continuing to impose restrictions that limit both content publishers and consumers." Then, with no sense of irony whatsoever, Adobe offers a screenshot of the technology that web usability guru Jakob Nielsen called 99% bad:

Although multimedia has its role on the Web, current Flash technology tends to discourage usability for three reasons: it makes bad design more likely, it breaks with the Web's fundamental interaction style, and it consumes resources that would be better spent enhancing a site's core value.

Adobe's screenshot showing a broken plugin icon where content should be proves Nielsen's—and Apple's—point. Having content locked up so it can only be "originated" by designers with Adobe's (expensive) tools, and only viewed by users with Adobe's player, is the very definition of a restriction that limits both publishers and consumers.

As a picture posted on Engadget shows (below), and many others have reported, there's something important missing from Apple's approach to connecting consumers to content.

iPad Flash Plugin Error

Yes, Adobe, your screenshot shows something missing, but it's not Apple's approach, it's yours, that is missing open creation and consumption.

Without Flash support, iPad/iPod Touch/iPhone users may be an interesting enough audience for publishers that they shift momentum back to web standards, so anyone from the New York Times to a child in Chile can freely publish their say.

Apple's 0.7 megapixel 4:3 EDTV media viewer

Come on, Apple—Jobs needs a new set of glasses. The iPad is only 1024x768. That's miserly for the HD video age.

A widescreen 1280x768 would have been a megapixel, and HDTV means at least 1280x720. Five years ago, Gateway's CX200 Tablet PC offered that, making portrait view perfect for viewing full page documents including the menu bar, taking notes with Microsoft OneNote—and landscape view ideal for watching movies.

With its 9.7" diagonal and 131 DPI, the iPad offers sharper resolution than Apple's 30" cinema display (4 megapixels at 100 DPI), and the same resolution as the 17" Macbook Pro (2.3 megapixels at 133 DPI), but is less crisp than the iPhone at 164 DPI.

Let's hope the pixel grid is oriented for portrait mode so fonts can use subpixel rendering, or reading will be tiring compared to the Kindle. (It's hard to tell from Apple marketing which is the preferred orientation.)

Sadly, this iPad is not the portable Hulu player I was looking for. Aside from the pixel count barely exceeding Apple's iFrame video format, with HDTV shot in 16:9 and most widescreen movies filmed in 1.85:1 or 2.35:1, there will be a lot of letter-boxing on planes and trains this year.