Howard Oakley
Poised between the iPod and notebooks, the iPad can bring a touch of magic to the eBook market by allowing access to a wide range of content.
One of the trickiest calls in painting is deciding how much detail to render. Paint outdoors and this determines whether you take an hour or a few weeks. Although hyperrealistic depictions like those of Raphaella Spence and others at http://www.hyperrealism.net can bring a heady rush on first impression, most of us prefer paintings that look painterly: that is, they drop detail, and look as if created with brushes and paint. Use one of the arty filters to turn a photo into a pseudo-painting and you will be making it appear painterly.
Scaling operating systems is also an art. Nearly four years ago, I described how scalable Mac OS X is, asserting that: ‘sooner or later, Apple will release a product that lies between current iPods and MacBooks.’ My concern then was for the creation of consumer desire beyond a tiny technophile market, something Apple accomplished outstandingly with the iPhone and now looks poised to tackle with the iPad.
Maybe somewhere in the bowels of that lumbering giant, Microsoft, there is a tablet operating system fit to take on the iPad, but that could hardly be Windows 7 as we know it. The Archos 9 PC tablet might yet sweep the planet, but its raw Windows 7 human interface is most unpainterly.
If Redmond can’t satisfy the essentials for a rival to the iPad, then Linux could be a candidate. Like Mac OS X, it’s remarkably scalable and runs in almost anything with a microprocessor, from watches to massive computational clusters. It has been dolled up into domestic devices, such as satellite receivers, media players and more, that don’t look the least bit Linux-like, including Android-powered phones. It remains to be seen whether Android or rival Symbian OS will scale to tablets, but insiders, including members of the Android project, have already expressed their doubts. Symbian could prove a dark horse, but has a lot of ground to cover in precious little time.
Just as an artist without a motif is an empty husk, so an operating system without programs and content is useless. As a platform, the iPad looks the most promising new device since the laptop. What will determine if it changes the world is whether it delivers the content. With most of the paper-based publishing industry languishing in decline, its only salvation is a new and popular business model. A few publications have made money from paid-for content delivered over the Internet, but those lacking tied and affluent markets have not met with much success. When it comes to the news, we’re reluctant to put bucks into our browsers and pay for anything, particularly when providers such as the BBC offer excellent free content.
I’ve already waxed lyrical about the new generation of eBook readers, and at last Apple has brought the magic confluence of purpose. Now I can subscribe to professionally written periodicals, browse books and the web, keep in touch, and more, all on a single device with a screen good enough to see how painterly are the masterworks of John Singer Sargent, for instance. With a suitably broad and deep portfolio of content, there are few who can’t find the iPad truly compelling.
So long as I can get a good paint-proof sleeve for mine, I will be happy.
