Are the barbarians really at the gates?

Fraser Spiers' thought-provoking blog entry

http://speirs.org/blog/2010/1/29/future-shock.html

suggests that the iPad will be the 'computer for the masses' and that the negativity expressed by many technical commentators simply reflects their dismay at seeing their rice-bowls shattered.

Compelling though his arguments seem at first sight, there are some real flaws in the idea that somehow, by creating a closed infrastructure, Apple have magically created the first computer that didn't need a resident geek hovering in the background to fix it every time Mom did something silly.

Apart from the rather obvious fact that lots of non-technical folks are managing perfectly well with ordinary old-fashioned open computer systems - my 95-year-old mother, for example, who emails me regularly from her laptop and has a broadband connection - there are some use-cases that Mr. Spiers simply doesn't address, and when you consider these some of the magic evaporates.

Suppose I want, for example, to transfer some photos from my non-Apple camera to the iPad so I can show my friend on the iPad's screen. The camera doesn't have WiFi and the iPad doesn't have a card reader. Sure, I can purchase a docking station - which, presumably, will have a card slot - or at least some USB ports into which I can plug a card reader - but I'm at my friend's place and I don't have it with me. Yes, I know you can buy WiFi-enabled SD cards, but they are hardly ubiquitous, and they are not cheap.

Or what if I wanted to project those photos onto the wall. My friend has one of those cool pico-projectors but - again - how am I going to get video across from the iPad to the projector?. (now think sales meeting.... hmmm. Not so cool now when I stride in with iPad tucked under my arm)

But the biggest issue that I think Mr. Spiers has overlooked is printing. In the real world, we still need reports, invoices, presentation handouts etc etc. Now, even if, just for a moment, we imagine that everyone starts installing WiFi printer gateways, there's still the small matter of printer drivers. How do these get installed?. If all printers spoke the same language, that'd be fine, we could make the iPad talk PostScript or something - but they don't. And I still have to grapple with margins and stuff. How does the iPad make all that painless?.

Of course, I can transfer (I hope) the document to another computer and print from that. But this isn't quite the seductive vision of seamless computing being expressed in this blog.

Another scenario - I'm typing my thesis for a PhD. Now, seriously, no touch-screen keyboard is every going to come close to the typing speed a skilled touch-typist can manage on a real keyboard, not to mention the damage you'll cause to your fingers constantly banging them against an unyielding surface. So you'll need an external, battery-powered, bluetooth keyboard. And remember to carry it around. And remember to check that the batteries have a charge. And pair it with the iPad, remembering the four-digit code. Since a significant number of people have trouble remembering their ATM PIN code, is this really something the average person is going to do?.

Oh, and prop the iPad up so you can read it. Now you have something that looks awfully like a notebook computer, just more awkward and more fragile, too, because in carrying the iPad around, there's no protection for the screen as there would be from the lid of a notebook computer.

Incidentally the Visigoths do like to play games. The iPad is simply not going to blow you away with World of Warcraft at 50fps, is it?. Even if you imagine cloud-based gaming, with the rendering being done elsewhere, internet latency makes the whole proposition very questionable. Nor can I pipe the output from my Xbox to the iPad on my lap.

Let's just step back for a minute and be realistic. The iPad is slick, no doubt about it. But I own an Android phone which comes very close in user experience to the iPhone. It's no leap of the imagination to imagine a new generation of Android-powered devices which are either tablets or - much more sensible - a hybrid device with an attached keyboard AND a touch screen. You can fold the keyboard entirely flat underneath the device and use it like a tablet, or you can use it like a notebook. Of course, being based on the Linux kernel, Android should be able to support an extensible print subsystem and leverage the huge amount of work done by Open Source developers to support most modern devices. This will require some changes to the architecture - Google has hacked Linux around rather a lot to produce the Android kernel, but nothing too difficult.

And, for that matter, let's consider Microsoft. Suppose the Apple 'no multitasking' restriction does prove popular. It turns out that after spending the last 20 years bringing multitasking to the masses, they simply don't want it. Well, out of the box, why not disable it and let the technically-astute turn it on if they want. You can bet that Microsoft will produce an easy-to-use version of Windows if the market demands it. Hopefully Apple have taught them how to get it right and will spare us any repeats of the Bob fiasco.

Apple has no monopoly on ease of use. Several years ago, the Asus EEE running a modified version of Xandros showed that you can build a very consumer-friendly product. Everything was launched from a locked-down desktop. You could browse the internet, create documents, play a limited selection of games and generally do things ordinary people do with computers. Even a BIOS upgrade was just a button click; the machine would reboot and apply it automatically.

I know we've all become bewitched with that seductive vision of Tom Cruise performing a ballet with the aether, dragging order from chaos from gossamer webs of light suspended in the air. But even he had to file his expense report at the end of the day. No, when the iPad collides with the mundane reality of daily life, and we stop pretending we're on the bridge of the Enterprise, it won't be warp factor 9, it'll be impulse power.