Interlude - Hardware Handshake

Another week and another guest writer! Games Developer Leigh White muses on a few points regarding the iPad, Games & handshakes.

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Hardware Handshake: Some thoughts on iPad Game Development

A blue tinged eyeball bounces quickly around the screen. It collides suddenly with another eyeball sending it spinning off to explode in blood like a bunny in a blender. A few finger presses later and hundreds more eyeballs appear all jostling, spinning and fighting for their little piece of screen real estate.

No, it's not the script for the latest Saw movie. I'm a programmer and this is one of the many tests I've been playing around with for a game I'm developing for the iPad. In this case the tests relate to the physics of the game. I need to put the physics programming through its paces to see if it'll hold up under stress. Testing game physics is pretty much like testing stockings. You just keep shoving things in until it breaks.

So why develop a game on the iPad? I guess a little background first...

I've been working in the games industry for about 8 years now. Three of those years were spent at EA in the UK and the latest two down under in sunny Melbourne, Australia. So it's fair to say I know a thing or two about making games.

I spent a fair amount of spare time developing an iPhone game based around trains which I never got around to finishing. I had the cunning idea of ..er.. being artistically inspired by Flight Control but magically replacing the planes with trains. And before you could say number 1 on the App Store, I'd be rich and on my way to a down-payment on a mansion in Florida, right? Of course, I didn't bank on four-hundred-and-thirty-two-thousand other people having exactly the same idea as me. And they had better coffee. The combined efforts of which meant their me-too games arrived on the App Store way ahead of mine. It seemed I was too late.

With a heavy heart, I shelved the project, drove to a hilltop, threw my fist into the air and silhouetted against the sunset, swore I would continue whence a new idea appeared. An original one this time.

Apparently, the iPad is just an iPhone with a bigger screen. If you're reading this you've probably heard this argument before. It usually makes me want to illustrate that a bitchslap is just a handshake with a bigger swing. Whilst true, each has its own uses.

Gaming with a larger touchscreen hasn't really been done before on this scale. At least not in the mass-market sense. Certainly not where I could come up with an idea and get it to a few million people in a few weeks. Coffee permitting. The screen's large size and multi-touch capabilities point the way to rich veins of ideas ready to be mined. A larger screen may allow people to solve puzzles together. It could allow two completely different games to be played on each half of the screen. Maybe even by a single player. It's coming up with the best ways to use it that I find pretty fun.

Now If I can just find the time to complete my eyeball popping masterpiece before someone steals the idea that mansion in Florida will be within my grasp...

*** Leigh White
*** leighwhitemail@gmail.com 
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Next: Comics and magazine publishing on the iPad

iPadawan - pt 12: Mobile Madness

I'm back from holiday (again)! Thanks to Frans-Jozef Rutjes & Sharon Ritchey for holding down the fort while I've been away. There'll be some more guest blogs in the future, but for now, it's back to me!

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So, I took a holiday without the iPad. A couple of weeks before I left I thought about taking it, but my mum really didn’t want to part with it and I did buy it for her after all. The thing is, when you get used to travelling around with a device like that, the thought of being without one is difficult to describe. How would I watch whatever I wanted to watch in my hotel room without paying rip off prices? How would I type email comfortably? How would I read my comics? How would I listen to my UK radio stations? Most importantly of all, how would I show off to all my friends in Germany & Holland? How would I manage? How would I cope? Only one thing for it... Buy another one?

No!

No. No. No. That would be impossible to justify. The truth is, since I gave it to my mum, I only use it when I’m visiting and then only when I’m sitting in the lounge. I don’t miss it though. As I’ve said here previously, it slipped into our daily routine really easily, but when you don’t need it, you don’t miss it. That sounds like an odd thing to say, but I know people who clutch and stare at their phones even when it’s not ringing or when they don’t need to make a call.

Surely the only thing I’d be missing on my travels would be the effortlessness of using the iPad for things like email, music, radio, etc. - not actually the tasks themselves. I could do them all with my mobile phone, just not as comfortably. I resolved that I would make do as I had always done (right up until April this year): mobile phone and iPod touch. That combo would work fine - I could make do with the limited email and Internet functionality on my phone and if Wi-Fi was available (which it often would be) I could use the  iPod Touch. Another iPad would be a flagrant indulgence.

Then disaster struck. My trusty mobile phone died. Or rather, the internal speaker died. I could only make calls using the hands free. The battery had been dying for a while and I knew that in a few months it would need replacing, but not now dammit! What to do? What to do? I certainly didn’t want to travel around mainland Europe without a phone. Can you imagine doing such a thing? Going travelling and not being able to have instant contact with anyone, anywhere? That’s so last century! Perhaps this was a sign? Perhaps it was time to really catch up with technology and... get an iPhone?

No!

I don’t want an iPhone. Too expensive. As someone who purchases their handsets (it’s actually cheaper than getting one ’for free’ on contract) I wasn’t prepared to spend upwards of £419. (That’s $630 USD. Yeah, that’s right! In the UK they cost as much as an iPad does in America. Don’t get me started on rip-off Britain!) Surely there must be a cheaper option with the same functionality? Then it hit me: Android! That would cover my phone issues and everything else. Or so they say...

Android is the Google OS that has been shipping on smart-phones for the last couple of years. Recently it has really started to gain momentum, catching up and surpassing the iPhone in terms of new sales. Android is available on a multitude of different handsets from a wide range of manufacturers, so surely there would be something that suited me?

Indeed, it turns out that there are a massive number of Android handsets on the market. Each manufacturer seems to have at least 2 models, maybe more. With barely 2 weeks to go before my planned trip, how would I select the right one? I needed advice and a recommendation. You know what that means don’t you? That’s right: Facebook & Twitter, font of all common knowledge of ‘The People’.

Literally within minutes of posting a question about ‘which phone I should get’ the answers were flying in thick and fast. After deflecting the iPhone users and a couple of negative comments about the iPad (go figure!), there seemed to be a clear contender. The HTC Desire.

So I did a bit of research on my own and decided that it was, at least on paper, the device which ticked the most boxes: It had all the regular phone extras (bluetooth, wi-fi, camera) plus Android for additional apps (facebook, twitter, gmail, etc). Perfect.

I had it for a week. Then I sent it back.  Here’s why.

It was actually quite good at stuff. Facebook app, twitter, weather, train timetables, etc., etc. So good in fact that I found myself using the handset all the time. I was constantly fiddling with it. I became one of those clutchers that I mentioned at the beginning of this piece. At first I thought it was just what happens when you get a new toy, but after a few days I still hadn’t stopped.

Part of the reason was that I was trying to get it to function like my iPod touch. I wanted to use it in a way that I’d be comfortable with. But I couldn’t... because it’s not an iPod touch! I also couldn’t get it to function like my SonyEricsson. So after a couple of days of battling with customization, I reset the phone in firmware and went ‘full android’, using the suggested set-ups, interface schemes and apps. I spoke to other Android users for tips on how to manage my contact list. “Simple”, they said, “sort it all out on google first and then just sync the phone”. So I did.

I have a lot of contacts in my gmail. It took me four f***ing hours. At first the idea of a combined address book for your email and phone sounds like a good idea. But after a few days I realised that most of the people I email are totally different from the people I call. So finding and making calls to people became a chore. I had to create a page of favourites, due to there now being nearly 700 names in my phone address book (as opposed to about 70 previously).

And that’s when the phone started to get too smart for its own good. It decided to synchronise my facebook, twitter & gmail contacts. It figured out who was who, combined pictures, numbers and details. Again, at first this sounds great, but it isn’t. My carefully constructed address book turned into a mess. Numbers I had nurtured for years ended up being combined into online profiles which hadn’t been updated in years. Even now, several weeks later I’m still trying to fix the damage of lost or down-dated contacts.

Thus, I realised that contact management and quick access to numbers and services is the essence of a mobile phone. Not the apps. Not the big screen. If it becomes hard work to find the person, and subsequently the number of that person, then the experience of making a phone call can become surprisingly unpleasant. Add to that things like accessing voicemail and turning the phone to silent taking ages, due to so many screens of navigation, and I was ready to hurl the phone at a wall.

The HTC desire might have been really good at doing stuff, but it wasn’t particularly good at being a phone.

That’s when I stopped fiddling and started to really look at the phone. And I didn’t like what I saw. The battery life and the accuracy of the touchscreen were awful. The camera and external speaker were pretty poor - I had a handsfree call with another HTC Desire owner and we couldn’t understand each other at all. So it wasn’t just my phone.

After a few more days I found myself wistfully thinking about my old phone. The one that just made calls and took a few pictures. The one that didn’t need to be recharged every day. The one that didn’t always seem to be telling me something. (So-and-so has updated their profile!) With only a few days to go before my holiday I decided to send it back and I replaced it with a standard issue Sony Ericsson w995.

The whole episode taught me a lot about myself and mobile connectivity.

Despite being someone who likes to be connected, who spends money on the latest tech, who really likes mobile computing, I prefer some things to be simple. Phones especially.

Its nothing to do with Android itself. I think the result would have been the same with an iPhone. or maybe even a Blackberry. And it’s not because I’m stuck on the SonyEricsson platform. I quite like Nokia phones too.

It’s one of the reasons why I didn’t get an iPad 3GS. I simply don’t need to be that connected anymore. My phone, which is the most mobile device I have, needs to do one thing really, really well - make calls. All the other stuff was getting in the way of that (not to mention running the battery down).

I also realised that one of the reasons I like both my iPod touch and the iPad (and my palm pilot back in the day) is that they are *not* phones. I think that making calls and handling mobile data are not as similar tasks as the tech companies would have us believe. At least, not the way we (or maybe just I) prefer to do it.

According to my phone provider I was the first person they knew of to return the HTC Desire. They were so amazed they wondered if I had a faulty handset. No, I assured them, there was nothing wrong with my handset. They asked me if I thought I’d be interested in an iPhone. I laughed and politely declined. For one thing I’m not buying a phone which costs as much as the iPad. I’d rather buy another iPad.

NEXT: Comics, Magazines & The Future of Publishing

Interlude - $125 a Pound

Interlude - $125 a Pound

Continuing with the guest blog theme, Sharon Ritchey muses on how the iPad came into her life and how she has been using it.

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I just bought an iPad and I lost 6 pounds. The machine was so expensive I can’t afford to buy food.  O.k., seriously it’s all true, except I can still afford to buy food.

When news of the iPad first hit the technology streets I didn’t think much of it. I knew that we’d own at least one because the techie in the family is an early adopter of all new gadgets. But for me, eh- just another gizmo, or so I thought.

Fast forward to March of this year. I broke down and upgraded my phone. I purchased my first smart phone, an Android. To say I hate it is a bit harsh. But I don’t love it. Part of the problem is that I was convinced by the ever helpful sales dude that I needed a screen protector to keep it from scratching. Well that scratch protection also prevents my small fingers from properly contacting the screen. I could never answer the phone before it hit voice mail. I would jab the screen furiously trying  to access applications only to scream in frustration as the phone  went into sleep mode. Cool techie apps are great but they weren’t fitting into my world.

Enter Denis

Our friend’s arrival in April was soon followed by the arrival of his new iPad. The machine had just been released and there was a mad scramble in Apple stores across the country to get one. The techie in the family had pre-ordered the 3G machine months earlier but its arrival was not scheduled until the end of May – almost a month away. Techie and Denis went to check the madness out.

Two days later we were all hooked. Denis, the Techie, my two girls, and anyone who had stopped by to say hi. If Denis was lucky he got to steal it back for a few minutes here and there to use it himself. 

I admit I didn’t know what to expect other than a large smart phone. But as applications were loaded I started to make connections to how this new technology could improve my life. It’s not a laptop and doesn’t pretend to be one. But for an on-the-go business owner I could see the productivity power. 

Now I have one. I bring it to meetings and run through presentations, I track the hours I put in on various jobs. I track my mileage, answer email and have enough room to type real responses. One application allows me to draw, type, and record my voice. Then there are the fun apps: news, games, weather, information resources, photos, and music. It also has a rock-star quality to it. I recently took it to a meeting at the local university where I consult and the Dean in charge of the school’s technology programs grabbed it and with a quick “would you mind?” started to play with it. I enjoy the coolness.

It’s not a perfect machine. It constantly needs to be cleaned, the keyboard is incomplete, you can’t print from it, and I now have a new data charge to my monthly bills. But that’s part of business. The machine is limited by the applications I can find and use. It has two e-readers loaded but I have found reading online occasionally gives me motion sickness. I also have to fight with my children but I can solve that by deleting their games. 

As for the 6 pound. The iPad’s arrival coincided with a push to lose some weight that had crept on with Denis’  arrival and a month of good food and wine. I’ve got an amazing little application called MyNetDiary that easily tracks the calories I consume along with my exercise and vitals. It’s a fun way to stay on the diet and it is a motivating tool, something all dieters need. 

So let’s see... cost of the iPad divided by the amount of weight I’ve lost equal about $125 US a pound. 

Perhaps if I continue to cut back on food I’ll be able to bring the cost of ownership down. 

Interlude - Can I have a little bit more?

Now that the iPad is available in the UK and other countries, and has been around in the USA for a couple of months, It's  time for some other users to have their say and tell us what they think...

First up in a series of guest pieces is Frans-Jozef Rutjes with a look at how the iPad has been accepted by his family.

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I should have known better, really. But in the mist of the sheer excitement that came with the opportunity to replace my wife’s ailing PC with a crisp, white MacBook, I side-stepped my caution – I should have known better.

Even with the ‘Design Thinking’ power of Jonathan Ives and his peers, nothing had prepared said MacBook for the ambitions harboured by my 2-year old of ‘getting higher up’. That is, of course, literally getting higher up: stepping onto a closed MacBook to reach for something on a bedside table.

What started as a small crack, ended up with an ominous black spider-like crevasse across the entire screen of the MacBook. Apart from seriously hindering any viewing pleasure – no website looks good viewed only from the bottom half of the screen – it made me winch every time I glanced over to see my wife still battling on, squinting at her favourite bookmarked websites. I suspect it says something about the ease of use of an Apple product and its associated software, when my wife can still use it with only half the screen showing and the mouse cursor frivolously playing hide and seek in between the blacked out areas of the screen.  

Having said all that, rather than being furious with my son, I suppose I should really thank him for how he ‘stepped up’. In fairness, his unbound enthusiasm did pave the way for my latest purchase of Cupertino magic: the iPad.

Throughout the years I have rarely been able to capture my wife’s imagination with technology. Deeply rooted in the realities of everyday life with kids, fashion and keeping me from running off with my imagination, she simply has never been that impressed with what it might have to offer.

Also, she appears to possess a translation skill I lack. Whilst I might opt for a 265GB HDD recorder with Freeview and FreeSat because of its high-tech pedigree, she looks at the shiny black box as a means to allocate time to herself: Freeview equals CBBC, which equals kids bottoms on sofas and eyeballs silently glued to screens, which in turn equals the ability to spend some quiet time to herself.

I suspect that if I understood this mechanism better, over time I might have been able to harvest more approvals for acquisition of much needed gadgetry. As it stands, I spent a few lost days trying to justify the purchase of an iPad, using the argument that she was a ‘content consumer’ not a ‘content creator’ and therefore, why would she need another MacBook? But in the end I just ordered her one.

It was after the order confirmation email had slipped into my inbox that I noticed something curious happening. For the first time ever I saw a sliver of interest for something technological appear in my wife. Apparently, she had seen the TV commercial and came to the conclusion that the new iPad was ‘only a laptop screen’. Apart from the obvious fact that I had - yet again - been totally inept at describing the device (why had I not simply described it as ‘just the screen from your MacBook in your hands’?), it struck me that she was asking me….questions. Many questions, as a matter of fact, but the one that stuck was “How will I know how to use it?” 

Cracking question. Obviously a silly one. Or was it? As an iPhone owner and a happy technocrat, I assumed that using it would be obvious to anyone. Blind to how my average description of technology makes little impact on my wife’s understanding of it, I attempted to clarify that there would be portrait and landscape web surfing, touch-screen delights and ‘capsule content’ wrapped into individual ‘apps’. I even ventured as far as showing her (at the bottom half of her cracked MacBook screen) YouTube videos of 'unboxings' and ‘first-surfs’ to show her what to expect. But in the end, I just unboxed it upon arrival and simply handed it to her. 

And when I did, this is what happened: I didn’t see it back for hours. And even more significantly, there wasn’t a single question for what literally seemed an eternity. To put this in perspective, it took her all of two minutes to ask me to turn off predictive text on her new phone and it took her less than ten minutes to ask me to turn off the previously mentioned HDD recorder, as it seemed to ‘speak a different language’.

However, it took her 4 hours to ask me how to turn off the iPad….in case she wanted to. In case she wanted to? Amazing!

It seems to me that unlike any other object, the iPad has managed to unlock something worthy of a Dan Brown novel. Slightly populist, flirting with insider know-how and elevating the obvious to a higher order but with dead-on purpose that leaves readers wanting just a little more. And without being a critic or an advocate; keeping interest going appears to me precisely what is at stake here.

So far, the iPad hasn’t disappointed on this front. When my wife's interest in surfing appeared to wane (after all, there is only so much swivelling websites from portrait to landscape view one can take), she discovered apps. When finding interesting apps became more of an effort than a surprise, she moved recent pictures from camera to iPad with the adapter I ordered for her. When she had flicked and re-flicked through her pictures my 7-year old son sat next to her and they started to surf the web together handing the iPad backwards and forwards. And in the end,  when they switched off the iPad, it wasn’t because they got bored but because they had to, in order to rejoin family life and have dinner.

From using it to liking it has been a small step this time. But with new technology and a vast knowledge gained from exploits that ranges from the Newton MessagePads to the iPhone, Apple have pushed boldly ahead and are now demanding the leap from ‘like’ to ‘love’.

And from where I am sitting – next to my wife, eagerly awaiting being allowed to have a go on ‘her’ iPad – they’re allowed to claim at least a little victory in our household.

11 - The not-so-good stuff

Now I'm back in the UK, and the iPad is no longer in my possession. I had it for about 3 weeks total. Of course, I still have access to it, but I really meant it when I said it was for my mum.

I've also made a point of saying that I'm not an Apple Fanboy, yet so far I've had very little negative to say about the iPad. That's mostly because the experience has been overwhelmingly good. But the entire point of this blog has been to look at the both the positive and the negative sides of the device, so I would be remiss if I didn't talk about the things that aren't perfect, clunky, or in some cases, pretty lame.

So where to start? Well first I think I should mention that many of the gripes I have are really to do with specific applications, so it seems a bit daft to write about those. I want to focus on the iPad and its basic functionality. However, there is one thing about the apps in general that I'm really not happy about, but I'll save that rant for the end.

Charging. The iPad won't charge from just any USB port. Not even any powered USB port. It seems to be really selective about which ones it will work with. Most of the USB ports that can charge my phone or iPod touch won't do diddlysquat to the iPad. In fact, at the moment, the only way I can charge it is by using the power adaptor that came with it. Apple says it will charge from a 'high-powered' USB port, but I've yet to find one. I have plenty of high power devices that will take a charge off a regular powered USB port, so that's pretty lame in my opinion. I suspect that were I to plug it into a Mac, I'd find that it charges just fine. Of course, I don't have a Mac, so I have no way of knowing. Can anyone shed any light on this? Additionally, when you do charge it off the mains, it takes ages. Great that its got a 10 hour battery life, but if you use it all up and then it takes 4-5 hours to get it back to 100%, that's not particularly brilliant.

Bluetooth. I mentioned early on that I couldn't connect anything to Bluetooth on the iPad. I still can't. It's clearly just there for things like keyboards and headsets (although I haven't tried those). Why can't I use it to transfer data? Moving pictures across devices like phones, with Bluetooth is really, really basic. It's been technologically possible for years. It's mobile 101! Seeing as there is an extreme lack of ports on the iPad, is that too much to ask?

Let's take a break for a moment to try this little scenario:

You've been on the road and your iPad is down to about 10% battery. You get home, you want to get the pictures you've taken on your camera/phone onto the pad, So... you connect your camera to your desktop, transfer the images, sync your iPad... hold on a minute.. you can't sync your iPad because it's charging off the mains! So you have to wait. For quite some time!

But what about WiFi, I hear you ask? Well, what about it? After all, there is no file manager on the iPlatform devices, so moving things onto it is a bit of a chore, even with apps to help you do it. All I want to do is easily get pictures into the photo album so my mum can look at them.

Hold on... what about the external keyboard with a - wait for it - plug for your camera? Yeah, that costs more money and I don't want to spend any more money. I already spent well over $770 for the pad and the case.

Glossy Screen. The screen looks absolutely great, but only when it's not being hit by direct sunlight (or any bright light source). Outdoors on a sunny day the iPad is practically unusable. And then there is the fingerprint issue, which to be fair, is quite unavoidable, but I do seem to be spending a lot of time cleaning the screen. Perhaps I should see a doctor about oily skin?

Safari. It's a great browser, but unfortunately its tagged as a different version on the iPad than on the iPhone or iPod touch. This means that many sites which have content that will work on the iPhone do not recognise the iPad as a compatible browser. Instead you get sent to the main site and if it's flash based, then you're out of luck. This is exactly what happens when you try to use the BBC iPlayer. Which brings me to my next gripe...

Flash. Or, should I say, no-Flash. Now it doesn't really bother me that the iPad doesn't support Flash. I don't give a hoot about it in technological terms. But it does bother me that I (or rather my mum) can't watch a lot of video that's on the web. I suspect that this will change over time - I honestly believe that Flash has been on its way out of the market for a while - but right now, it still dominates and I don't see that changing in the next few months. Yes, Steve, we know you hate flash and have clearly stated why. But what's the work around?

File browser. There is no file browser for any of the iPlatform devices (jail-breaking notwithstanding). Now, on the iPhone & iPod, this is less of an issue, because generally the devices are small in terms of memory space and the kind of files you have on there don't really need to be browsed. But the iPad is bigger and badder in all respects and has been touted as a replacement for laptops and heralded as the future of computing. So why can't I easily see what data is on there? Why can't I plug it into a desktop and read it like a USB stick? If I create a document on there, be it notes, a drawing, an audio recording or whatever, I have to email it somewhere to make use of it. Which is ridiculous. I just want to manage a few files. Perhaps move some music around. Get stuff off it onto other devices. You know, the kind of things people do with computers. Ah, if only there was Bluetooth... oh hold on, I already talked about that.

I already mentioned that I have many other gripes with particular applications, but I'm not sure that's a fair thing to talk about in this piece. For instance I could go on for ages about Google Docs being utterly useless on the iPad. For one thing, it detects Safari as a mobile browser (but the iPlayer doesn't, grrrr) and you can't edit anything! Why, Google, why? No, don't get me started on specific apps.  There is however one general thing that I want to grumble about with regards to the currently available batch of apps...

Cost: OK, so it's no surprise that developers are trying to get as much as they can out of the early adopters. And to be fair, those developers that have developed an iPad version of their apps should be reimbursed their costs. Yet, I can't help feeling that those of us who have already paid for iPhone versions of a particular app should at least get some kind of discount on an iPad version. A dollar off maybe? Just to show a bit of goodwill? I already paid $4.99 and now the developer wants $7.99 for an iPad version of the same app!

Look, I know there's this idea that the early adopters are fools and have lots of money to chuck around, but: a) that's not true, and b) we are your ambassadors! Don't milk us for every penny we have! If you already have an iPhone version of your app, then converting it to the iPad isn't that big a deal. And it was the iPhone & iPod users that helped pay for you to do it, so why are you charging us even more to use it? You know who we are. I'm sure you have a list of who's already paid into your development coffers. Come on now, give us a squeeze!

OK, so that's it... for now. If anybody out there has anything they'd like to add, please feel free to leave a comment.

Next: Being Pad-less

10 - My mum & her iPad

As I told you all very early on, one of my prime reasons for buying an iPad was my mum. When I returned from living in Japan, I showed her my iPod touch and she was clearly taken by it. She loved the simplicity of the interface, and in particular the photo browser, but thought it was too small - both for her eyesight and her not-so-dexterous hands. She's 70, suffers from rheumatoid arthritis and does not speak English as her first language, so being easy-to-use is probably the biggest selling point for her where technology is concerned.

But, as I also have mentioned, she's not a technophobe. From a very young age, I can remember that it was always my mum who sorted out technology in our house - from tuning the television, to setting up the hi-fi, to programming the VCR. In later years, she has learned to use the DVR (to the point where I'm probably going to need to upgrade it to a model with two tuners and a bigger hard disk), the DVD player, SMS on her mobile phone (she uses  emoticons and shorthand like a teenager) and most recently, the desktop computer. She uses FireFox, Gmail, the BBC iPlayer, internet radio and Skype.

It wasn't all plain sailing. It took her a while to understand the virtual nature of where things are stored, and she's never quite got her head around tabbed interfaces. Still, she's managed to surprise me a few times by adopting features without my help, and discovering functions that I was previously unaware of.

A few months ago, when I was visiting her and had a laptop with me, she enquired whether that would be a good way for her to use the internet. The problem with the desktop workstation is that it's not conveniently located. It's in the guest room. If someone is visiting, she can't really use it, and in general, it doesn't fit well with her daily household routine. We quickly established that the laptop wouldn't be a better solution. It was it too bulky and heavy for her to use comfortably. She also couldn't get her head around the trackpad and didn't like having cables trailing everywhere. She decided that she would to stick with using the desktop workstation.

Then, back in February, I showed her some of the tablet concept videos from Conde Nast and the iPad demos by Steve Jobs and that St. Ives fella. Her eyes lit up with keen interest. In fact, her comment was, "Why don't you get me one of those?"

Told!

It was surprising to me then, that when I returned from the USA two weeks ago and presented her with the iPad, along with several other gifts, she didn't even blink. In fact, she was far more interested in the jar of "Goober Peanut Butter & Jelly Swirl" that I'd brought back. (Americans, you can't get such nonsense in this country, but my mother, who worked as a chef for American kids for years, loves peanut butter & jelly sandwiches!) Of course, I was quick to show her my holiday photos and videos on it, extol its virtues and explain that she was probably the most advanced pensioner in London by having one, but for the most part, she was unfazed and put it down in a corner.

A few days later however, I walked in on her with it sitting on her lap. She had the Google app open. I asked her what she was doing and she said she'd tried to get her email using 'the button,' but it was set up for me, not for her, so she was trying to get it another way. I realised at that point that the iPad was still configured for my use, so I spent a short while purging it of all traces of my holiday. I reset it to default and loaded the handful of applications I thought she'd be interested in: BBC news, an internet radio player, Skype, Epicurious, Jamie's 5 Minute Meals, Accuweather, and so on. I set the calender, contacts and mail apps to sync with her Gmail, and then added a small number of other things that I thought I would probably use when I'm visiting (Marvel Comics, Facebook, TwitBird). Finally, I loaded all of her photos from the desktop PC (several thousand) and a few of her favourite albums (the Beatles, Julio Iglesias, Paco Peña), gave it back and left her to it.

A little while later she said to me, "That thing changes my words! I can't send mail with it because it makes no sense!" Of course, she was referring to the auto correct & completion functions. As I said, English is not my mum's first language - she's Spanish - and her writing skills are not great. She reads and writes phonetically, so any thing she writes in English is always quite interesting. Recently, while I was away in the USA, she sent an email to me describing how great the weather was:

"hallo, is wed,and the most beautiful morning so am prep ear for water,the allotment.today it will be perhaps the Hooters day of the yer .but very wet for the weekend."

For those who don't speak Spanglish, the mail translates as follows:

"Hello, it's Wednesday and it's a most beautiful morning, so I'm preparing to water the allotment. Today it will perhaps be the hottest day of the year, but it will become very wet this weekend."

Aside from the comedic value of "the hottest day of the year" being described as "the Hooters day of the year," you can see that my mum's typing and punctuation skills are not great. In fact, this was a particularly good message from her! As far as she's concerned, her words make sense. And, if you read it in the voice of a little old Spanish lady, they do. They also make sense to a spell checker. In fact, I suspect she spell checked this particular one and hence we end up with words like "prep ear" instead of "prepare."

But, like predictive text on a mobile phone, auto-complete only really works well if you have a good command of the language in the first place. If your spelling is atrocious, then you end up with all sorts of junk. So I turned that off, along with auto-correct and the double space/period short cut function.

A few more days passed and once again I asked her how she was coping with it. "Is OK" she said with a smile. It took her a while to figure out how much pressure to put on the screen - how long to leave her finger on it - when she swipes and activates icons. There is no tactile response, so at first she would hold down her finger on an app icon and the screen would do that wobbly-interface thing_. (Can that be turned off, by the way?) But she soon adjusted. Now she's reading her emails, listening to the radio, checking recipes, and enjoying her digital photos. She uses it in bed, in the kitchen, whilst watching TV and even on the balcony.

She's typing a bit better with it, but she's still not 100% happy with the keyboard. That doesn't surprise me. She's a two finger typist at best and it took her a while to learn to use a regular physical keyboard. The fact that the virtual keyboard doesn't have a number pad and changes the way you access the symbol characters is a bit confusing for her at the moment. But I'm sure she'll get there. The last time I asked her if she needed any help, she told me to leave her alone so she could explore the thing for herself.

Told!

This weekend my aunt was visiting and my mum was very quick to give her a demo. They spent a large part of Saturday evening reminiscing over family photos, surfing the net and drinking whiskey. Yup, that's right, surfing the net. I'm expecting a phone call from my cousins any time soon complaining that they are now expected to splash out big bucks for an iPad. But that's OK, they are all far better off than me.

I'd like to end with a question for you all....

Would your parent, or even grandparent, want an iPad? Would they prefer a regular PC or laptop? Or would they rather just leave technology the hell alone...?

Next: The not-so-good bits.

09 - The iPad user experience

I keep saying that the iPlatform - my pet term for the Apple mobile device OS - is all about 'user experience.' But what does that mean, exactly? Shouldn't everything be about 'user experience?'

Of course, the answer to that question is, yes. But in some cases the user experience isn't relevant. For instance, if you want to find the square root of 269, pretty much any calculator will do, regardless of who makes it. If you want to boil an egg, you just need a pot and a stove of some kind (and of course, an egg). Once you have these items, the job is nearly done. The final product - a boiled egg - is more important than the method you use to make it. Same with the answer to your math question.

But when it comes to many tasks that we perform on desktop and mobile devices, the tool we use to perform that task is often as important as the task itself. In fact, in the case of consuming media, it is the task. So, your specific interaction with that device is a major contributing factor towards the success - the enjoyment - of that task. If performing the task takes too long, is too difficult or confusing, then it becomes less enjoyable. Perhaps, even to the point of unpleasant. This is what I mean by 'the user experience'.

The problem with most desktop and mobile devices is that they are trying to be all things to all people. The various operating systems (OS) are designed to cover a wide range of possible user tasks ranging from the mundane (desktop clocks and calenders) to the complex (creating visual effects for a movie). As such, its practically impossible to create an OS which is simple enough for anyone to use. Even the Mac OS, which is generally considered to be the best in this area, is still fairly complicated and has its own quirks and foibles that can confound a first time user.

One of the promises of gadgets like the iPad, is the wide range of functionality that can be found in a desktop computer, but with a level of simplicity similar to that of a smart-phone. In comparison to desktop machines, next-generation mobile phones and PDAs are severely limited in the number of things they can do, but they do those few things very well, indeed. Furthermore, they perform most operations with a minimum amount of interaction by the user.

For a device such as the iPad to slip into the household comfortably, it needs to be as simple and easy to use as a TV remote control or an old fashion telephone. Pick it up, use it. Job done. Instantly. And it needs to be usable by everyone - not just adults, but kids and pensioners, too.

Laptops, netbooks and pretty much all other tablets fall short in this one area. If you doubt me, then try the following:

1) From the off position, turn on your device.
2) Get the weather forecast for tomorrow in your area.
3) Now, find out how many emails you have.

It took me about 10 seconds on the iPad. How long did it take you? It becomes more interesting when you change the task to something more complex.

1) From the off position turn on your device
2) Find out what the "genus of honeybees" is. (Search for "honeybees" on Wikipedia.)
3) Once you've done that, go find the latest headline.

Took me about 30 seconds, total.

For the ultimate test, give the device to your mother and have her try it. Next, give the device to a child and see how that goes.

Why did I use these examples? For a couple of reasons. First of all, these are typical tasks in a family household. Checking the weather, finding the answer to a crossword puzzle, browsing the TV guide - that sort of thing. Secondly, chances are, unless you have a computer that's on in every room, you're probably going to have to get out of your chair to do it. Third, these are all tasks that can be performed without the help of a computer using more traditional means: newspapers, encyclopaedia, local TV station. Lastly, each test requires doing more than one thing. We all know that the iPad doesn't multitask - that's been it's biggest criticism.

"But wait," I hear some of you say, "I can do all that on my iPhone!" Sure you can, but how comfortable is it? I love both my Palm Pilot and my iPod touch, but they are both still just a little bit too small to be a pleasure to use.

In my opinion, the iPad scores brilliantly in terms of user experience. I found myself getting over the coolness factor very quickly and just using it to do stuff. At the different households I've stayed at during my US visit I've seen others treat it the same way. Watching it get passed around a table or living room amongst the kids was fascinating. They were totally un-phased by it from a technical point of view and immediately just used it to jump onto YouTube and the web (in that order).

I'd say that of the 20 or so people that have so far sat and used my iPad, only one or two have asked me how it works and what to do with it.

Over the last 10 years, we've come to feel so liberated by technology that we've become satisfied with the effort involved in using it. As a grade-A, old-school, alpha geek, I know this too well. I remember a time when our family had no colour TV, telephone, washing machine or microwave. Those things existed, but not in my home. We couldn't get those things in the 70's, as they were expensive luxuries we couldn't afford. The internet? Every time I use Skype to video chat between Japan and the United Kingdom (real-time, for free!) it feels a little bit like magic. And I'm a propeller head - I understand how it works!

So, I really appreciate what all our new technology means, and I don't mind having to do a bit of work to use it. If I have to run an installer or two, or fire up a custom client... well, its not ideal, but it's better than the alternative. The alternative being, er, not.

But my mum... she remembers a time when there wasn't even television. As a result, she's happy with just a remote control and a handful of TV channels. Everything else is a luxury, and if it gets too complicated, she doesn't see the point. She's managed most of her life with no media technology at all. She only gets upset when there's no radio available.

Despite what I said in the last paragraph, as it happens, my mum is extremely "down" with technology. She programs the DVR, sends text messages like a teenager and surfs the web everyday. But, at the age of 70, and English not being her first language, she'd rather spend as little time as possible learning how to use a thing and, instead, just use it.

So, the big test for the iPad comes in the form of my elderly Spanish mum. Notes on that coming up soon!

NEXT: My mum & the iPad