You’d practically have to be Amish in order to not know that Apple today finally released their much anticipated tablet. Called the iPad, it’s a new approach to tablet computing.
Early today on Twitter, someone remarked that the iPad will be a failure because it’s not really a mobile computing platform. To me, this comment is actually indicative of why overall tablet computing hasn’t taken off. In short, both the netbook market and the tablet market have struggled for the same reason: portable computing is not about being able to run 5 VMware instances in the palm of your hand, factoring 100,000,000 digit primes, or complete desktop replacement strategies.
Portable computing is about portability.
There’s an old saying: you can have fast, cheap or good, pick 2, you can’t have all 3.
This sums up portable computing thus far. Portable computing in the form of conventional tablets and netbooks have failed because they’ve tried to do all three. You can’t have fast, cheap and good in a single device when you try to do the same thing as a desktop. It just doesn’t work.
The way to make it work is to redefine what you use the device for.
Let’s consider my computing requirements. I have an iPhone, a (work) Mac Book Pro, and a (home) Mac Pro.
There are things I do on each of these platforms that I wouldn’t attempt to do on the others. I can encode video at 300 frames per second on my Mac Pro whilst running 8 virtual machines. I wouldn’t even consider doing that on my laptop. I can multitask on my laptop, having Twitter, browsing, Adium, etc., open and all available at once. I wouldn’t want to consider that on my iPhone.
On my iPhone, I can check the news and check email regardless of whether I’m laying in bed, eating out at a restaurant or even (heaven forbid) in the loo. I wouldn’t attempt that with my laptop, and I sure as hell wouldn’t attempt it with my Mac Pro.
So why the hell is it logical to expect that I should be able to do all of the above on a portable computing device that falls somewhere between a Smart Phone and a Laptop? There is no logic in such a requirement. It’s based on false expectations, on a false sense of entitlement.
By comparison, one of the beefs that I constantly have with Linux is that you don’t design consumer products with geeks in mind. I am not a regular computer user, yet I think I’m perhaps a more realistic desktop user than a lot of geeks. I don’t want to customise my desktop to the nth degree, or skin every single app in an entirely different window dressing, or have a choice between 3,134 personal media players. I just want the desktop environment to work.
Linux, in short, is designed for a programmer or other highly technical user who values customisation over productivity. This, I’d argue, is the core failing of Linux at the desktop, and also mirrors the core failing of conventional tablets and netbook designs.
Don’t get me wrong. I love Linux at the server level. But I’d sooner be tasered in a bath repeatedly than subject myself to Linux on the desktop these days. I’m after productivity, not customisation.
So, after that digression, let me return to the original topic – the iPad.
Apple have, in my mind, quite rightly determined that you can’t make a portable computing device that either is (a) a big version of a Smart Phone with no additional features (other than screen) OR (b) attempts to be a complete laptop or desktop replacement.
In short, there’s room for another platform level there.
So, that’s my assumption in this entire piece. (Bear in mind, based on their last financials, I’d suggest to you that the odds are with me in backing Apple for knowing what they’re doing as opposed to with the nay-sayers who are saying the same thing about the iPad as was said about the iPhone.)
My assumption is that portable computing is not about replicating an entire desktop experience, but giving an über-portable experience. It’s about picking up your device and carrying it around with you, still doing stuff while you’re standing in an elevator or you’ve got five minutes before the meeting starts. Or it’s about taking your troubleshooting session with you from your desk into the computer room without losing a moment’s connectivity.
I predict that iPad will be huge in the enterprise realm. Not for email. That’s passé. Not for eBooks. That’s nice, but largely irrelevant. Not for instructional videos, meeting notes or portable presentations. That’s all sales and consulting. These are all good, but represent only a small portion of the enterprise realm.
What I’m talking enterprise systems management – the core of any IT group within any company.
I looked at the iPad and I started to drool not because of any of the advertised features – not even from thinking about how fantastic it would work in hospitals and medical circles – but because I was thinking of all the different enterprise systems I’ve worked with over the years – NetWorker, NetBackup, a multitude of databases and ERP systems, HDS arrays, EMC arrays, NetApp arrays, system console services, DRAC, etc., and I imagined an iPad interface for every single one. Sure I’ve wistfully thought about such management apps for the iPhone/iPod Touch in the past, but each time I’ve acknowledged that screen real estate would be a real killer.
Not with the iPad.
So let me make a prediction: any enterprise vendor that didn’t look at Apple’s presentation today and see the future of enterprise management interfaces is stupid. It’s not about desktop apps or Java apps or web portals – well, maybe it is about web portals, but only 100% HTML5 compliant ones that don’t rely on Java or flash.
The future of enterprise systems management is in portable computing devices. It’s about backup administrators who are able to kick off a recovery from wherever they are in the building. It’s about storage administrators being able to bind a LUN or manage a snapshot while they’re waiting for a meeting to start. It’s about network administrators being able to open up an additional port while they’re waiting for the lift to arrive, or react instantly to a notification that an unapproved system has attached itself to the network. It’s about system administrators being able to continue their ssh or RDP session as they move from their desk to the computer room as they prepare to power cycle a machine having problems. It’s about the IT manager being able to access the global dashboard to check up to date service statuses when she’s in a meeting with the board.
You get where I’m going here.
The iPad will make it into enterprises not because of any of the advertised features, but because of the portable management functionality it allows. Since Apple has not tried to make the iPad all things to all people, it will do what it does superbly, and one of those things will be enterprise management apps.
Mark my words: if your enterprise vendor is not forming a team right now to develop management apps for their software or hardware for the iPad, they’ve got their heads stuck in the sand, and asking their competitors to take advantage of them.
Ask your vendor tomorrow: when will the iPad version of their management app arrive?
Hi Preston,
great writeup, really. I just imagined myself jogging through the building with in iPad tugged under my arm, occasionally checking the Nagios Webinterface, the Networker Console or a SSH session on my firewall.
But what bothers me, and please correct me if I’m wrong, the iPad doesn’t seem to support multitasking. If that’s the case, I’m afraid it’s pretty much useless, or at least highly limited in usability. This worked out on the iPhone, but for me it would be a must on such a device.
Secondly, the output seems kind of limited, given that there is no HDMI port or anything. Imagine yourself at a meeting with more than just two participants, you would might want to hook up your iPad to a beamer. Well, maybe wifi would work…
As for private usage… Hmm I’m kind of struggling to see where this would come in handy, what with the limited size of 64GB, relatively short battery usage and no possobility to replace, no GPS, no optical drive, no HDMI. Heck, it’s going to sell anyways 😉
Personally the lack of multitasking doesn’t bother me – but I’ve been using the iPhone for some time. However, the primary reason it doesn’t bother me is that there have been very strong rumours for some time that iPhone OS 4.0 will support multitasking for the next generation iPhone. In this regard, I think what it comes down to is multitasking being supported on A4 styled CPU systems, which I’m certain the iPhone v4 will use (in some way or another), as well as this system. So on the multitasking front, if you’re concerned at all you could choose to wait until the June/July timeframe when the next iPhone will come out and confirm that multitasking is going to be provided.
The output I don’t believe should be a problem – while there’s no native HDMI there, it does support video out via the 30 pin dock connector. Apple did, during the presentation, explicitly state that you’d be able to hook it up to a projector if you wanted to, so I have to imagine there’ll be a connector to allow it to plug into at least, say, DVI.
As for capacity, GPS (or the lack thereof), battery life and lack of an optical device, I’d say that these are features of full laptop systems, not the portable computing platform that Apple has envisaged here. (On the battery life front, I suspect it’ll be quite good for standard usage scenarios.)
I don’t by any means think the iPad will be perfect, but having slept on it, I think it’s going to be a game changer nonetheless.
Hi Preston,
I was taken by the idea of being able to access NMC via an iPad, so much so, I suggested raising an RFE. The answer I got back from EMC was that until the iPhone / iPod / iPad actually support Java, then this wasn’t going to happen and maybe I should raise an RFE with Apple.
Not being an Apple user, I wasn’t aware that the iPxxx’s did not support Java. Surely with many web-based management interfaces using Java, Apple has missed the mark with this?
Hi Jarrod,
I’m of two minds about the Java-on-iPhone/iPad (or lack thereof) issue. In the first instance, getting a Java interpreter on the iPhone would allow for “easy” porting of a lot of the management applications, but easy isn’t always the right thing. Java on portable devices has always struggled in terms of performance and memory – and for right or wrong, Apple do not want interpreters running on their system. Java more generally has been easier to manage on the desktop because you often end up with different versions for different Java applets or apps that you need to run.
There’s two ways that vendors could come up with management apps for iPhoneX devices – they could do them in Objective-C, making them available only as installable apps on those platforms, or they could actually take a more “open standards” approach anyway and implement in HTML with a rich web-server back-end relying at most on Javascript at the front end. Sure this isn’t going to be always perfect, but it would give the added advantage of allowing the development of such portable management applications for any platform. Further, such management apps would then be connection-independent – or at least have a better chance of being anyway. Portable management apps will need to handle disconnects/reconnects well, depending on where someone is, etc. This isn’t something that is often handled gracefully by traditional desktop/laptop/Java management apps. Saving state for connected users and being able to reconnect is relatively straight forward. (The most recent example that springs to mind is Zmanda’s ZRM console, which preserves state across logins (and can be optionally disabled).)
Either solution would be good. The first would give the richest experience, the second though is perfectly acceptable and would provide the most cross-platform capable portable apps with minimum redevelopment time/etc.
Cheers,
Preston.