Looks like the iPad from Apple may become one of the biggest ‘must haves’ after the iPhone and the iPod. It seems destined to change the time honoured practice of ‘snuggling up in bed with a good book’. Competitor products are going to have a hard job to beat the sexy, smooth functionality and brand allegiance people have for Apple products. Librarians are starting to look a little nervous. The whole concept of libraries is now up for grabs. Will they be replaced by iPad recharging stations? A new generation may go though life not knowing what a bookshelf is. Ufologists will discover ancient texts with odd looking creatures holding tablets that look surprisingly like iPads. Book printers are livid. Small quantity digital printing has eaten away at their profits, and now iPad is destined to take away a big chunk. Captains of the newspaper industry are clamouring to establish subscriptions in the online space. Newsprint is diminishing. Trees are breathing a sigh of relief. Those digital ‘print-a-book-while-u-wait’ kiosks are starting to look a bit silly.
But just how many books can be made available for an iPad? Book publishers will be feverishly adapting all their best sellers for consumption by iPad, fearing competitors may gain a lead. “Our online library’s bigger than yours!” One wonders exactly how the porn industry might make a dollar from all this. People are already unsure quite where the iPod/laptop/netbook/notebook/iPhone ends and the iPad starts. And it doesn’t stand up vertically so you can’t view the screen ‘the old way’ unless you buy one of the optional extra stands. This means you have to put it down flat on a table or cradle it in the crook of your arm. Hey that’s different. Particularly when you try and type on the ‘virtual keyboard’. But Apple has that covered also. There’s an optional plug-in keyboard. I expect very soon there will 2,967 variations on a protective sleeve, custom colour accessories and a deluge of custom apps.
There are a few other considerations. Where will it live? At home or the office? Is it a work tool or a lifestyle accessory? Will it live next to our PC/laptop or be consigned to the bedroom? What happens when Dad spills his breakfast cereal on it? Will your kids find it a suitable diversion to quell their ‘long car journey’ syndrome? Optometrists will be rubbing their hands with glee as the strain of reading hundreds of pages of fine electronic type slowly but steadily dims our vision. What will book mark makers do? What will newsagents do? Millions of ‘paper boys’ around the world will be deprived of pocket money, no longer able to roam the streets in the rain dispensing their newspapers for a pittance.
One prediction, prompted by some thoughts from a designer colleague, is that there will be a new realisation (finally) that the design and presentation of publications - books, magazines and newspapers - needs to be rethought to optimise the online reading experience and release it from the shackles of the printing process. The experience of reading from the printed page is far different from the potential of viewing and reading from a well designed interactive electronic page.
In five years time will early model iPads replace books as doorstops?
Of course there will be many witticisms bandied around....
“He tried every trick in the e-book”
“The judge threw the e-book at him”
“Did Steve Jobs take a gamble with the iPad or is he just an online e-book maker”
(cringe)
The pioneering work of the past ten years transforming complex documents like listed company annual reports into ‘mini-websites’, occupies the winner’s podium when it comes to making complex text, photos, graphs and charts come to life on a PC screen. Will the iPad influence more shareholders to make the shift to online report reading? I think it may just influence a few. Thank you Steve.
Will our centuries old reliance on printed paper books, preceded by the first baked clay tablets used in 3500BC Mesopotamia, result in uninspiring dull white screens with endless lines of black type? I don’t think so. There are too many designers around to let that happen. Does that make them iDesigners or eDesigners?
Tony Heywood is a Fellow of the Design Institute of Australia, founder of Heywood Innovation in Sydney Australia with affiliates in Melbourne, Gold Coast, London, Singapore and Mumbai.
View some of Heywood’s work on www.heywood.com.au
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