Let me state this: I don’t need multitasking from the iPad. Even better, I don’t need multi-tasking from a 10 inches portable tablet device. But before I go through this, I believe we need some “background” about the whole multi-tasking problem.

First, go read this post from John Gruber where he explains the reasons nehind the lack of “backgrounding” on the iPhone.

“The profound simplicity of the iPhone user interface stems in part from the complete lack of interface elements for managing processes. There is no task manager or memory meter; if you want to know what’s running, the answer is simply whatever app it is that you’re looking at. “

Indeed, the iPhone is the finest example of “human interface”: you’re doing what you’re looking at. I could have Mail and Youtube running at the same time on my Mac, but that doesn’t necessarily mean I’m watching a video. Multi-tasking can be workflow, as Milind Alvares wrote in his SmokingApples piece, but it’s not an imperative. Just take a look at all those Mac applications that help you focusing on one app at a time: they basically bring single-tasking into your workflow once again.

I don’t need a multi-tasking capable portable device. I just need an excellent single-tasking oriented yet multi-purpose tablet. And that’s what Apple is building. How am I supposed to run 3 apps at a time on that screen? But physical limitations aside, let’s look at the concept itself.

The iPad isn’t meant for people who require multi-tasking.

My mother doesn’t need multi-tasking. She doesn’t even know what it’s multi-tasking. But surely she would appreciate an intuitive multitouch “tablet computer” which requires a few taps to have a very good browsing experience. I strongly believe that a great and focused user experience is better than a crappy and unusable “let-me-resize-that-window“-based workflow.

Does this mean I hate multi-tasking? No. It’s just that I want a new and different experience from the iPad. You know, focusing on one task at a time is really productive sometimes.

Great post over at Cocoia blog, where Sebastiaan has asked some questions to Mike Matas, former Delicious Library UI designer and worker at Apple. You’ve go to read this.

“My favorite designs are the ones that don’t just solve a problem, but also engage you on an emotional level—where you take away more from it than just the end result of its function.”

Nik Fletcher nails it in his latest blog post:

“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.”

Link

“The screen size is a huge difference. Try browsing the Web on the iPhone. Works well but you have to keep zooming in and out. You’ll need to zoom on the iPad, but not as much — you’ll see a lot more of the page which will make a big difference to the browsing experience. Same thing with photos, and videos, and pretty much everything else. While the iPhone is mainly a phone that does more, the iPad is a fully functional information consumption device. The fact that it uses the iPhone’s OS is also irrelevant because the OS in question is suited perfectly for what the product is intended to do. Instead of looking at the iPad as a big iPod Touch, you should look at it in isolation and ask: is this a good tablet device? The answer is: yes.”

Interesting post over at Smoking Apples, where Milind Alvares shares his thoughts about the iPad as a breakthrough device that will change the computing world as we know it forever.

From the post:

“I propose the next major shift in computing platforms has begun. It began with the iPhone, and it’s more evident with the iPad. Computers of the future won’t have a file system as we know it. There won’t be a Finder window, there won’t be a home folder, there definitely won’t be an applications folder. So far progress in the computing world has been all about adding new features. From now on its going to be about removing things to make room for a better experience.”

This is an interesting theory. Pretty much what Google is building with Chrome OS: making the file system structure invisible to the user, pushing everything to the web. But there are many drawbacks in doing this, and Milind just got it right:

“Take word processing for instance. iWork documents will reside on the web, but only immediately required documents will be cached locally—why would you want documents from 2 years ago available for editing? These documents will be available on the iPad for editing, iPhone for viewing and projecting, and any other device that fits into Apple’s product lineup. That’s where Google has it wrong. To roughly quote Jobs in 2005, “the marriage of cloud services, with rich local client apps, is a great thing”. Google wants to do everything in the cloud, including writing the software that drives it—as is seen in their Chrome OS. Apple wants to create rich local functionality that drives itself with data from the cloud.”

This is the main point. You can’t force the user to edit documents online, because you don’t know if the user will have a 24/7/365 active internet connection. Everyone should, sure, but the reality it’s a little but different from this utopia. Just as I wrote in my post about Chrome OS some time ago, a total-cloud OS is going to fail. Turns out that the solution lies in both “clouding” things and caching them locally. You want to open a recent document? Just fire up Pages on your iPad and choose it. You remember you had this 6 months old spreadsheet that could come in handy again? Head over iWork.com and download it again. That’s how cloud computing should work in my opinion, that’s what Apple will do.

What really bothers me is thinking that the file system structure will die at any level. Don’t get me wrong, I’m one of those people that believe the iPad is introducing a new era of personal computing. But thinking that for this reason desktop computers will change forever into biggest iPads is just as dumb as thinking that mobile phones will replace my dial-up home phone. Sure I don’t use my home phone that much, but when everytime I need it - it’s there. I believe that in the next years I’ll use the iPad maybe even more than my Macbook, but it won’t replace. The Finder window won’t disappear, it will be different. But it will be there.

Mike Rundle nailed it.

“This is the iPad’s intended audience. People who have a PC and use 10% of its features and software 90% of the time. People like my Mom & Dad who browse the web, read news, send email and watch videos. People like my cousin Jenny who chats with friends, uses Facebook and uploads photos. Regular folks. Consumers. People who use computers to stay informed, connected and entertained.”

Excellent blog post on Cocoia by Sebastiaan de With.

“Fortunately, there’s not that much stuff in the iPad UI that I’d call ‘bad’ or ‘ugly’. Apple has shown once more that they’re at the top of their game, and the interface is sublime. If iPad had preceded iPhone, we’d all be lyrical and hopeful for a smaller device that did even a few percent of its awesome feature set. Instead, this natural evolution of the iPhone OS is being heckled by people that fail to see how extending the underlying ideas of iPhone’s UI helps interaction with ‘serious’ applications like iWork.”

A must read.

The reaction to the official iPad announcement has been hilarious. Pretty much like every official announcement, it seems like you have to either completely love or hate something in order to give your opinion about it. But while this way of thinking doesn’t work in real life, so it doesn’t in technology. You can’t judge a new device in 2 hours, just as you can’t in a week or in one month. And please notice that the iPad it’s only been announced: it will be out in 2 months.

That said, I think people are missing the whole point about Apple’s newest creation when comparing it to a big sized iPhone. Sure, it looks like a fat iPhone if you ask me. Point is, it doesn’t feel like an iPhone at all and the fact that it looks like the iPhone is actually the explanation of what I’m talking about. Plain and simple. Don’t get me wrong: the user interface is very similar to iPhone OS, it takes some elements from it (toolbars, buttons, icons) and pushes them into another dimension. I don’t know how this OS will be named, but iPad OS doesn’t sound bad at all. The big difference between the looks like and the feels like problems lie in the screen size itself. Many people can’t look beyond the form factor thing and they just go out and say “it’s a larger iPhone”. I can’t blame them if they don’t have a vision. By creating a product with more screen real estate, Apple will provide a device with more information on it. All those menus that you used to have in a dedicated tab in your iPhone can now be accessed with a single tap on a button without losing the information you’re looking at. It’s in the user flow where the iPad will be different from the iPhone: you can do things faster, in one place, without losing or breaking the experience.

Take a look at the Mail app, my favorite so far: you don’t have to go back and forth between the inbox and the single message view, you just hit a button and boom, here’s the “contextual menu” for that, with the inbox listing your incoming messages. I can go on with this for hours, but I’m pretty sure Tweetie for the iPad won’t have a single compose window anymore.

Second of all, the iPad we saw yesterday isn’t about tech specs. Neither it will be in 6 months or later this year. Sure it’s got a pretty aluminium case, a gorgeous shiny screen and 802.11n wifi, but I believe Steve wanted to put the focus on the reason you need it rather than plain numbers.

“We’ve always tried to be at the intersection of technology and liberal arts - we want to make the best tech, but have them be intuitive. It’s the combination of these two things that have let us make the iPad”

A great piece of tech, which has to be so great and yet intuitive to establish itself in a third category of products. This leads me to the question “Do I need an iPad?”. Yes I do. Speaking for myself, I need a device I could carry around the house, in the garden or in bed that lets me access and work with my stuff. That lets me check and manage my stuff. Couldn’t I use an iPhone for that? I could, and I’m currently using it. But this doesn’t mean it could be a lot better and most of all, the iPhone doesn’t let me manage data. I check things (stats, docs) but I don’t manage them. The iPhone is a device meant for “checking and accessing the most important things of your life” on the go. Nobody ever said it could be your mobile office, and Office clones apps in the App Store don’t justify that. I don’t write posts on my iPhone. With an iPad running iWork, I probably will.

I’m not saying the iPad it’s perfect, because it’s not. The OS is still incomplete, it’s a first iteration and we all know how much the iPhone got better in 3 years. I’m just saying that the iPad has a reason to exist, that there’s room for a 3rd category of products and Apple can fill that empty space. And as Josh Helfferich said yesterday “this is how past computing dies — with thunderous applause”.

Right after Steve unveiled the iPad yesterday, I started wondering what was the developers’ reaction to the product. I had the chance to chat with Michael Flarup, a graphic designer who’s currently working at Robocat. We reviewed Robocat’s first application, Outside, and we loved it.

Enough for the presentations, let’s see what Michael thinks about the iPad.

Read more