The iPad and the human being

I’ve been having a lot of conversations lately that start with, “What’s all they hype around the iPad? I don’t get it.”. Arguably, these people are a little less “dialed in” than some, but this sentiment is still out there.

I guess I should start with some stats around the iPad to help illustrate the hype they’re referring to.

• 1% of all Internet traffic “comes from” iPads. (Remember they’ve only been on the market a little more than a year and there are currently 16 million of them.)
• It’s a personal device. Peak usage times are 6am-8am/8pm-10pm.
• They’re constantly out of stock.
• The “Post PC” era is here and HP’s exit is further evidence.

The real question is how has the iPad done this when tablets were around for years before their arrival. The answer – to put it simply – is: the interface.

NEWS FLASH!! We are physical beings and we want to interact with items on the screen as we interact with things like we do in the real world. It’s in our nature. We want to drag & drop, turn the page and hopefully talk to our computer to get things done. A keyboard and a mouse are a poor excuse for an interface that we’ve been dealing with for many years and computing is now more personal AND entertaining (video, surfing the web, hanging out on Facebook and reading books and the news).

Just for the record I used four sets of double quotes. That’s a record for me!