Mark Zuckerberg, at Facebook’s mobile event today in Palo Alto when asked if Facebook was building an iPad app:
“I don’t want to be rude to Apple – we all love Apple products – but this is a mobile event and we want to stay focused on that. The iPad isn’t mobile in the same way.”
This can mean quite a few things, so instead of opening Tweetie for Mac to write that the Zuck’s an asshole, let’s just think about the nature of the iPad as a device. We often refer to it as a “mobile device”; now I’m asking you to think of that 10-inch piece of aluminum and glass as a “device”.
Is it mobile?
It depends on your acception of mobile. Having an App Store and a portable form factor doesn’t make you mobile., If so, MacBooks are becoming mobile devices in 2 months with the grand opening of the Mac App Store. But then again, it depends on what you refer to when you say “mobile”. MacBooks are lightweight, thin and have enough battery life to always be with you so yeah, one could consider a MacBook Air or Pro “a mobile device”. But I think we’re missing the real point here: there’s a huge difference between “mobile” and “portable”.
MacBooks are computers you can use while carrying them around (you can’t do that, of course, with a Mac Pro or an iMac); you can bring a MacBook to your parents’ place and still use it as if you were at the office. Indeed, the term “portable” comes from the latin “portare” or “porta” which shares the same root of ancient greek’s “poros” - basically, “to carry around” in modern English. As a matter of fact, “portable” becomes “portatile” in Italian, which is the closest thing to Latin you can have. Clearly ancient populations knew exactly what they meant by portable: something that can be with you, something you can carry around as you move. But also something that keeps its purpose intact when carried around.
Why are we having such a hard time trying to describe the iPad as a mobile device? Because Apple’s tablet is so new and innovative it makes the difference between portable and mobile so thin it’s almost impossible to notice.
Ultimately, I think the iPad is a portable device that can be an excellent companion to a MacBook and an iPhone, but it’s not mobile. The iPhone, and smartphones in general, are mobile. They are always connected to the internet, they fit in your pocket and you can easily reach out to them with a single hand. You can even do stuff with smartphones without even looking at them. In today’s acception and in my opinion, a cellphone is mobile and everything else falls under the computer category. The iPad, and I’m with Zuckerberg here, is a computer. It’s a new form of computing and it doesn’t share anything with MacBooks or Mac Pros, but it’s most definitely a computer buried under a touchscreen and a thick layer of creativity. The way I see it, the iPad isn’t by definition “mobile”. It’s portable.
But the iPad can be mobile for some people. Those who bought a Wifi + 3G version and are willing to carry it around all the time and check-in at Starbucks using Gowalla on it want to use it as a mobile device. The fact that something can be used for a different purpose than it was originally meant to doesn’t imply that the user can redefine and abstract the rules of the object. Otherwise, I’d be perfectly justified to think my car is a submarine just because I once drove it into the lake. The fact that my iPhone can’t tether to the MacBook doesn’t turn my MacBook into a mobile device capable of working under 3G connection. So I’m assuming you understand the difference between mobile and portable I’m making: they’re almost the same thing from a dictionary point of view, but in today’s tech industry mobile is something else. Perhaps we picked up the wrong term in the first place, but right now mobile is associated to smartphones.
Also think about the natural conditions that apply when using an iPad. Most of the time, you’re likely going to use it on your lap or on stand and Apple even ships a dock / keyboard set for it. It’s highly portable, but it can be used as a “regular” computer if you want to. Ever wondered why Apple never bothered releasing a dedicated keyboard or other desktop-like accessories for the iPhone? Because they, too, see the iPhone as the mobile counterpart of iOS. Sure they enabled bluetooth access for external keyboards, but it’s the iPad that needs the capability to shift from “highly portable” to “desktop-like”. No wonder the tablet’s growing fast in enterprise.
Most of all, it all comes down to a very simple argument that can’t be applied to the iPhone: by default, the iPad isn’t anything. It’s a piece of glass that recognizes your fingers’ input. When you turn it on, it’s up to you to find a use for it. The iPhone, on the other hand, is and ultimately will always be a phone. You can make a very few calls on it and use it a gaming device but it’ll always be a phone that can run apps. The iPhone has a primary function. The iPad does not. Phones, in today’s industry, are mobile because it’s very likely that you always have a phone with you. I don’t have an iPad with me all the time.
Don’t forget what Steve Jobs asked when he announced the iPad in April: “Is there room for a third category of device in the middle? Something that’s in between a laptop and a smartphone?” He didn’t call the iPad a “mobile device”, nor did he refer to it as a close relative to MacBooks without a keyboard. Six months later though, at the Back to the Mac event, he introduced the new MacBook Airs by asking what could ever happen if a MacBook and an iPad hooked up.
In the end, Zuckerberg’s argument is really simple: Facebook wants people to check-in and use the service but they can’t do that on the iPad because the standard version is a Wifi-only model. That’s why today he came out saying the iPad isn’t mobile – he was simply referring to smartphones. There was no hidden meaning in there, unless you want to find it in the obvious platform differences that exist between the iPhone and iPad.
