The iPad and its appeal to humanity

The other day I pointed to this video as describing the computer literacy of the vast majority of potential consumers out there. It’s a Google employee asking random people on the street in Times Square “what’s a browser?” Result: fewer than 1 in 12 people understand the technology they use.

My point: they don’t have to. They shouldn’t have to.

I just read “60 million Americans don’t use the interwebs” by Rik Myslewski at The Register. It is an underscoring of the Google video. Some quotes:

Of the roughly 60 million adult Americans who don’t use the internet at all, 47 per cent cited cost and complexity and 45 per cent agreed with the survey statement that “I am worried about all the bad things that can happen if I use the Internet.”
Of all respondents who told the FCC that they don’t have broadband - both dial-up and non-internet users - only 4 per cent said that the reason was lack of availability. More important to them was “too much pornography and offensive material” (65 per cent) and their belief that it’s “too easy for my personal information to be stolen online” (57 per cent).”
The survey is part of the run-up to the FCC’s National Broadband Plan, which will be delivered to Congress on March 17. According to the FCC’s statement, this plan “details a strategy for connecting the country to affordable, world-class broadband.”

I think Apple is the only group that sees the problem correctly. Or, at least, the only group that sees the problem and is visibly doing something about it. The problem is not broadband but the device and interface that you use to connect to it.

This article by Jesus Diaz at Gizmodo (written before the iPad’s launch) did an amazingly prescient job of relating the work of Jef Raskin (who evangelized the concept of the “information appliance” in the 1980s) to the iPhone and the iPad. The iPhone is the first true information appliance: a computer so easy to use that anyone just “gets it” and can start using it immediately without having to be tutored. The only drawback is the screen size — not really large enough to take over the responsibilities of your “normal” computer.

This is where the iPad comes in: it takes the iPhone’s “so simple anybody can use it” concept and gives it more screen acreage to work with. The iPad, even though it is being described right now as an appendage to your desktop or laptop, will ultimately replace both the desktop and the laptop. Why? Because the vast majority of people are not computer geeks; they don’t need a confusing box of complex UI conventions and subtle error scenarios (e.g. the active window not being the one at the top of the pile). They don’t have broadband at home because it is non-trivial to set up and intimidating to use. Let’s not even talk about setting up wireless at home.

Why? Why should it take an electrical or computer engineer to set up networking at home? Why should you need to be a seasoned expert in various “productivity” software packages just to get simple tasks done quickly? My neighbors frequently turn to their children for help after wasting hours on a spreadsheet or word-processing document (and their children solve the issue in seconds). Why? Why are computers so difficult to use for the vast majority? Why have we (and I include myself in this) not designed computers specifically to be easy to use?

Answer: because nobody has forced us to.

I think people are waking up to what this is about. Apple is simplifying the interface in an appeal to humanity. In both senses of the word.

Just look at the run-down of issues they’ve tackled:

  1. It’s always connected to the intertubes, without you having to do anything.
  2. It’s got a simple, intuitive interface.
  3. It’s got all the apps most people use on a daily basis.
  4. It’s inexpensive.
  5. It explicitly avoids software and scenarios that are potential security threats.
  6. Its software just works.

These are the issues that people — users — care about. They could care less about openness of platforms or whether a particular piece of software is supported — they just want to do a small handful of simple things without having to deal with a computer on the computer’s terms. They want an appliance.

And Apple is giving them one.

Notes