Today Apple announced, with little surprise, a tablet computer called the iPad. Some nifty things going on, but very little in the “knock me over the head with Wow™” going on.
One thing in particular is lacking: A camera. [tech specs]
Now, this at first glance does not seem to be much of a big deal. The device is straddling the fence of the iPhone and the MacBook lines, both of which have a camera. The obvious similarity would be with the iTouch which lacks a camera, but I’m willing to bet that many iTouch users will understand my complaint.
Steve Jobs says iPod touch didn’t get a camera because “it’s a great game machine” –engadget
The iPad will be a wonderful platform for application development. Take all of the wonders that have come from the iPhone developer community and amp it up ten fold. e.g., You can now make a device that a doctor carries around from patient to patient and can easily access information, charts, etc. on the fly and with more granularity for drilling down to specifics or complicated interactions.
A camera provides a very useful input source for such applications. QR Codes, augmented reality, business card scanning, face detection, object detection, and all of the other wonderful things that we haven’t even thought of yet are now all closed off. A very large door for innovation has been closed in our faces before we even went to open it.
Will I need to have a camera dongle if I want to, say, make a Doctor Application™ that allows them to take photo graphs of injuries to be entered into the patient’s file? The Wine Taster Application™ won’t let you take photos of the label of wine you just drank that blew you away. Of course the lack of video chat via iChat is a striking feature set that is missing.
The built in camera on my iPhone is an integral part of my experience with the device. To have taken that integral tool out of the iPad was a very sad mistake that Apple has made.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Ok, here you go, a post on your blog instead of the flickr page 🙂
I agree with you that the biggest misstep of the iPad is the lack of camera. More specifically, a front-facing camera. iPad strikes me as a fantastic computer for people who don't want to learn how to use a computer. Adding video chat would be a really attractive practical feature for this demographic. All I can say is, be patient. I am sure it's coming in rev 2. Or buy something else.
As for multitasking, I agree with you on some parts, but not others… I agree that traditional computer-style multitasking will probably not happen. But there is certainly a good opportunity to introduce a new type of "fake" multitasking. The device of course can handle push notifications. But I don't think it should be running a lot of background processes. I would be perfectly happy with a type of application quick-switching combined with push notifications for network apps.
Alternately, it would not be difficult for Apple to add in a quick memory check upon each app launch to verify if enough memory is available to launch that particular app.
The tricky thing will be for them to figure out how to implement it without making the whole thing much more difficult to use. Over-complicate the device, and you loose your most promising new demographic. Over-simplify, and you can't sell to your existing customers. It will be interesting to see where we are 2 or three years from now.
Sorry for my delay. Sickness, business, and lots of travel have gotten in the way.
I completely agree that the camera should be front facing. If you look very closely at my mockup, you can see I actually put the camera on the front, but that is less noticeable when making such a point.
Unlike the iPhone, the iPad won't be held like a camera. It is going to be held like a clipboard. Therefore, front facing makes sense. Taking pictures of items to be input would be the same place as where you would want PhotoBooth to see you for taking snap shots or for iChat to see you for video chat.
When I see "crazy things" lacking in a device that has any tie to a carrier, I blame the carrier. They are the troglodytes of the technology age, but wield a mighty heavy bat. AT&T's networks are already SLAMMED by the iPhone data use.
"Ok, you want them to surf the web, but there is no way you are going to eat up our bandwidth by doing video conferencing! That would just clog our tubes up like chicken fried bacon clogging up arteries!"
Then again, look at the iTouch. No camera. No carrier. Something fishy about that. There are lots of rumors about supply chain being a problem, but we can only venture guesses. I actually think it is more of a strategic cost cutting issue, but that is just one of many guesses.
Oddly enough, the iPad seems from this glazed view of opera glasses to be a device that will be harder to type on than the iPhone. I can throw my iPhone into landscape mode and peck away somewhat quickly with my thumbs. It is too large for dual thumb use, but apparently too small to put on your lap and get a real QWERTY touch typing experience. I will be curious to see where this takes us.
As for multitasking, I think we know where Apple is going. They have been very clear that there will be no real multitasking. Save current state, put in background, talk to server and we'll push notify you if something important is going on. Now, if they had instead taken the real OS X and made a smaller version for the iPad instead of taking the iPhone OS and bumping it up, I could see room for that to happen, but I think all of the signs clearly point to, "Look where the iPhone has been, is going, and where Apple said they are going: no true multitasking."
You either multitask and take a user experience hit (my laptop can really chug away when I'm beating it with the short end of my multitasking stick: Final Cut Pro, Photoshop, 20 browser windows, etc. all on a dual core Xghz with 4gig RAM etc.; I'd hate to see what'd happen to the iPad with me using it so carelessly!) or you only get to drink from one firehose at a time…with background push.
I'm mostly curious to see what happens when this thing comes out. The software will define it.
Ok, here you go, a post on your blog instead of the flickr page 🙂
I agree with you that the biggest misstep of the iPad is the lack of camera. More specifically, a front-facing camera. iPad strikes me as a fantastic computer for people who don't want to learn how to use a computer. Adding video chat would be a really attractive practical feature for this demographic. All I can say is, be patient. I am sure it's coming in rev 2. Or buy something else.
As for multitasking, I agree with you on some parts, but not others… I agree that traditional computer-style multitasking will probably not happen. But there is certainly a good opportunity to introduce a new type of "fake" multitasking. The device of course can handle push notifications. But I don't think it should be running a lot of background processes. I would be perfectly happy with a type of application quick-switching combined with push notifications for network apps.
Alternately, it would not be difficult for Apple to add in a quick memory check upon each app launch to verify if enough memory is available to launch that particular app.
The tricky thing will be for them to figure out how to implement it without making the whole thing much more difficult to use. Thank You.