A good friend of mine pointed out the money phrase from Steve Jobs at this week’s iPad 2 introduction: “This is worth repeating. It’s in Apple’s DNA that technology is not enough. It’s tech married with the liberal arts and the humanities. Nowhere is that more true than in the post-PC products. Our competitors are looking at this like it’s the next PC market. That is not the right approach to this. These are post-PC devices that need to be easier to use than a PC, more intuitive.”
It’s an insightful even brilliant statement that’s 100 percent true. Then why doesn’t Steve Jobs practice what he preaches?
Jobs and Apple definitely have a better handle on the future of mobile devices and interfaces right now than any other CEO and company and are bold enough to come right out and say it: “Our competitors are looking at this like it’s the next PC market. That is not the right approach to this.” It’s a gutsy move, telling your competitors precisely what they are doing wrong to compete.
But then we come to this very rational critique of the iPad 2 from a blogger named Allahpundit who points out that despite the iPad 2 being thinner and faster and just as cheap as the original iPad with two new cameras to boot, it is still a pain in the ass to cut and paste text with one.
Why, given Steve Jobs’s boast that these are post-PC devices that need to be easier to use than a PC, would he build a device that is in this one important area is clearly harder to use than even a Windows PC?
It’s not like Apple couldn’t come up with clever gestures for cut and paste. It’s that they chose not to. And they chose not to because Steve is, well, a little bit of a hypocrite here.
For all Steve’s bold talk, Apple still relies on Mac sales for a quarter of its revenue — about $15 billion per year — which is a lot of revenue, so they have deliberately kept some things like production cutting and pasting text easier to do on a Mac than on an iPad 2.
Surely they have those gestures ready and waiting to go. Waiting for a dip in Mac sales or a blip in cloud capability or just for some other company to finally match or beat the iPad, forcing Apple to reveal these hidden capabilities and blow-up the MacBook line in an act of self-defense and technical imolation.
Yet until one of those precursor events happens Steve seems determined to have it both ways.
Nothing new there.
Huh? Your thesis implies that if Apple releases a clever cut-and-paste gesture Mac and PC sales will tanked? It sounds ridiculous when it is distilled it down doesn’t it?
No, it’s not silly at all. That’s how platform transitions happen.
I’ll have to disagree with you there. Cut-and-Paste on a tablet/phone using touch is not a very easy thing to solve. They probably are still trying to find the optimal solutions.
Sadly, this is also of issue on Android too – and WP7 doesn’t even support it yet.
So with other things to focus on, and competitors not doing any better it doesn’t surprise me in the least that they did not address it with iPad2.
To me, your article gives the impression that PC sales is hanging by a thread and the only thing keeping it from tanking is no good cut-and-paste implementation on tablets. Hey, maybe you’re right, but I find it hard to believe. Or maybe what we have here is a failure to communicate.
I’m going to disagree. I think the average iPad user isn’t capable of remembering a cute multi-finger gesture to make cut and paste happen. I work with several users that don’t even know that they are supposed to plug the iPad into a computer every once in a while. I find the cut and paste process simple enough that you don’t have to think of how to use it.
Then let’s disagree. You (and Steve) are right that if you want truly broad adoption it is going to require some dead-simple tech. But you are both wrong that a better cut-and-paste would be necessarily difficult to do. I had no trouble thinking of ways I would do it.
Then its time for the Android folks to get on with better cut and paste.
The big takeaway I had from the iPad 2 event is that we will now get to see explosive innovation in the tablet ecosystem as Apple and the Andriod tablet devs work to create, as Steve is pushing them to do, a “better user experience.”
This is great. Oh and IMHO, cut and paste is ok on the iPad, what drives me nuts is the auto correction feature, intuitively, I would prefer it to work exactly opposite of how it does work.
Steve’s comments at the unveiling of iPad two mean that this battle will take place where it needs to and the old Windows model of “just put out faster hardware” is hopefully going by the wayside. Of course that’s not to say that the A5 chip upgrade isn’t going to massively boost the power of the iPad2.
“I had no trouble thinking of how I’d do it.”
Then share.
Don’t forget you also have to manage scrolling and manage an insertion point on text that’s typically smaller than your finger, and allow users to change the start and end points of the selection. Or that you may want to cut or delete the selction instead of copying it. Or paste into the selection, replacing the current text.
On an iPad: Touch and hold to position cursor at start point. Tap select. Drag end point to end of selection. Tap copy.
On a Mac with mouse: Position cursor at beginning of text and click. While holding down the button, drag to the end of the selection. Now go to Edit menu, click, and select copy. (Or, go to keyboard and remember to do command-C.)
On a Mac with trackpad: Position cursor at beginning of text and tap. Now tap and hold, then drag to the end of the selection. Now go to Edit menu, click, and select copy. (Or, go to keyboard and remember to do command-C.)
None of which is that much faster, easier, or intuitive. The only thing I can see Apple doing is elminating the “Select” tap, possibly by continuing to hold down your finger at the same spot. Which takes just as long.
I cant think of a better way to implement copy/paste than what Apple did already. Can you? I also liked his post-PC comment. I thought it was his not so subtle/ modest way of saying that Apple has set a new direction for the whole industry again.
Yes I can.
I’d use a two-hand gesture, the equivalent of a shift or function command. Designate a corner of the screen (probably the lower left, but it could be the lower right for lefties) to serve as the function key, touch it (usually with your thumb), then swipe the text to be copied with one finger or thumb of the other hand. I’ve run this past many iOS developers and they generally say “why didn’t Apple do that?”
Why is that simpler than double-tap swipe ?
This idea is terrible on so many levels, I don’t even know where to begin.. Rather than the simple current method of double-tapping on the text I want to copy/paste.. With your method I now have to use BOTH hands.. and I have to precisely tap on a “magic corner”, which is bound to be error-prone.. especially on smaller devices like iPhone/iPod. Not to mention, accidental “magic corner” taps when one does NOT intend to invoke copy/paste (exactly why I disable “magic corners” even on desktop Macs – they are a pain).
I am just happy Apple doesn’t have you in charge of iOS UI/UX.
Agreed. Maybe you could come up with a vastly superior way to cut and paste but what you describe here isn’t it. It’s a push at best. I’d much rather double-tap in place than hunt or a function key.
The entire idea of word processing is an old fashioned notion. If Apple really wants to rock the iPad they should come up with a really elegant built-in dictation app. The entire idea of typing needs to get the boot.
“It’s not like Apple couldn’t come up with clever gestures for cut and paste. It’s that they chose not to.”
Oh really? And the rest of the tablet world (including Google, with it’s huge store of PC sales it’s trying to protect) has followed suit? What exactly are these clever gestures — please let us know.
A much more intelligent analysis would realize that
(a) Jobs is simply riding the hype machine, saying what sounds good. He is as aware as any intelligent individual of the limits of tablets. BUT
(b) He’s not a hypocrite. There is a peculiar strain of idiocy in our media that imagines it is for some reason extremely important that we all possess one, and only one, computer, even though computers are cheaper than dirt.
I own an iPod nano, an iPhone, an iPad, a MacBook Air, and a largescreen iMac. This is not because I have some obsessive need to own every Apple product; it is because these devices are just NOT THAT EXPENSIVE, and each of them has a different form factor. Form factor is destiny, and that’s not going to change. Their are tasks that are best performed on a 24″+ screen, and that means a desktop PC. There are circumstances where one is willing to give up a large screen for the sake of mobility, but a keyboard really is essential to be productive. Reading large amounts of material on an iPad is vastly more convenient and more pleasant than reading on either a desktop PC or a laptop. But an iPad won’t fit in the pocket. And even an iPhone, that fits in the pocket, with all the convenience that provides, does not offer the immediate constant control available to an iPod nano hanging around one’s neck.
Steve Jobs and the rest of Apple are not fools, they are well aware of this. Likewise their customers seem quite happy with the system — exactly how many iPhone/iPad customers does Cringely imagine don’t have PCs at home?
The core of Apple’s strategy has been, and remains NOT to sell one device that does everything badly, it’s to provide a constellation of devices that all work well together, each in a particular human form factor. An on-going part of iOS/iTunes/OSX improvements are getting these devices to all play well together, witness the ongoing expansion in the capabilities of Air Play, or similar cross features like Air Drop.
Apple’s competitors (and pundits like you) seem completely oblivious to this fact — which is why the Apple market is so much stickier than the competitors.
The bizarre thing is that if you’re going to complain about Apple not treating iOS as a “real” computer, you actually have a MUCH better example at hand — the way iOS, as envisioned by Apple, does not present files as a user interface element. Rather what exists are “documents”, each in their own separate silo, and with the ability to bridge silos limited and a hassle. These are NOT exactly technical limitations. The siloing is a technical limitation, getting files onto the device is a variety of ways is not.
But it is very clear that THIS is a place where the set of UI metaphors that Apple came up with for iPhone 1 is being stretched to the breaking point, and if you want to engage in conspiracy theories about Apple not wanting to steal market share from Macs (rather than simply being blind-sided by the astonishing success of iOS and how aggressively it is being used across such a variety of situations), this would be a much better place to start.
OR, of course, you could just remember that what you are complaining about are SOFTWARE features, and iPad 2 launches, like iPad 1, with an incremental software update, the real new and exciting software coming in June/July with iPhone 5. At some point Apple will presumably figure out a way to rationalize this scheduling, but for now it’s what they’ve inherited and they’re riding this wild stallion as best they can, but with far from perfect control.
Why are you getting mad at me? My experience in this space is that people who are angry are often overlooking things in their zeal.
I suggested above exactly how I would implement a better cut-and-paste, so that question of yours is answered.
I comment about these things not simply to piss you off but because I’ve worked as a user interface designer for both Apple and Microsoft in the paste dating all the way back to the Lisa in 1980. I actually know a few things about this field.
And as for Steve being a hypocrite or not, I’ll let the record speak to that. How many times has he dissed a technology only to introduce a product in that segment weeks or months later? Many, MANY times. Steve is a great marketer, which means his current message is based on his current product line and nothing else.
Hi bob, I’ve been reading your articles for a long time now and I was really enjoying the audio copy of it. too bad you stopped it. Anyway, just wanted to say that and also to thank you for sharing your great thoughts. They are always insightful.
It didn’t stop, I just got behind. I’ll try to catch-up today. Kids have been sick.
Hey Bob, when are you going to enable us to leave audio comments? (Just kidding!)
Maybe Bob is behind on purpose; that way he can read all the comments in the audio version as well. Looking forward to it!
typing on an ipad is going to be hard until they include a physical keyboard, and that bones the sexy tablet form factor. i think that’s a much bigger problem than cut and paste for interacting usefully with your ipad, though of course all tablets are going to have the same issue.
The thing is that by the time you’ve added all the extra bits to make it as good as a notebook you’ve got… a notebook. Looking down the road, though, I’m guessing we’ll have retinal scan displays, voice recognition for data input and eye movement for cursor control, by which time your tablet won’t be a tablet at all and will never leave your belt or pocket. Notice the stories just this week about Microsoft’s work on user gaze for cursor control? These companies are all headed toward a similar destination.
Google seems to be working very hard on the voice-recognition part of Google Translate.
I don’t think you mean that typing on an iPad is hard – it’s inherently easy. However, it is slower than on a keyboard for people who are touch typists. But would we have developed keyboards at all if technology for voice transcription had predated type-writers? There is nothing to support the idea that keyboards are inherently superior as an input device. They are useful with todays approach to selecting characters but other approaches will supersede the keyboard such that in 20 years or so people in museums will look upon them as artifacts much like rotary phones. In that sense, the gesture UI is an advance over manual manipulation of mechanical keys. Given the advances in technology demonstrated by Kinect, non-contact gesturing has an enormous amount to offer as well.
This is a pretty ridiculous argument, which is usually not the case for you. You imply Apple is making the iPad deliberately worse than it could be as to not cannibalize the Mac. Recent Apple history has shown that they do no such thing… The iPod touch came put even though the existing models were doing great, and the iPod nano came out to replace the best selling iPod mini. They didn’t save off the nano somewhere until mini sales dipped. In a year or two, they will very likely be making more money from the iPad than from the Mac anyway.
Interestingly enough, the lack of copy and paste in the first releases of iOS forced Apple to design the OS so that copy and paste are rarely needed. I had the first iPhone and I didn’t miss the feature most of the time (but when I did, I missed it badly).
What other PLATFORM did the iPod Touch cannibalize? None.
That’s what we’re talking about here, iPads hurting MacBooks — tablets hurting notebooks. Look at the broader sales statistics (and a lot of news stories) and you’ll see that has already started to happen. Netbook sales are in the toilet and notebook sales are lagging, with most analysts citing iPad sales as the reason. Those 15 million iPad sales mainly came at the expense of notebooks.
To think that Apple is immune to the basic economics of consumer electronics is simply naive.
Bob,
Not sure you’re making sense here.
Notebooks are probably more impacted by ALL mobile devices, not just the iPad.
You don’t need 1024×768 screen to check your latest twitter feed, and the iPad or notebook most likely does NOT handle a growing surge of SMS usage.
What used to require a desktop 10 years ago was fulfilled by a laptop 5 years ago and is now “in the cloud” and can be accessed by a mobile app or SMS/email interface now where appropriate.
I see where you’re going with the cannibalization argument, but I don’t think cut and paste is gimped.
Tell me how you can easily cut and paste entire web pages or images like you can in iOS. Cut/Paste just works differently (and in some ways better) than on the Mac or PC.
A lot of people own computers because that’s all that was available at the time. But new devices are filling these people’s original needs.
I think another fact that proves your point is Apple’s refusal to make any device that does not have to be plugged in to iTunes. Clearly there is no technical reason for this. All it takes is a file system accessible to the user and a usb port.
This will change upon the transition of MobileMe to an Apple device, no/low charge communications cloud. The limitation is not technical. It’s required tethering thanks to content providers to iTunes who are used to re-fleecing us each time the media format changes. They’ll still find a way to up the ante and milk our purses (I think that’s what is behind the 16 bit to 24 bit audio rumour).
So you agree that the limitation is not technical. Moblie Me will help a little but if I’m not using an Apple PC and my content is already on my PC and I just want to transfer some of it directly to my portable device (phone, tablet, umpc, mp3 player), I certainly shouldn’t have to run a bloated iAnything to do it nor should I have to put it in the cloud first.
Steve has always made things harder for the computer geek crowd for the sake of intuitiveness for non-geeks (one button mouse, no right-click menu, window resize from one corner only), but as for the implementation of copy/paste being particularly bad on the iPad, how would you do it? You have to point/highlight the target of an action and then you have to touch a command to say what that action will be. That’s what they’ve done.
Steve is not out to save the Mac; since when has Steve ever been afraid to cut something perfectly good, technology-wise, to take a chance at something better (floppy disc, etc.). The Macbook Air is the beginning of a cannibalization of the Mac; it is, paraphrasing Jobs, what would happen if the iPad and the MacBook “hooked up.” He knows he lost the PC war but he is hell-bent on winning the post-PC war — and he’s got a pretty good head start.
The Mac still makes money but it’s not where the future is:
Revenue by product forecast cart
https://www.dailygalaxy.com/.a/6a00d8341bf7f753ef013485a073bd970c-pi
And as for crippling the iPad to keep the Mac afloat, the only thing “crippling” it is the state of the current hardware, which is always getting better. Apple introduced GarageBand for iPad and iMovie for iPad with iPad 2. Both look really good and in some cases rival their desktop counter-parts with intuitive gestures that cannot be replicated presently on the desktop. (Want to cut a movie clip? Make a slicing motion with your finger through that point in the clip. Want to play a note louder on a keyboard on the iPad? Hit it harder – the accelerometer can measure the impact). Neither app, by the way, runs on iPad 1. Imagine the apps on iPad 5. I think Jobs is sprinting at full speed and he’s not looking back – not even to preserve the Mac; that’s for the market to decide. This is a guy with tiger blood — he is who Charlie Sheen only imagines himself to be. 😉
iMovie doesn’t run on the original iPad, but it’ll also run on the iPhone 4 and iPod touches that have cameras. GarageBand WILL run on the original iPad, but not the iPhone or iPod touch.
Clearly the dual core processor in the iPad 2 isn’t what’s needed for either of these apps. I’m sure iMovie would run just fine on the original iPad, using movie clips imported via the Camera Connection Kit, if Apple allowed it. There wouldn’t be a lot of people using it this way, though, and enabling it would increase the Q/A necessary on it by 25%. Apple simply made the decision that the additional 25% Q/A cost wasn’t worth it the marginal benefit. Saving development and testing costs like this is actually part of Apple’s current success. A few people might find it annoying, but the majority of Apple’s shareholders don’t.
I’ve covered this all in my comments, above.
You’re not making any sense to me. In the first place, Copy/Paste is easy on an iPad, not just for text, but also for images. Secondly, Copy/Paste is much harder on competing devices, this is a major knock on Android and other systems. Who has shown how to do a touch Copy/Paste better in over 20 years of tablets? Third, if Apple is being protective of the Mac, why port Keynote, Pages, Numbers, iMovie, and GarageBand to iPad? Before iPad, people bought Macs just to get one of those apps. Fourth, if Apple is crippling Copy/Paste on iPad to promote the Mac, why in just that one way? Why give iPad a Bluetooth keyboard, when the lack of that would promote the Mac even further? Why give it an SD card reader and USB port for offloading photos?
Read the blog post I linked to in the column. The guy makes a good point.
The guy is whining about not being able to copy text out of the NY Times app. That functionality is the developer’s prerogative. If the NY Times doesn’t want you copying text from their stories then they probably didn’t implement cut/paste in their app.
As for Safari, their copy/paste is light years ahead of other browsers. On my iPad and my Mac, selecting text in a column works how one would expect selection to work.
I’m with Bob: as soon as Apple is forced to implement an improved gesture for cut-and-paste I will be ditching my PC.
Dead on correct. My family is in the process of deciding between a MacBook and continuing to use the iPad (specifically my teacher wife). This is one of her chief complaints. Even paired to the small bluetooth keyboard, editing a sizable document is a pain – it’ just not easy enough to key back and edit a typo. Once this is solved (and I cave and replace our laser with an AirPrint capable printer), this will become a hands-down obvious choice. I hope it is not long – the iPad is far superior in many other respects.
I’m going to have to agree with Bob on this one… Okay, maybe Macs won’t stop selling the INSTANT a simple cut and paste in introduced to the iPad, but as soon as users are given the option of using a single device to do all of their daily, routine computing, they will.
The Motorola Atrix 4g is already on it’s way. It has a docking station that gives the phone a full size screen and keyboard. It can do everything an iPad, iPod, and an iPhone can do, but not everything a Macbook can do. As soon as Android’s OS gives them the ability to replace a laptop, you’ll see how fast Apple reveals that the iPad 2 can do it too.
Of course consumers would prefer to pay for only one device if that one device can satisfy all their needs. What Bob is saying that that Apple has the capability to make the iPad a one size fits all computing device, but Steve Jobs is intentionally withholding functionalities to prevent this.
As others have said/implied – Talk is cheap, show us a better way for “the average consumer” Bob
But still, the iPad is prett-ay, prett-ay, prett-ay, pretty good. The Xoom is the least silly among its sad competitors.
Hey Bob, what do you think will happen in 3 years when the iPad has enough computing and graphics power for 99% of consumer uses?
I think the notion that inconvenient/difficult copy and paste is the major obstacle between what the iPad is and what the iPad could be is absurd. First, as another commenter has pointed out, how COULD copy paste be easier than it currently is, given the constraints of a device where the only interface is a touch screen? A simple or quick gesture is nearly impossible because copying requires fine selection of specific portions of text. This requires fine motor coordination and can’t be done quickly unless you’re willing to sacrifice accuracy.
IMHO, what is REALLY stopping the iPad from being all that it could be is that there is no support for developing ON the iPad. Sure- we can develop for it, but we can’t develop ON it. As long as this constraint remains, the iPad can never fully replace a laptop or desktop for software development professionals. So far, all other tablets seem to suffer from the same disability.
Personally I find Safari on the IPad to be a much bigger pain in the ass than the copy & paste. Yes, copy & paste is cumbersome, and you’re probably right that it can be done better, but it’s hardly the millstone around the IPad’s neck you make it out to be. As for Safari, I switched to “Perfect Browser” and haven’t touched Safari since.
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/perfect-web-browser-extraordinary/id373916467?mt=8
Job’s quote in context: it concluded the presentation after very substantial demonstrations of the iPad as creating content in Garage Band and iMovie. In other words, for the first time we were seeing the first transcendence of a computer for direct human creative interaction. As an artist I have been sketching and painting on an iPad using my finger using AutoSketch. It recaptures the directness I felt as a child. We haven’t begun to see what will come of this device in the “right” hands, and those might very well be hands that aren’t concerned about cutting and pasting text. If you’ve been mulling over Steve’s statement that “this is the most important thing I’ve done” (the introduction of iPad 1) then, like me, it’s becoming very clear why.
How hard is it really? Totally confused here, I find it about the same as copy and paste on my Mac. Bob, can you be more specific? Or do you just not know how to do it? Just curious. You seem to normally rant after you are frustrated by something, is that what happened here? You want something actually hard that should be easy today… try embedding a movie into PowerPoint… I mean actually embed it so you don’t need the source file.
Let other manufacturers madly rush to design boxes that tick as many boxes as possible no matter how shoddy the implementation. Apple has discipline.
I think Steve is being honest when he says that copy-paste took time to implement because they wanted to get it right. yes they could augment the basic functionality with fancy gestures for more sophisticated functionality, and they probably will, but they’ll take their time over doing it.
Apple will give us easy copy/paste gestures as soon as the auto industry releases the cars capable of traveling 100 km on 1 litre of water.
My, oh my. Aren’t the Applenauts offended?
When will Apple realize that many many people in the US (let alone the world) can’t AFFORD $600, for what is still essentially a toy (compared to a computer)?
Nor can many of them afford a $999 base price system.
No matter HOW good it looks, how well it runs, or how virus free it is.
If Steve REALLY wanted to change the world, Apple would sell me the OS to install on custom made systems…but then my systems aren’t PRETTY enough.
You can get a mac mini for $500 on Amazon.
Well, it seems YOU also don’t want to save the World either anymore…
What I read was: Steve should sell me (cheap, hopefully) OSX and iOS,
so I could put’em on MY custom made systems, which I would then sell for around 300$ and thus I would change the world. Oh, and one last thing: wake up and grow up, please!
I apologize, but if that’s what you read, you’re mistaken. Also, I do not mean to troll. These are questions that I’ve been looking for answers to for years.
I am a small time builder. If I build 30 systems a year, that’s a big year.
My lowest priced system is $550 sans monitor. And it will kick a mini’s tush. Much better specs, plain and simple. Oh and my mahcine is made of standard parts in a standard case. My cost is right around $400. Of that, NewEgg.com gets $100 for a copy of Win 7 Home Premium 64bit. How much MS gets is unknown to me.
Apple’s OS animal of the month has been shown to run on my kind of systems.
What’s wrong with sell a gabillion copies of it?
Working theories…because it won’t go on pretty machines, because then anyone can fix them, because they’ll hit the tripping point where attacking the OS becomes an actual interest to the virus writers?
Please enlighten me.
Thank you.
If Jobsian Apple abhors one thing above all else, it’s actual competition. Jobsian Apple is the Supercar at the Go-Kart track. What I mean is they have no interest in competition, they intend to out-do the competition so that there is essentially none.
Selling an OS to you, or me without Apple Hardware would allow us to put their Supercar engine in a Go-Kart chassis, which could make there Supercar look expensive and overrated. Why would they have any interest in creating competition by selling you an engine?
Apple is and always has been a software company. They only make the hardware so that they can show off their ultra-bitchen software. Really. What innovation has come from Apple in the hardware arena in the past 15 years–or however long it has been since Woz left Apple? Woz was the hardware genius and Jobs always was and will be the software geek. Other than Thunderbolt, which is really an Intel product, Apple hasn’t made any real innovation in the hardware market in a long time.
Sure, the Macs are pretty. They must be! The iPad, the iPhone, the iPod, while handheld hardware devices are unique in their software, not in the technology or hardware that you hold. Jony Ive should get a lot of credit for the new Apple and the recognition they have as a sleek computer/post-PC company. But the real craft that separates Apple from all others is the OS/iOS.
And as such, Bob is right to criticize Apple for the poor implementation of copy and paste. But I disagree in the overall argument in that it sounds as though Bob sees only Macs as competition to the iPad. And that only Mac sales are propped up by a poor copy and paste implementation in iOS devices. I could just as easily buy a Win7 box to copy and paste on as I could a Mac. My MacBook Pro will do just fine. I have accepted that my iPad is great for certain times and places and my laptop has its times and places. And there is some overlap in the middle but I do not see it as I need the same functionality on both devices because I should only own one or the other.
Apple does not want to be in the commodity market. That is your enlightenment.
Their hardware prices pay for their software. Entering the race for the bottom, forces out the craftsmanship.
I use my iPad all the time and rarely, if ever, need to use copy/paste.
One man’s hang up is another man’s non-issue.
Touch is only so accurate when it’s your fingers. Use a stylus like the targus. Problem solved. However, w/out one you can still get better at it. I’m more peeved that folder management and other OS features haven’t evolved.
WHY the hell does OS X NOT merge folders or at least ask like WindowsXP? Clearly Windows7 has evolved beyond with “Yes to All”, “No to All”, and Duplicate features. If it wasn’t for Time Machine, I’d be pretty sore (and still am when I forget on a jump/net drive that doesn’t get backed up). Grrrr.
Who wrote this article for you? I first checked the date thinking it must be April 1 already. As an iPad owner (my kids do much of the using) I have to say it’s well thought out, responsive and more useful than I hoped for.
I didn’t expect it to work just like my PC or Mac – a new product requires a new UI which requires new methods of operation. The iPad gestures take a few minutes to learn and so far have fulfilled all my needs. I cut-n-paste as needed – it works just fine.
I plan on getting an iPad2 for field inspections and documenting construction site progress. My Filemaker databases are being tweaked as I write this.
Serious work on an iPad? LOL. Most people use it for content consumption – web surfing, movies, etc. No serious work gets done on iPads. It’s not a laptop. Perhaps that’s what Jobs means when he says this is not the next PC (which the laptop was – another PC).
healthcare sure seems like “serious work” to me.
https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/healthcare-sector-among-top-adopters-ipad
Good point !
Steve is: wanting it both ways (PC and Post-PC functions, C&P is a *PC* function), talking out of both sides of his mouth (see previous), still trying to figure out an appropriate UI (and backing datastore) for a non-keyboard device.
I’ve been saying for years now: the PC will not be displaced by a better PC (the PC, once NetWare came along displaced the mini-computer), but by a different device that sort of works like it, but not quite. What is apparent is that the host/terminal meme is back with a vengeance, and the iStuff (and clones) makers need to start with a clean sheet to figure out a useful UI (and backing datastore on that host; BCNF comes to mind) which allows intuitive assembly of content and general input without a keyboard for a *terminal*. The history of GUI is to replicate antecedent physical widgets with pixels. That only gets you so far. The iPod broke ground; the iPad trods old furrows.
Twitting is fine, but serious work isn’t going to get done on the subway while reading the Post and drinking your Starbucks.
Steve is definitely telling his competition something. He could be trying to telegraph a totally different message.
The Android pad makers are following Apple’s lead on pricing. New Moto and Samsung pads are $500-$800. I recently worked on a design for a 7″ touch screen display device with ARM inside. BOM cost is about $180, landed cost around $240. The profit margin on the pads is sweet right now.
Mr. Jobs would like his competition to keep the prices high. Don’t start a crazy rush for more and more for less and less, as the PC and smart phone industry have done. Keep the margins big, and evolve slowly and we will all make mucho dollars. That is a message worth giving away to the competition.
Yes Apple can demand a premium for it’s product. If there are $250 devices it is a whole lot tougher to demand $800 for the same thing.
Dead on. This is what I call the Rolex strategy:
-Tablets are expensive
-You can only have one
-Since you can only have one it has to do everything
-All the processing, graphics, screen quality make for a heavy expensive unit
-Since you are paying so much you might as buy a “luxury model” w/ good styling
-Any competition must be in the form of an “iPad killer” which is then dismissed as an “iPad knockoff”
Basically this would have been a good argument for buying a Rolex in pre-electronic watch days.
Jobs has milked this for years with the iPod convincing folks they have to pay ludicrous prices for a dirt cheap commodity
Using this argument for a Rolex collapsed when electronic and digital watches flooded the market. A dirt cheap ($10-20) Timex is a serviceable watch and a reasonable Casio (~$100) is more than sufficient for nearly any use. In the same fashion you can buy several Swatches and mix and match.
The counter argument is
-Tablets are cheap and getting cheaper
-You can have several
-You can specialize the function of each to a specific need (reading in bed, commute, extended travel)
-You can make tradeoffs on specs suited to the need.
For example I have a cheap Telepad 10.1″ (aka Badpad) for around the house, terrible battery life but incredibly light and thin. Since it is for around the house the battery life is not an issue since the charger is always handy. For my daily commute a reasonably priced rooted nook color is more than perfect. A Malata ZPadT2 rounds things out as a long battery life heavy hitter for travel. The total cost of this lineup is less than a midrange iPad!
Paradoxically all of these pads have crucial features missing from the iPad such as microSD card slots, USB OTG ports and drag and drop wireless sync.
Doug, please tell me: in your mind a 250$ Android piece of crap is the same as an 800$ iPad? Some people have a very tiring mind-set, like comparing the cost of what is a breakthrough component to its cost after 20.000.000+ devices have been built with it. And please, god, spare me the people who always demand that Apple produces a faster, smaller, “better” product right now,(and let’s not forget cheaper), with features they nebulously dream of, but have no idea how hard it would be to implement them across the board on the whole product line. But the bottom line is: if you don’t like Apple’s products, ok, but please don’t imagine all the Apple owners are remotely thinking like you are. Like most reasonable and intelligent people, they realise all of life is compromise, and take it in stride. Good luck with Androïd, then.
Apple keeping true touch cut and paste locked up until Mac sales falter? LOL.
iTunes is what locks you to a computer, not copy-and-paste.
As long as you have to sync with iTunes, the iPad will always be a secondary computer. Which of course is good for Apple, and the rest of the PC industry.
The most difficult thing about cutting/copying is identifying the boundaries. The problem is the “points” are easy to do with a small cursor and hard with a fat finger. The way to do it is to tell it “I’m going to copy something from this general area,” then have it blow that area up to the size where a finger fits in between letters. then tap the begin and end points. If the end point is not visible, support dragging around the blow-up to reveal it.
Yes, it’s modal. But in this case that’s what you want. Mentally you’re already in “copy mode.”
Perhaps “cutting and pasting” is an example of old school mental inertia in any case. A cut and paste is a static copy. What would really fit today’s networked world better is what Microsoft used to call OLE (object linking and embedding): linking and embedding live content. What is embedded is thus always the latest revision, not the static copy. Yes, this presents issues for the conceptual unity of a document, and embedded content can change, perhaps unpredictably. But hey . . . think different !
In this case whats being talked about is just one function that needs to be ON PAR from a productivity stand point with a standard computer. Thats what both Bob and the blogger he sites are talking about.
Fact is that outside of productivity for all uses, the PC market does not have anything to offer that has a wow factor. Ubiquity can be death for companies like Apple. Apple needs to stand out from the crowd. Their post-pc devices are what that is all about. Apple also knows they are better than their competition at that kind of innovation and Steve would not be telegraphing anything if he did not know Apple R&D was still out ahead of those folks.
Also – IMPORTANT POINT – iTunes, Keep working to make it the default leader in digital content distribution to …. “APPLE” devices and it does not matter how cool those competing products are, remember its a package deal now.
As far as competing with standard PCs, it no different then Canon or Sony or anyone making cameras (as an example)……. users are always crying for more and more features and capabilities with no regard for the fact that giving them all they want would negate the need to spend another $1,000 on a high end camera. “Hello!!”
When he puts a phone in it I might consider buying one.
Just slide in a bluetooth ear bud on the side and let me just carry one device I could use with fat fingers.
Bob
When I need to do serious work I want to sit at a desk in an upright position. I find desktops and laptops well suited for this.
When I’m having my morning tea, watching TV, going to meetings, etc. my needs are different. It’s much more about instant access to information, reading, having fun, keeping caught up. For me the iPad works pretty damn well in this context.
Sometimes you do a bit of serious work on the iPad and it’s “good enough” when you need to go there. Or capturing the shell of an idea when inspiration strikes.
But honestly when I have the time and mental capacity to get down to “serious business” it’s hardly a chore to go sit at a desk… which for millenia has been a pretty good UI for getting stuff done.
Bob, for me you’re obsessing on a problem that doesn’t really exist. It’s kind like wanting a sofa to also function as a toilet.
You seem to have read John Siracusa’s piece in Ars Technica two days ago: The Apple strategy tax. (http://arstechnica.com/staff/fatbits/2011/03/the-apple-strategy-tax.ars) He makes the point that:
Competition between divisions within a large company has, at various times, been lauded as a best practice. But danger lurks on both sides of the issue. Too much internal competition can lead to a lack of focus, with divisions pulling in all directions at once, causing the company as a whole to stand still. Allowing too little internal competition, as in Spolsky’s Microsoft example, results in the absurd situation where a company handicaps its own products.
Based on what their products actually do, I can only assume that “liberal arts and the humanities” is code for lucrative media content.
What a load of bull.
Saying that the iPad 2 is not better just because of cut and paste is a load of bull.
The iPad 2 IS BETTER. All you have to do is give one to your grandmother or 2 year-old and ask her or him to use it – WITHOUT INSTRUCTIONS. Then give a PC to him or her and as him or her to use it. THERE IS NO COMPARISON. The iPad 2 will be used far more easily and more frequently. EVEN CUT AND PASTE IS GOING TO BE EASIER TO USE on the iPad 2.
Then all you have to do is look at GarageBand and iMovie on the iPad 2 versus the Mac versions. You will then realize that the iPad 2 is not only BETTER at doing these applications but can do things the Mac CANNOT DO AT ALL. The iPad 2 is a REAL INSTRUMENT whereas the Mac is NOT.
I’m skeptical of the idea that Apple has a good technology ready to go but is holding it back to prevent cannibalization of existing products. That’s an attitude that has doomed many tech leaders in the past, leading them to lose their leadership position. Apple seems to understand this danger and hasn’t been afraid to ruthlessly eliminate old technology in favor of something Steve seems to believe is the future.
And you just know they have a solution for world hunger waiting in the wings but refuse to release just to be spiteful and make lots of money off those starving people. Why can’t more people be rational like me….
The author is myopic at best. Fact: Apple is driving the market, others are following. I own and service PCs and Macs, so I’m not an ardent fanboy of either. If you are not seeing the fact of a clear market leader (both markets, the computer market and stock market), then you either are blind or in denial. The integration and infrastructure with the hardware is not perfect, but it is very appealing. There are those who say that Mac users choose Apple products because they are clearly not “technologically sophisticated”. Those people are missing the point entirely. It is because of this integration that the average user doesn’t have to be “technologically sophisticated” in order to develop, produce and consume on a computer. Cut and paste? Yikes.
Bob,
You’re a smart guy, but think about the original Mac for a minute. Did it have multiprocessing? Was it multithreaded? Could you run more than one application at a time? No. But you have to agree that it was the future. The DOS world was going to end, and Apple/Jobs showed us the way.
2001, Apple/Jobs showed us the way with MP3 players/iTunes. Millions sold.
2007, Apple/Jobs showed us the way a smart phone should work. Millions sold.
Now, again, Apple/Jobs is showing us where computing is going. Is the iPad perfect? Of course not. But it’s the future, and give Jobs a little credit: he is showing an entire industry where we are headed. If anyone hates Apple they still have to agree it would have been years later (later than 1995 and Windows 95) before we would have seen a true mainstream GUI PC OS. It would have been years later than 2007 before we saw a true mainstream smart phone that showed people how it should be done. Now we are at tablets and MSFT had 10 years to get it right, and they couldn’t. Now Apple shows the way and, guess what, everyone follows.
Give Jobs some credit. He’s brilliant. He knows where we are headed and comes to the table with real devices that prove it way before everyone else does in this industry.
Clearly you cannot see the broader picture. You base your entire argument on the fact that iOS cannot do copy paste. Can you mention anything else?
I find this argument ridiculous (I have not spent enough time researching a more accurate word, so please do excuse me).
Things like copy and paste might seem like an easy issue to handle from a users perspective. That might not always be the case from the point of view of a designer. I know, because I have been there.
Give it another year. We’ll see the MacPad/MacPad Pro, with a Motorola Atrix-like docking station complete with keyboard and expansion ports.
The only question is, will Steve live to see it?
The fundamental problem with all the naysayers of Steve Job’s “Post-PC” Metaphor seems to be like those who had problems in moving from a “geo-centric” view to accepting the “heliocentric” view.
The “Corporate PC-centric” view as propounded by the Microsoft Popes Gates and Balmer is now being challenged by the “Personal Post-PC Centric” view now proposed by Apple and Steve Jobs, who are on the outside of the “Microsoft Vatican”, in the large user-centric world outside this Vatican.
Lessseee… one finger… tap, tap, swipe = cut and paste.
Hmmmmmm. Doesn’t seem out of the ball park to me. But, I’m 64 years old and high tech is evidently beyond me.
>don’t even know that they are supposed to plug the iPad into a computer every once in a while.
I don’t know this. Why should I do this?
No HAS to plug it in but it is a good idea.
When you open itunes on your computer and plug in any i-device into your computer it allows you to synch and back up your purchases. It’s a way of having a local backup in case something happens to your i-device. Also it allows you to transfer purchases between i-devices if desired.
Of course, if Apple DOES make mobile me free AND turn it into a continuous virtual backup of all i-devices then we could happily buy and install whatever we wanted without a care in the world. But then that would become another reason to not buy a desktop computer :).
OK. I don’t use itunes, and haven’t purchased anything either.
I think you still want to evaluate iPad from a PC usage standpoint, just not hardware specs therefore making the similar mistakes as those “competitors” are making.
The statement of ‘post pc devices should be easier and more intuitive to use’ doesn’t necessarily mean that ‘you should be able to do *everything* you do on PCs better on the iPad’. As Jobs mentioned there will be need for trucks.
Whether text editing belongs more to PCs more or to touch based tablets I don’t know, although the precision of mouse pointer-click-drag certainly seems to fit better for text work. I wouldn’t criticize iPad because I cannot create 3D animation using Maya on it. People may think text editing is far way simpler of task than 3D animation I actually think it is not that simple. After all in the history of mankind we rarely used our fingers directly for writing except when you are at the beach.
Yeah, copy-paste is what defines a product. And a mediocre blogger can get hits by playing analyst.
Okay.
I confess I’ve been reading Bob…actually for longer than I care to remember…and I also confess that sometimes I’ve disagreed so strongly with his comments that I vowed never to read again.
Yet next update I’m back.
Simply because Bob has an insight that ranges from purely technical to purely speculative. Yet he always manages to find an angle that makes his readers think.
His especial insight here (which really should be obvious to everyone) is that Steve doesn’t play the same games as anyone else .
We all know that there is better hardware out there. Better by a long way.
Apple has always compensated for that by finding another area in which to be first where no one else even realises there is a competition.
What Apple/Steve does is finesse and almost art. Their competitors response is usually brute force/logic.
The two don’t mix.
Until the other manufacturers get a bit of Apples fairy glamour the simple arguments of power and performance wont persuade anyone that Apple isn’t the best at what they do.
Even if on paper you can prove otherwise.
Cut and Paste isn’t the only problem, therefore it cannot be the end all solution.
Nothing matches a physical keyboard, a mouse, and a decent screen for general productivity on a work computer. I find the iPad lacks the first two and netbooks lack a decent screen.
The devil decides to make a deal with Apple:
Devil: Dearest Apple, I will give you the design to the most awesomest of gadgets man has ever imagined. It will be a tablet. You will call it the iPad. The day it goes on sell is the last day any other type of computer will be sold. Nobody will buy notebooks, netbooks, desktops, towers, servers, or anything else. They will only buy your iPad.
In exchange, you must kill the Macintosh and OS X.
Do you accept this deal?
Apple: Yes!!!
That’s the first reason why I disagree with you. The success of the iPad doesn’t come at the expense of the Mac platform. It may reduce the 2nd computer purchase or grandma/kid purchase, but it’s also bringing people into the Apple ecosystem, stealing more from PCs than cannibalizing Macs.
The second reason is that if a magic copy/paste interface is so easy to come up with, a competitor surely would, and where does that leave Apple? A competitor could do it, patent it, and Apple would be forever screwed on the issue.
The third reason is that I disagree with both what the problem is and what your solution does. Cut, Copy and Paste isn’t that much more difficult on iOS than on OS X. However, the difficulty that exists really is in the selecting. I don’t think your solution addresses this. Also, I think that your solution is better at all.
It seems to me that with iOS, Apple created magic by what they said no to. They released the first iPhone with no apps, no copy and paste, no multitasking, no printing, etc…
They’re slowly adding features and doing so very cautiously. Many of the features being added are being worked over from scratch. For example, they didn’t just add apps by having you install apps from disk or download from a site. They created a whole trusted system and are still working out the bugs for the trust/hassle. You don’t just let any app run in the background however it wants, there’s smart multitasking. You don’t install print drivers, there’s AirPrint. The list goes on.
If Bob thinks Copy and Paste is hard to use on an iOS system, try Android (or WP7 – when ever that update is released). It’s tricky, but some people claim you don’t need such an archaic means of document editing. I’d argue we do, but only because of the paradigm and our habit/way of thinking. The things you do on an iPad that are intuitive and easy to learn are what makes it fun to use. The things that are equal or more difficult to do as on a PC add to its utility. We expect these methods to be there t segue between the approaches. The point is, copy and paste is an old paradigm that will likely never be at home when your finger is the precision element. Instead, the need for copy and paste will become an anachronism, replaced by modalities for word formatting that are more intuitive and effective when applied through touch UIs. Is Apple working on that? I wouldn’t bet against them.
Although iOS sales may cannibalize OSX sales, I bet they cannibalize Windows sales much more.
I’m going to give 2 very important urls to John Gruber who writes some of the best critiques on the world of Apple that can be found anywhere. The first is here and the second is at the end of RxC’s forum comments for Sunday 13 March about 1340h or 1:40pm.
The first url takes one to his article on Macworld 13 May 2010 “This is how Apple rolls” and explains how Apple plans and develops and why it seems Apple doesn’t put the razzle dazzle into its first, second etc version of what it markets. Mind blowing, really. Explains why Apple is where it is and M$ is where it is.
First URL–Macworld Article: https://www.macworld.com/article/151235/2010/05/apple_rolls.html
The second post is to John Gruber’s Blog where you can go to archives and view his latest to first Blogs on Apple and other interests in the electronic world. Look for the iPad 2 to complete the ideas he presents in the Macworld article.
So you think Steve Jobs is a hypocrite because, in interpreting your opinion, Apple should have invented the iPad and instantly killed all Macs because the iPad is, as Jobs put it, “post-PC”?
That’s the dumbest statement of the year thus far. It’s quite obvious that the iPad cannot fully replace a laptop computer, or a desktop, due to limitations in processing power and storage. But you still think Apple should jettison its Mac line just because the iPad has been a raging success?
Come on. Even you had to recognize the ridiculousness of that comment when you were writing it.
And stating that the iPad 2 is not better just because cut and paste is different than on a Mac? First, if touch screens had been invented prior to keyboards and mice, then it would seem very strange to highlight with a mouse, then turn to the keyboard and press two keys (why can’t it just be one key?) to cut, move the mouse back to another location, and press a different key combination to paste.
Really cutting and pasting in iOS is no more difficult, nor more steps, than doing so on OS X or Windows. The difference is most people have trained themselves for years to do cut and paste and now do so without even thinking, but they still have to think a bit to do so on a touch screen device.
It’s not harder, it’s just different and people aren’t used to touch screens yet.
I only know two people with iPads – my sister and my boss. In both cases they have sited what they love about the gadget is being able to surf the web while sitting on the sofa, or otherwise relaxing.
It strikes me that Apple have struck upon the non-PC aspect of computing – not meaning a Windows PC, just a computing platform which isn’t of a PC form-factor – an developed it when no other company dared.
Most people have simple computing desires. Incidentally they also like iPods over brushed-metal hi-fis too (my own 80’s hi-fi equipment is wrapped carefully for storage in the garage).
It’s a maturing of the computing market. In years gone by we all got used to making our desktops to do everything we needed, but more specialised devices have their advantages and if Apple is first to market with those then good on them! If people buy them, then they are needed and will be a success.
As to the point that iPad 2 is not a major revelation and still holds back on what it can actually do – that’s interesting! But it shows Apple recognises that my sister and my boss don’t do that much cut, copy or pasting at all. Also, on a tangent, that I don’t have the room or time, any longer, to set up my pumping hi-fi in the living room to dominate the house with buzzing transformers and loud rock. A pass-time I haven’t indulged in since my single days….
I’ve just seen a Flickr photo of a member who has bought some new keyboard for his iPad. The Apple device sits on top in landscape orientation and the stand incorporates a keyboard and docking station, for all the world it looks just like a netbook in action.
Defeating the object – and more crucially, the client group iPad was aimed at.
It must be quite a daunting prospect, planning where the iPad line will go. Especially if desktop computers are still managing to sell well. Incremental changes must be the order of the day and it will be interesting (again!) to see where Apple’s competitors try to take the portable tablet idea.
Personally I’m rather attached to my desktop and iPod. I kind of know that any iPad I bought would get pushed down the side of the sofa or worse, sat on.
That last point may at first appear silly but I’ve manged to sit on my iPod Touch many times with no ill effects. The iPad, however is large enough to break.
Cut and paste is easy on the iPad and even iPhone.
Mac sells 3-4m a quarter, and is about 5% of the whole PC market. Apple expects to be selling over 10m iPads a quarter soon, and trending up to over 20m iPads a quarter in a year or two. So that’s 4m times $1200, or 10m or 20m times $600. I know which one is bigger.
If iPad cannibalizes the Mac, it will cannibalize the PC as well. And since Apple is taking all sorts of steps to have the iPad dominate the tablet market, I really can’t see how iPad would not get whatever it needs to dominate, and even wipe out the Mac.
We’ve got an iPad (and a bunch of other iStuff) at the house, and what I can say is that the Mac is not going away soon. The iPad may be the best digital media consuming device ever made. Its awesome. But media creation… well it kind of sucks. I am interested in seeing how well I can do things in iMovie and Garageband with my fat fingers, but I have this feeling it will be just as frustrating as it has been with other media creation on iPad.
My experience is “Yes, I can do it, but give me a Mac and a Wacom tablet, I can do it in 1/4 the time and with better quality.” This is important because people like to consume digital media that is better than they themselves can create. This is what makes it worth looking at. And, frankly, nothing is better at media creation than a Mac. It has the proper paradigm for creation.
So why is iPad outselling Macs? Most people aren’t that creative, and don’t have the time to be either. They tend to be passive consumers of what a relative handful of creative types do. They would rather have something easy to look and listen with than make, and this is why cut, copy and paste sucks on and iPad.
This applies even to things like YouTube. Ever put up a YouTube video yourself? If you did, how many views you get? If you have a YouTube video with a lot of views, you are in that lucky top 5 percent. Most suck and no one watches them.
PC’s are not going away. They will just be relegated to doing what they were designed to do: to be tools for getting your work done.
You don’t know a video sucks until you watch it.
R.C. says “Why are you getting mad at me? My experience in this space is that people who are angry are often overlooking things in their zeal.”
Actually they are doing the same thing you did. Point to something and complain. LOL
Can Apple make things better, faster, cheaper??? I am sure that they could. They could make cheap crap like Dell and race to the bottom of the hardware barrel, like many others. Sell on features and not that they work well,,, or even work at all.
Make a fast buck now and let the customer be danged… That would make it so much easier for anal—– yst to understand Apple and make other stupid guesses as to what is going to happen in the future. 🙂
But, Apple is doing these things, they are doing them first…. or better -first vs just making SOMETHING happen.
And if you somehow just cannot believe what is happening with Apple (iPod, iPhone, iPad etc) then just invest in Microsoft stock cause we will always have to have a PC running windows, and a mp3 player running Playsforsure, etc…… right??? And soon Microsoft will be coming out with an iPad killer tablet,,, for sure, …… cause anyone can do it,,,,,, its easy…………… Right???
I am not a fanboy, I like to take Apple to task too. But I try to remember that most of us do not have magic wands to make the problems of technology just disappear. Apple is inventing new battery configurations, power management, longer lasting batteries, etc, etc, etc…
Where is Microsoft during this?
Where is HP during this?
Where is Dell during this?
Where is Samsung during this?
Where is Nokia during this?
Where is Motorola during this?
Am I making my point?
Just a thought,
en
+1
Yep. Apple is different from other companies – it’s well known yet people can’t get over it. And because they can’t fathom that there’s a company that doesn’t ship half-baked features, or features just to tick off checkboxes, they come up with bizarre explanations – they may defy all logic, they may not make any sense at all – but they let you bypass the truth: Apple doesn’t ship stuff that doesn’t work.
Apple didn’t have copy/paste on the first iPhone. A year later, they had it, and the implementation worked better than anyone else’s.
Apple didn’t have cameras on the first iPad – there was no FaceTime, and Skype didn’t support video on iOS. What would you have done with cameras? FaceTime simply wasn’t ready. So – no camera.
Now they’ve caught up on pretty much everything imaginable, save maybe the retina display. Retina displays in that size can’t be produced in sufficient numbers for the iPad – that’s all. Apple is investing $Bns to get production up and running at various OEMs.
If you think that there’s a much better way to copy and paste, please describe it. Better still, patent it and make a ton of money. Just don’t whine.
As others have pointed out, the iPad is primarily for media consumption plus very quick and small communications…short emails, contributions to blogs like this one, and Facebook updates. If your mobile content generation needs are greater than that, Apple offers the MacBook Air…pretty nifty for the size and weight. And the iMac is a provides a lot of content generation heft for the dollars. so I don’t see a conspiracy here and I don’t see competitors doing a better job. Although I do feel the camera(s) was deliberately held back to give early adopters a reason to upgrade to iPad2.
Bob, when you are on, you are brilliant. But I think that is happening less frequently, kinda like how Elvis Costello hasn’t really equaled his earlier work, but keeps putting out CDs.
You know what would be great for precision selection and manipulation of content on an iPad? A stylus.
@B – smirk…… A stylus. You so funny…..
A stylus would help. Personally, I use a umpc with a 5″ screen and a slide out keyboard and mouse pointer. So cut and paste is easy for me…but I have small enough fingers so the mini built-in keyboard is not a problem.
What on earth are you smoking? Apple is intentionally holding back their secret way to copy/paste more easily in order to save Mac sales?
Do you really want to add your name to the list of Enderles, Dvoraks – blog writers who write any idiotic idea they can dream up just to get page hits?!
Congrats, it worked, I clicked on the link. In the future though, I am much less likely to.
I’m going to make the same assumptions you did when you said “It’s not like Apple couldn’t come up with clever gestures for cut and paste. It’s that they chose not to. And they chose not to because Steve is, well, a little bit of a hypocrite here.” and assume your a moronic asshole since it’s clear your NOT God and would actually know any of this.
Bob, not sure if the Photoshop of one of your kids(?) clinging to the plane windshield was a subtle reference to this story of a man driving 35 miles with his wife clinging to the hood of his minivan:
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1108928
but if so, very amusing. 🙂
As for copying and pasting text on iOS, I think Apple’s solution is probably about as elegant as you can get with a touchscreen interface, but it’s certainly true that the text *selection* code is buggy and somtimes refuses to let you select just the text you want (making you trim it down after the paste), a la Microsoft’s cursed “Smart Cut and Paste”. Also, it continues to throw me that Apple changed the alignment of finger to virtual reticule in iOS 4 as compared to previous versions — I usually have to adjust slightly after the long press to avoid obscuring what I’m trying to select.
> Designate a corner of the screen… to serve
> as the function key, touch it … then swipe the
> text… with one finger or thumb of the other hand.
Requiring a two-handed (or even two-fingered) gesture would be impossible for handicapped people who use a mouth stick.
See the Christopher Reeve Foundation site for a video of a paralyzed person using an iPad.
And for non-handicapped, this method won’t work if there happens to be a clickable item (like a link) appearing in that corner of the screen.
I’m sure Apple engineers could make this a Teflon zone. Anything you would try to put there would just slide off and park itself next to it. Your little active corner would never be obscured. Even if some handicapped couldn’t use it everybody else could.
The error is that you are looking at Post-PC devices through the eyes of the desktop. It’s the same mistake that other tablet manufacturer’s are making. The way we interact with tablets is going to be different from PCs.
For me it’s not the gesture that’s a hassle, but rather the fact that it’s not universal. Can’t copy a status in Facebook, for example. Still, if you’re writing a blog that requires cut and paste, won’t it also require enough typing that a laptop is just a better tool?
The iPad and it’s I’ll may be the ‘good enough’ devices change the way most people think about computers, but they are not a drop-in replacement for regular computers. For some things–I’ll use coding a’s an example–a desk- or laptop with multiple monitors and a real keyboard can’t be beat.
I know about bt keyboards and that dock thing, but large screen areas and the ability to truly run multiple systems side by side would be difficult to do without.
That being said, outside of the work I do for my employers, my iOS devices suffice for all my computing needs, great cut/paste or no.
What is this? The Onion? Too early for April Fools.
Seriously? The feature that makes this a cut and dried case for you is cut and paste ease of use?
The fundamentals of graphical user interfaces were established decades ago, just like where the pedals and the steering wheel go in cars. The “innards” of computer systems have standardised too, so that most things you want to do can be done on Windows, OSX or Linux. From these points of view the iPad is a step into the past as is the idea that these things will replace PCs. iPad is just a glittery bauble to keep the chimpanzee is the street grinning like a fool. We still have a need for serious computing devices and these things don’t even make decent front ends for them.
I’ve been using tablets since 2005 (Motion Computing’s LE series). They are heavier than the iPad and don’t have multi-touch displays, but these are trivial differences. Multi-touch in particular does not let you do anything that you couldn’t do without it. Overall the only things I’ve found these devices are capable of are the usual trivial applications, web browsing, viewing photos, email, etc. Try CAD (even with a pen instead of a chubby finger), Photoshop, software development etc, and although they are powerful enough, you soon go back to using a PC with a big screen and a mouse.
Having said this, I am still using my last tablet. It lives on a stand with a keyboard and a mouse plugged into it looking rather like a compact, slimline PC. So in my case it’s not about post-PC its about post-tablet and post-tablet is a PC!
There are still a few things the software needs to tighten up, but that will happen and it won’t take long. I agree with Bob that a lot has been worked out, it just a matter of timing.
Having said that, all of us old timers are used to the decades old GUI, but the digital kids of tomorrow are leaving that behind at lighting speed and the future of this is in their hands (literally) not those of use who are decades old already. Whats important about this it not really what Bob thinks, its what his kids think that will driver where this is all headed.
After watching the marketing piece on the iPad (not the iPad 2) just the iPad, the video that they played at the presentation, it’s clear where Apple is headed with this. A world thats 100% portable. Then again we already knew that right. Consumer iPad, professional MacBook Pro. It may be that Mac Mini’s have a real future, but iMacs and MacPro’s are on the way out.
Break out box’s will replace the need for peripheral slots and thats it. Want a large display, or standard keyboard, no problem conductive polymer technology will reinvent how that function works anyway.
Sorry Bob, I tried to find a credible critique of cut/paste on the iOS but didn’t. The article you cite, simply cite’s a Slate article and provides no valuable, first hand evidence.
The one area they get right is the NYT app and others do not allow for text copying. This is not a function of iOS, but a choice of the app developer.
The cited citation from your embedded link (from a site called HOT AIR):
——————————
“For work, however, the iPad is not just bad, it represents a net reduction in productivity. One of the great things about the new Web is that you can manipulate text, but the iPad treats you like a child. (Not unlike the way iTunes treats you like a child with your own music.) I can’t copy text out of the New York Times app or the Washington Post app or most other apps for that matter. Doing it from a Web page on Safari takes about the time required to make a cup of tea. I feel like I spend all my time poking at the screen trying to get the little blue box to behave. It’s like I’m on an endless search for a button in the sewing box.
——————————
Really? iTunes treats you like a child? This is impossible. Everything is amazing and all you can do is ACT like a child? iTunes gives me total control over playlists, ripping, burning, etc… and on an old Mini serving as a jukebox handily and speedily flies through over 20k of items.
I usually really enjoy your insights but this one, to me, smells like bait … link bait.
This article was a waste of your time to write. Not one of your assertions makes any sense. I think you’ll look back on this one someday, if you remember it at all, and wonder what you were thinking publishing this ill-formed thought snippet.
Oh. cut out the link baiting and paste in some substance.
I can live with the crappy cut and paste it’s the lack of backspace and delete forward keys that I really miss.
The iPad is first and foremost a multi-media device. Copy, cut, and paste is a different process with music and video editing. IPad Garage Band is a fantastic first attempt at a portable 8 track studio with unlimited built-in virtual instruments. The drum kit with multitouch makes GarageBand a killer app that alone will sell iPads, and I am very excited to see what professional products will follow.
IMovie will evolve to be another killer app.
Multi-touch is in its early development but is the most exciting thing to happen to computers since the 1984 Macintosh. I was really getting bored. Damn, I love Apple.
Text articles are for my reading enjoyment and I share them complete, in context, with credit to the originator. I have never used copy and paste on my iPad. And I find it impossible to use on my iPhone; but I really see no need for it.
For productivity, I cannot work on anything less than a 24 inch monitor. IMacs are NOT going away anytime soon, I hope.
What youre saying is completely true. I know that everybody must say the same thing, but I just think that you put it in a way that everyone can understand. They fit so well with what youre trying to say. Im sure youll reach so many people with what youve got to say.
Hey Bob. How about filtering the SPAM.
Just smart strategy by Jobs and Apple. They have to save some whiz-bang stuff for future updates to the ipad. As long as their competitors are not applying enough pressure on Apple, they will continue to do these incremental updates masquerading as major improvements.
There is probably a five-year plan somewhere they’re prepared to blow up if forced to by some competing device. So far, we’re not seeing that kind of pressure on Apple in the tablet space.
This hardly makes any sense Robert… if Apple was panicking at the idea of cannibalizing other products, they would not have hammered the iPod line like they did when merging that functionality into the iPhone, and now iPad.
If Apple is withholding something, it is not to protect the Mac, which you need anyway (to sync the iPad with), it is to one-up the Android tablets when they catch up with the iPad. Are they? I am not sure, but I would not be too surprised.
My mother-in-law just got her first computer, an iPad with keyboard, as a gift. While her husband has had DOS/Windows machines for two decades, she personally never desired to use one, other than at work, when absolutely necessary.
Now, however, she finally has her own email, and seems to be enjoying it.
Being curious, I watched her use it the other evening. While she can use it freehand, for viewing pictures, the keyboard/dock is really a neccessity for email.
But what REALLY jumped out at me was the hand-waving! There was no MOUSE, so every time she wanted to switch, change or doing something, she was lifting her fingers from the keyboard, either continually pushing the button on the bottom and/or “swishing” up, down or sideways. It drove me nuts just watching her — I can’t imagine using it myself that way!
So, being a nice son-in-law, when I got home, I went googling for a mouse for the iPad.
Apple doesn’t see one. From what I can tell, you can’t even add one. The capability doesn’t exist, unless you want to hack.
BTW, there doesn’t seem to be any easy way to share a Windows printer, either. Unless you want to hack, following 10 pages of instructions.
But the prize goes to my wife — I asked if she would like one, and she said that if there’s no mouse, she wouldn’t be able to play her online games — especially on such a small screen.
My $0.02 worth…
BULLSHIT, if you don’t understand why Copy paste works differently on an iPad (no click and hold, no mouseover etc…) than on a Mac (or PC), you don’t understand anything about computers and should find a new job !
Exactly. Way to be straight with him!
Bob understands how it works the way it does. His point was that it could be much better so as to replace a pc but that would reduce the sale of Macs.
i meant, no mouseovers, different management of the current selection etc.
no menus, ETC !, it’s NOT A CHOICE !
I don’t know what you are all complaining about. Most consumer-based products have always been in perpetual Beta. Just let it go. 🙂
vi?
[…] I, Cringely » Fear of flying — Why the iPad 2 isn’t even better – on the money as usual […]
You write: “But then we come to this very rational critique of the iPad 2 from a blogger named Allahpundit who points out that despite the iPad 2 being thinner and faster and just as cheap as the original iPad with two new cameras to boot, it is still a pain in the ass to cut and paste text with one.”
I’m 35 years old. I’ve had iPhones and iPads since they’ve been available. I have never, ever had problems cutting pasting (since it was released). You sound old and bitchy by basing your entire article, “Why the iPad 2 isn’t even better,” on the fact that you and some douchebag blogger can’t cut and paste easily. Why don’t you learn? Maybe practice a little bit? You’re losing your edge. You are losing your edge.
The key to all things Apple is iTunes, that is recurring revenue.
Where Apple will have some competition is TV. Vizio is the one to
watch for tablets and TV.
Check out the ViaTablet, https://www.engadget.com/2011/01/05/vizio-tablet-hands-on-preview/
I think it’s a matter of expectations. Tablets and handhelds and such are not full-fledged desktops and people want them to be. They are mostly for DRINKING information and entertainment, not CREATING it. There are some ways in which you can be production on these things, like writing emails and such, but in general I don’t care that cut-and-paste is difficult on the iPad because I don’t look at it as my “main cut-and-paste machine.” Once you start using these devices what they are for and stop criticizing them for being bad at things they never intended to do, then they work great. Gee, my car seems ok, but it SUCKS at flying. Why can’t anyone get cars right?
There are 2 very important urls to John Gruber who writes some of the best critiques on the world of Apple that can be found anywhere. I posted the first after Keith Edwards comments but I will post it here as well.
The first url takes one to his article on Macworld 13 May 2010 “This is how Apple rolls” and explains how Apple plans and develops and why it seems Apple doesn’t put the razzle dazzle into its first, second etc version of what it markets. Explains why Apple is where it is and M$ is where it is.
First URL–Macworld Article on how Apple plans and designs differently from all others:
https://www.macworld.com/article/151235/2010/05/apple_rolls.html
The second post is to John Gruber’s Blog where you can go to archives and view his latest to first Blogs on Apple and other interests in the electronic world. Look for the iPad 2 to complete the ideas he presents in the Macworld article.
John Gruber’s Blog:
http://daringfireball.net/2011/03/the_ipad_2
Those interested in Apple might wish to check out his archives.
Apple, like any business, is going to present their products in the best possible light. They frame the conversation in their terms, and most of the media generally accepts it. Those members of the media who reject Apple’s terms tend to fail in one key respect: they do not offer their own terms that acceptably frame strengths and weaknesses. It’s easy to armchair quarterback and come up with a list of supposed failures or weaknesses.
I believe Apple, as a corporation, wants to make the best, most useful products they can. I think they have a specific plan for how they are going to grow the iPad into the computing platform of the future. I don’t think Apple, or any corporation, is clever enough to get from here to there in one step. I don’t think they’re clever enough to figure out how to do the entire thing, but are instead taking a number of very calculated steps combined with the informed desperation of a blind man forced to crawl in the dark.
It won’t be overnight. It won’t be at the third major revision of the product. I think Apple’s game is a lot longer than that.
Another example of the reality distortion field that surrounds Steve Jobs.
iPad2 cutting and pasting is just something I accept. Technology never quite does what you want it too (never a James bond movie). I have two problems with my iPad first syncing with a windows pc and itunes is a hassle and not at all intuitive, and the accelerometer (sensor to gauge the orientation of the ipad screen is not calibrated correctly with the slightest movement the screen will do cartwheels.
They advertised multitasking and it does do some multitasking but not how I am used too it. But it is an abosolutely brilliant device to integrate the web, mobility and information (news, financial stuff and more) in a fairly portable format. I look forward to getting an iPhone from Verizon when my renewal comes up in a few months. I don’t understand why I can’t get one now you would think Verizon would be jumping at the chance to renew my contract
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