The Apple iPad, Flash, and the Future of Computing
On Wednesday, months of rumor and speculation came to an abrupt end when Apple chief Steve Jobs formally unveiled his "latest creation," the Apple iPad. The death of rumor relating to the device ushered in an entirely new wave of speculation. Is this really the thing that Apple spent years developing? Will it actually sell? Do we really need a "third device" between laptops and smartphones? Who came up with the name?
Most of the negative assessments of the device fall into one of two camps. The first camp says that the iPad isn't anywhere near as innovative as rumor and speculation had indicated, and that the iPad is really nothing more than "a giant iPod Touch." The second camp says that the iPad is too locked down to be attractive, since it only runs applications that Apple has blessed with inclusion in the App Store - notably excluding any version of Adobe's Flash runtime. I'd like to address both camps in this post.
The iPad doesn't have a camera / wash my car / cook me breakfast. First, Apple products rarely live up to their pre-launch hype, but that doesn't make them any less compelling or significant over the long haul. Look back to the iPod; when it was first released, I was happy with my portable MiniDisc player / recorder (which is still, to me anyways, the true successor of the cassette tape). The iPod was like any other MP3 player on the market when it was released, and while the Apple hype machine might not have been in full gear at the time, there certainly wasn't much to be enthused about at the time.
But as release followed release, the iPod became a thousand-ton juggernaut in the portable audio market. Apple refined iTunes until it was the best music management software available, on any platform, not to mention the premier online store for buying content. Apple invented the "podcast," the sonic equivalent of blogging. The iPod itself became ever more capacious, and when it reached 40GB in its third generation, even I was tempted enough to ditch my minidisc collection for a device that could hold my entire music library (at that time, anyways... it's become much larger since then). The initial product may have disappointed, but it quickly grew into something much bigger than even the most outlandish hype could have predicted.
The cycle repeated itself with the iPhone. Remember the Motorola ROKR? 100-song hardware limit, with a clumsy music-playing interface - an abomination that was quickly forgotten in Cupertino. Then Steve Jobs announced the iPhone. The hype was incredible - desktop-like web surfing, innovative new multi-touch screen, a whole new way of interacting with an iPod. Then the criticism began. Mobile Safari doesn't have a Flash plugin; the phone is too expensive; there's no way to write real applications for it; you're stuck in a two-year contract with AT&T; it's too slow. Within two years, Apple had introduced the blazing-fast iPhone 3GS at nearly half the cost of the original iPhone, the App Store had outperformed any analyst's expectations, and Flash started its decline in popularity.
I predict a similar cycle with the iPad. Every "major" concern that would supposedly keep people from buying an iPad - its lack of a camera, the inability to make phone calls on 3G-equipped models, or the continuing lack of Flash support - will become a non-issue within two years. Sure, entirely new issues will arise during that time; witness the complaints about the App Store approvals process or the outrage at AT&T's service that accompanied the growth of the iPhone. But the iPad will in all likelihood sell like hotcakes within one to two years, even if its initial launch is underwhelming, simply because Apple doesn't sit around on their laurels when they release a new product line. Apple tweaks, prods, and perfects their devices, and if they still don't sell well, only then does Apple lose interest (see the AppleTV or Mac Mini).
The iPad is a locked-down DRM love-fest. Sad but true. The only way to get an application onto a standard-issue iPad will be through the iTunes App Store, meaning that if you consider the iPad a computer, it's about the most locked-down computer to be sold in the history of computing. If Apple doesn't like your app, it will not find its way to an unmodified iPad, period. The lack of a disc drive or even a USB port further solidifies that, and the iPad's non-traditional filesystem won't even let you shoehorn an unauthorized application onto the device. Note that I haven't even mentioned content yet, the traditional place for talk about DRM. No, the iPad's DRM limits what can come into the device as much as (if not more than) what you can copy off of it. No wonder the Free Software Foundation is up in arms.
All the same, devices like the iPad really are the future of computing. It's certainly powerful enough to run nearly any traditional desktop application, along with relatively complex games (though it's not any real competition to something like the Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3). It has the world's easiest application installation process; click a button, potentially charge your credit card, and the application is on your device and ready to use. And since every developer in the world is forced to use the same application installer, you will never see the confused jumble that is Windows (or, to a lesser extent, even Mac) application installs, with product activation, serial numbers, and actual installer programs.
The iPad "just works," in an actually meaningful way, and that's all most people care about. If the Web conforms more closely to Apple's vision, which, thankfully for Apple, is also the vision of Google and others, then many users may not even need a "real" computer to complement their iPad. The stereotypical computer-literate family member who keeps all the family's computers in good working order will become a thing of the past, because the iPad is built so that it cannot be broken. It can crash now and then, sure, but no one will ever need to "re-install iPhone OS" or make sure that they have the most recent browser or plugins.
I make only one caveat to the above paragraph: Apple, and computer manufacturers in general, cannot use the iPad approach for everyone. Plenty of people use computers because they enjoy keeping a well-maintained system, much like car enthusiasts who truly enjoy fixing up their cars with their own two hands. And specialists - designers, developers, and researchers - will always need the unparalleled flexibility of a general-purpose operating system. The geeks will be all too happy to recommend the iPad to their relatives, so long as they can keep the shiny toys for themselves.
Yeah, but what about Flash? Over the years, I've had a love/hate relationship with Adobe. I first learned web design by using my school's copy of Dreamweaver; without that experience, I probably wouldn't be where I am today. At the same time, Dreamweaver keeps designers weak by holding their hands and creating shoddy look-alikes of well-implemented sites. The Flash Platform is exciting because of its power and its near-universal install base. ActionScript 3.0 can do an awful lot, and the Flash runtime can execute some fairly complicated code (like full 3D gaming) at a reasonable speed.
But Flash is, and likely always will be, proprietary. Adobe makes its income selling the tools that allow developers to target the one and only Flash runtime. If Adobe opened up Flash development, you would see multiple Flash runtimes for everything from supercomputers to toasters, and a proliferation of Flash development tools as well. This would be incredibly good for Flash adoption - it would have the opportunity to unseat JavaScript as the go-to scripting language of the Web - but it would bankrupt Adobe. So Adobe has to walk a fine line. They have to push for adoption of Flash wherever possible, promoting it as an essential part of the Web like HTML or CSS, but at the same time they have to keep Flash protected from any attempt to open-source it or otherwise reveal its complete inner workings. It's a strategy that makes Adobe act like it has multiple personalities, threatening open-source developers reverse-engineering Flash for being too open, but criticizing Apple's exclusion of Flash from its mobile devices for being not open enough.
What will the outcome be? Ultimately, I don't think potential iPad buyers are going to care about the lack of Flash. Adobe will either find a way to make Flash web-accessible while still remaining proprietary, or Flash will wither and die. You can see the beginnings of the first option in Adobe's CS5 demonstrations, where Flash CS5 was shown compiling Flash apps into native iPhone OS apps, and Dreamweaver could convert interactive charts from Flash components to HTML5 components. If Adobe's money-maker is tools for designers and developers, I think Adobe will be making its tools as useful and relevant as possible - and I think that means embracing HTML5 and finding ways to make Flash content work within that scope.
Rant mode off. The iPad really is a unique device, even if it is nothing more than a giant iPod Touch. When the iPad evolves into a notebook replacement, the computing landscape will be changed forever, and I believe that such a change is inevitable. In two years, we will look back at the iPad announcement and tell ourselves that the whole time we were asking the wrong questions and focusing on the wrong things. It really is going to be a game-changer, even if I don't find myself all that enthused about buying the first generation.