Push to change the game
This is somewhat conjecture as I do not yet have an iPad in my hands, but those who are not convinced the iPad is a game-changer are missing a very important concept. One that's right at our fingertips. And that is the overwhelming benefit of direct interaction without the abstractions of the user interface we have used for the past 20 years.
Consider this example as illustration. Everyday millions of people perform this particular action of scrolling content in an application window. To scroll down a page we use the mouse cursor to click and grab the scroll position slider and pull it downward. We move the mouse on the flat horizontal plane of a desk surface and the onscreen cursor moves proportionally on the vertical screen surface. As we move the mouse toward ourselves, the slider moves downward and the application content moves inversely upward. A simple action that millions of perform countless times without thinking about it. Yet this action of scrolling down a page is layered with abstractions and complications.
- We move the mouse in a perpendicular plane to the screen.
- We grab a slider control on the right edge of the window - a UI element that's around 1% the size of the viewable content it controls.
- That slider is of variable size, as a proportional indicator of the off-screen percentage of the window content.
- The content scrolls in the opposite direction of the slider motion - we pull it down to move the content up.
- The content moves at variable speed. This is a massive usability disconnect. The distance the slider moves on the screen correlates to the percentage of the length of the content. If you pull the slider half way down the screen you will scroll one page through a two-page document, or 50 pages through a 100 page document.
- The cursor movement is typically speed-sensitive with an acceleration effect. The cursor will move further when you move the mouse X distance quickly than if you move it the exact same distance slowly.
Here's where the iPad in one simple motion changes the game entirely. With your fingertip, you push the content itself the exact distance you want it to move in the exact direction you want it to move. This is finally, after two decades of the "desktop" metaphor being the dominant UI, the exact way we interact with our physical desktop. Perhaps after scrolling around on an iPad this way you will realize the unnatural abstractions the computer industry has put us through for two decades. Moving your hand in a perpendicular plane, the opposite direction, at an unrelated speed, and with variable acceleration is the old game. And the game has now changed completely. The iPad changes everything.
