"Will you perhaps leave Apple on this high, a fitting end to your career here?" "I don't think of my life as a career," he says. "I do stuff. I respond to stuff. That's not a career — it's a life!"
Worth reading for the anecdotes and Stephen's wonderful writing style alone, but here's a key point I sometimes need reminding of (apologies for the long quote):
What Ive and his team understand is that if you have an object in your pocket or hand for hours every day, then your relationship with it is profound, human and emotional. Apple's success has been founded on consumer products that address this side of us: their products make users smile as they reach forward to manipulate, touch, fondle, slide, tweak, pinch, prod and stroke.
If you are immune to that kind of thing, or you think it somehow weak, pretentious, artsy-fartsy or unbusinesslike, then there are enough functional objects in the market for you. But you might consider this: from the starting point of delight, detail, finish, polish and design come not, it seems, shallow high-end toys for the affluent but increasingly products that are ... well, awesomely functional.
Interesting, I thought that was perhaps the weakest paragraph in the otherwise excellent article (I was amazed at how good a writer Fry has become.)
I don't think it's about a profound, human and emotional bond with an iPad or any electronic device. It should be like the bond you have with a good book: it should allow for perfect immersion.
When immersed in a book time flies by, you don't even remember flipping pages or finishing chapters... there's a direct stream of consciousness from the book to your brain. I think that is what a good computing device should also offer, and every time your computer gets in the way that bubble bursts and you're violently thrown back into reality.
It takes a lot of computer experience before you can deftly sidestep every error message the computer throws at you, so you can continue on your work without missing a beat. We (programmers/enthusiasts) have been able to do that for ages, but most people don't even know it's even possible to work with a computer without getting frustrated.
Immersion is the name of the game, and the iPad might just get that right.
I'm not kidding here when I say I do believe you've hit upon the profound, central truth of the iPad.
It's not about the fact that it's a tablet. It could have been any form factor, even been a desktop computer with a mouse; the tablet form factor just helps it in this central regard: It's about abstracting every last thing, to the best of its designers' and engineers' abilities, away from your task at hand. The goal is nothing short doing things with all the help of a computer and none of the hindrance.
Well, I'm skeptical whether one can abstract form away so much...
If, just supposing, an item which seems amazingly functional and compliant after five minutes gives you a headache, a sore write and pain in the lower back after twenty minutes ... then would there still be none of the hindrance?
There's a few reviews out now, and in most of them the iPad never seemed to leave the reviewers side. I think in the BoingBoing review (but I'm not going back to re-read it) the review (can't remember her name) claimed to have been using the iPad for 12 hours straight.
I don't recall reading a review where the reviewer complained about the problems you've stated here
Apple didn't invent this, the Psion3 PDA was so beautifully made like this that people couldn't help handling it - and they didn't get fingerprints on the screen, and it had a keyboard, and it took regular batteries.
"One melancholy thought occurs as my fingers glide and flow over the surface of this astonishing object: Douglas Adams is not alive to see the closest thing to his Hitchhiker's Guide that humankind has yet devised."
I find this pretty touching, when I first read the hitchhikers guide I remember the excitement of owning a guide, while I doubt I will get an ipad, if I do, it will certainly have a "dont panic" cover
I think the one of the most telling nuggets in that piece is from designer Jonathan Ive:
"For us, it is all about refining and refining until it seems like there's nothing between the user and the content they are interacting with"
Also, as someone with experience in quantitative marketing, the following quote made a lot of sense as well. In my opinion, quantitative marketing and analytics are great tools, and as we've seen in both sports and business, people use them do have an advantage. Again, however, in my opinion these tools are too reactionary and don't leave as much room for creative thought.
"It's not for us to predict what others will do," Ive says. "We have to concentrate on what we think is right and offer it up."
You gotta give it to jobs, that Ive guy is obviously incredibly bright and Jobs takes credit for finding him too.
As something of a Fry fanboy I get the sense that the Time sub-editors did some serious work on that article. Much of the tone remains but the progress and overall rhythm of the piece seem off-kilter from what I'd expect.
"I have met five British Prime Ministers, two American Presidents, Nelson Mandela, Michael Jackson and the Queen. My hour with Steve Jobs certainly made me more nervous than any of those encounters."
I can't remember where, but I remember reading one piece where the person said making eye contact with Steve Jobs was like looking directly into the sun.
The irony is that I (and countless others I am sure) would rather be stuck in an elevator with Stephen Fry than Steve Jobs. However anybody who has followed Fry's tech writing knows how big a deal this must have been for him, so I am happy he got to do it.
"Will you perhaps leave Apple on this high, a fitting end to your career here?" "I don't think of my life as a career," he says. "I do stuff. I respond to stuff. That's not a career — it's a life!"