Snow in August! Er, February

Less frequently than a blue moon is actual snowfall around Atlanta, at least for the years I’ve been here. Although I’m used to much deeper drifts from my upbringing in the Rockies, snow here catches the locals completely off guard. I’m amazed at how utterly things shut down.



Despite the human chaos, the birds still chirp (and eventually come back to their man-made birdhouse when the photographer stops startling them).



The MINI’s bike rack just tucks in for a few cold nights until it warms up. For now at least, I’m determined to leave that rack on there in a show of defiance against any cold.

iPad is the new Black

“You know the hardest thing about being smart? I always pretty much know what’s going to happen next. There’s no suspense.”
— Billy Bob Thorton in Bandits

These days, friends and colleagues routinely ask for my take on new technology, particularly from Apple. The iPad is the current topic.

I really can't get around the name and I know that this is the most obvious thing about it. I can only hope we collectively come up with some other way to refer to the iPad because I feel like Apple just threw me the keys to a shiny new Porsche but there's a catch; it's hot pink.

There's no doubt for me that Apple hit the concept square on. Smart-but-clueless* people have been trying to get the tablet concept right for years. Dismissing the iPad just because it falls between two products, like the iPhone and a MacBook is stupid. Every tech company with a future is staring at this space; it's why the netbook even exists. So give Apple credit for seeing what others see. Of course this only gets them in the game.

Where most pundits and critics publishing exuberantly negative reviews miss is that Apple nailed the iPad's execution. The critics missed this on the iPhone and seem to have learned little since then. In a nutshell, the iPhone didn't produce better specs; it didn't do more; it didn't even do less. The iPhone's breakthrough is that it made its owners super productive (relative to Blackberry and Palm people) and brought smiles to their glowing faces while doing it.

Think about it: The iPhone is the first phone that users can't use enough of. AT&T, Verizon, and T-mo never complained about those 'blasted Blackberry users' consuming too much of the network. The iPhone created a cycle of hyper consumption (users) and creation (developers) where both sides keep coming back for more. In the years that I had a Blackberry, I don't think I ever went back to the developer for an updated app. The Blackberry didn't change my life, at best it made my time more efficient. In contrast, the iPhone is great because I use it for different tasks altogether, not to make the old ones faster.

The iPad will change your life, if you want it to.



“I love Apple computers. I’m obsessed. My MacBook challenges me: ‘What are you going to write that is worthy of me?’”
— J. J. Abrams

The iPad will change our fundamental definition of a flat tablet because it changes the way we interact with it. For example, I foresee this changing the entire way I do presentations.

A few weeks ago I did an in-person presentation for a couple of smart potential clients in their conference room. After my video adapter failed on me, I defaulted back to their in-room laptop hooked up to a projector screen 25 feet away. The presentation consisted of me making a statement, them asking a question, all of us turning our heads to look in the same direction toward the screen, and then snapping my head back and forth to get their reactions. It was impossible to read their body language—let alone quickly react to it—using this method.

How different would the meeting go if I pulled out a sleek iPad. "Wow," they'd say, "that's really slick." (Every college student knows that you put your paper in the best binder you can afford.) I show them websites and designs while holding the iPad out in front of me; when I want to hit a point home, I just flip the iPad upward and use it's self-rotating sensors or even push the iPad across the table. Now I can read body language and respond to it faster. I would think, "That guy seems intrigued by the user interface example I'm showing. I'll slide him the iPad and let him tap around the example himself."

I've never seen a presentation where two people that weren't familiar or comfortable with each other sat shoulder-to-shoulder to look at a MacBook screen at the same time but I have seen two or more lean over a piece of white paper or a notebook countless times. The iPad is the future of hover-and-study.

A word on Flash. Flash isn’t dead but it’s not becoming more relevant. Most complaints I've read on the lack of Flash support point to its unique ability to show dynamic, interactive content. This misses the point. HTML5 and AJAX aren’t gearing to replace Flash’s functionality but rather its relevance. Flash is a stable wrapper for content beyond HTML's current capability, however, the content itself is changing. Decrying the lack of Flash on the iPad assumes that what people want from the iPad is only a more portable version of their desktop. No, people will want their iPad to do things that no existing website or device can.


*Smart-but-clueless people make up 95% of the tech industry. These are the people who work on the future but hesitate to actually create something that doesn't exist. They coined the phrase, "Nobody got fired for buying IBM." Their opinions have no real effect on what Apple creates.