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A Series of Clicks

“Every once in a while a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything.” - Steve Jobs, Macworld 2007

Often, new technologies come along and they immediately show us the future. That something new is possible, right now, today, and that we should pursue innovation along that path. But other times – most of the times I’d argue – new products and technologies simply “click” in our brains, telling us that, yes, that looks like the future, but that we should also wait for a proper and concrete realization of that vision.

In the past 18 years, I have been fortunate enough to play around with gadgets and technologies that had a profound impact on my personal and professional life.

It was sometime around 2003 when a friend of mine showed me the first Nokia phone with a camera. The 7650, revolutionary to me at the time, had a poor display compared to today’s standards and it ran Symbian. But it took pictures. Coming from old StarTACs and other Nokia phones, I can’t really express how that lens embedded in a mobile “smartphone” seemed ground-breaking to me. I mean, there you had a phone – the thing you were already using to make phone calls and send short messages – capable of shooting stills and saving them into its onboard memory for future perusal and consumption. Back then I couldn’t afford that phone; I started saving money, and eventually got another Nokia phone, with a camera that, however, was quickly surpassed by the pace of innovation in that area. Click.

Around that time I also used to travel a lot with my parents, usually by car. When we did, I made sure my dad would tune in the car’s FM radio to my favorite station…which would promptly lose its signal inside tunnels. So I convinced my parents that I needed one of those things – a portable CD player. My parents weren’t – they still aren’t – exactly “tech savvy”, and they hadn’t considered upgrading their music library from cassette tapes to the higher-quality CDs. We had a lot of music tapes in our house – remember how you had to switch sides in LPs, or use a pencil to manually rewind the tape? So I got a portable CD player – an Amstrad model – and boy was I late to the party. All my friends from school already had one, making mixes with the latest hits and exchanging ripped albums like there was no tomorrow. I remember getting my own portable CD player was some sort of a revolution for my music listening habits. Not only did I get to enjoy music with higher fidelity that didn’t “lose the signal” while in the car, I could also listen to something different than my parents. I loved that CD player. In fact, when it eventually broke down, instead of getting a new one I decided to take it to my local gadget shop and have it fixed. They fixed it. And I kept collecting CDs from my favorite artists and I made sure that, on every new trip, the Amstrad was right there in my backpack.

Of course, eventually, something new came along and showed me yet another taste of the future. New solutions always create new problems. With the CD player, it was the CDs. All those CDs! I think by the time I was into my second year of portable CD player usage, I had bought around five of those things to carry around compact discs. And sure enough, a new standard had come around, a digital format called MP3 that promised to bring CD-like quality with the convenience of your music being available digitally. On a computer, with files you could manually manage, download, and delete at any time. So I bought a new “MP3 player” – it was an Acer one – one of those with a spinning hard drive you could hear when you were navigating your music library through a terrible display. The MP3 player was an even bigger revolution for my music habits. It allowed me to rip my own music, transfer it on a computer, manage it there, and if I still wasn’t happy, look it up on the Internet to get something else. And I didn’t have to carry around CDs. I filled my MP3 player with gigabytes worth of music and those random bootlegs found on the Internet I still cherish today. Because new technologies often “click” somewhere in our brains and tell us to wait for the complete realization of that product a few years down the road, it was no surprise when that MP3 broke and I decided to get an iPod. Classic white one, bought in 2007. That iPod got me started with iTunes, the Apple ecosystem, and gave me a better interface for the CDs I had ripped, which hopefully in a few months will be available for a digital upgrade through iTunes Match. Those are the same files I converted over a decade ago.

Progress and innovation have a funny way of changing our lives. Sometimes, they do so abruptly, seemingly without following a constant line of changes throughout the years. Other times, it’s just a series of clicks. The music tapes became CDs, which convinced me to get a portable player, which turned into an MP3 that, because of the pace of innovation in the digital era, led me to buying an iPod years later. That iPod allowed me to create the iTunes account I still use today for my iPhone. The MP3 files have become a monthly subscription to Rdio. You can count the clicks.

It’s not just about music and gadgets. In reminiscing products and ideas that have been truly transformative in the way I think about the broad subject of “technology”, I can’t avoid mentioning videogames. I have been a gamer since my earliest memories, and even if I’m playing less today, I still try to be in the loop of what’s happening in the community. My parents bought me the original Game Boy and SNES when I was around 6, yet the more I think about “click” moments in regards to gaming, the more I keep coming back to the Game Boy Advance. The GBA, and in particular its SP revision, showed me that SNES-quality portable gaming by Nintendo was possible, with decent battery life and original games, too, not just ports. Years later, I got a call from my friend Marco, who owns a videogame store here in Viterbo, to come try “something cool” he just got from Japan. It was a Saturday afternoon in late November. Today, every time I go visit Marco, usually over the weekend, I still remember that Saturday afternoon of 2004, when I first tried the original Nintendo DS, controlling Mario in a 3D environment with a stylus on a touch screen. Back then, I couldn’t believe what I was looking at - “you really can control Mario with your touch”, I think I said. Touch screens were nothing new; yet that implementation paved the way – or at least my perspective – for touch-based interactions in the future, leading all the way up to today’s Angry Birds. Click.

The sense of discovery in The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. Liberty City Stories, flexing the original PSP’ hardware muscles for the first time. The PSP homebrew community – back in high school, I spent hours browsing PSPUpdates.com (now available here), learning the latest tricks to run perfect emulators of – guess what – my old SNES and GBA games. The day my friends and I figured we could send photos during class to each other over Bluetooth, rather than MMS, with our Nokia phones, also in high school. Or that morning when Marco from the videogame store called us – we were at school – because he had the Wii in stock on Day One. We left school, got the Wii, and spent all day wondering if, someday, all game interactions would be based on motion controls. Click, and click.

In the recent years, several innovations occurred in other areas: the App Store in 2008; the solid-state drive, forever changing the way I think of “responsiveness” on a laptop; Twitter, the tool I use every day to get in touch with people from around the world. Just two years ago, in 2010, I gazed upon the iPhone 4’s Retina display for the first time, thinking that such image quality, such crispness, such detail couldn’t be possible. But they were possible. Nokia 7650 be damned.

In connecting the dots and “counting the clicks”, I remembered ideas and products that I was able to try out when they were first released, and then I look at my new iPad, which is the culmination of these technologies that have so amazingly evolved over the past 10 years. For better or worse, in one way or another, all those innovations that were so incredible when I first tried them are now coexisting in a single device that’s even more incredible and enjoyable because of the very sum of its parts.

Technological innovations are objective, factual, but how we remember them – the way we connect them to today’s products – is deeply personal. So while my series of clicks and dots may be best exemplified by the iPad in 2012, waiting for “the next big thing” to happen, perhaps yours is still developing, with the iPad being just another “click”. Either way, there’s only to be excited about the future.

Click.

The Apple Community, Part II

A few hours ago, I came back from the Apple Store at Roma Est driving all the way back home after a 19-hour wait for the new iPad. Tired – exhausted, my head exploding for the absurd coffee intake I forced my body into, but happy, smiling because I knew that what I had imagined all along didn’t turn to be true – it was better.

Until yesterday, I had never waited in line for an Apple product before. I always preferred driving to the store myself after a few days, or simply asking one of my US friends to ship me an iPhone or iPad without waiting for the Italian launch. A lot of people told me “I was missing out” – that for an Apple fan, getting in line to wait for a new product isn’t just about waiting, which is boring per se, it’s about knowing the people that share your same passion, not giving a damn about spending 20 hours of their lives to get “a device”. Today I can say buying an iPad was just the tip of the iceberg for what has been an incredible experience – something that I look forward to for the next big Apple launch.

I know I am late to the party. I’m fairly certain you all know what a “Day One” looks and feels like. Long lines, security staff, Apple employees, the cheering and the clapping before and during the launch. All that felt new to me. Unexpected and familiar at the same time, as if I was getting to know for the first time a family that, however, I had always known somehow.

It’s no exaggeration to call the people I got to meet in real life last night an extended family. I wrote about the Apple Community before, but actually meeting the people I mention so often is different. I shook hands and made bad jokes 5 minutes after arriving at the line. I talked to folks I only “knew” through Twitter and Facebook, and got a chance to really know them from a much more rewarding perspective. I talked to the founder of another blog and spent two hours discussing the future, where we see things going for our sites, and the state of Italian Apple reporting in general. I introduced myself to Apple PR, finally giving a face and a smile to the people that keep in the loop about news and announcements. I shared meals, coffee – and lots of it – and exchanged phone numbers and Twitter handles. Because whilst I may have known some of those folks already, clicking on usernames and friend request buttons after knowing them felt more real. Necessary. Natural. An obvious consequence.

It was surreal. I mean, we’re talking about a bunch of people – from any kind of social extraction – waiting in line and sitting on the ground to buy a gadget. We are talking about employees of a big corporation, all dressed up in blue and clapping and shaking your hands because you are giving them money. Because you are the customer. And it was surreal, because it felt like you were there as a friend. As my girlfriend put it - “they make paying more pleasant, as if you are glad you are giving them money”. I don’t know if I’m “glad” I spent 700 Euros today. But I sure am happy to have paid for this product in that way.

On the other hand, it felt real. Surprisingly so. You are meeting up with these people you only know from profile pictures and wall posts, and you realize these are real people that have their history, their flaws, their bad jokes about food and sports, and all those traits that turn flaws into the thing we love the most about human beings: that we’re different. That we all have problems and may argue about politics and Android. But that, in the end, if 20 hours spent in line to get an iPad can make us laugh, we should celebrate those 20 hours. Appreciate them. Treasure them.

The more cynical of you might dismiss my words as the usual excitement of a nerd who is happy about paying for Apple products because it is this company’s big, evil plan to make us think we have a choice. You are free to think whatever you want. Maybe it is Apple’s grand scheme to get rich by providing a friendly customer experience. But we do have a choice, and we have chosen to make the most out of it. Those people, those stories – heck, those 13 espressos were real. There is no corporate strategy that will take that away from us. There is no exclusive or breaking news that can beat the fact that some of my readers can also be my friends.

In our review of the new iPad, Cody wrote “you won’t believe it until you see it”. I agree. The device is fantastic. But I ’ll add this: the greatest thing about Apple isn’t the product line itself. It’s the community. It’s the users and the developers and the journalists. It is you, reading this on an Apple device. It’s the Apple community using Apple products. And you won’t believe it until you experience it.

Daisey’s Lies Take Us Two Steps Backwards

Taking a noble cause one step forward, and then two steps back. That’s what I think Mike Daisey has done with his spinning of the truth and lying in creating his monologue ‘The Agony and Ecstasy of Steve Jobs’. I have no doubt that a significant part of Daisey’s intentions were noble in creating the show, particularly when he was starting — but all that was wasted, when, in the pursuit of a perfectly dramatic story, he started to make things up. His play was meant to be a serious, considered, sobering look at the ugly, hidden side of how our Apple devices are made. But because he made details, people and stories out of thin air – particularly the ones that plucked the hardest on our hearts – he has ultimately trivialised the real human suffering that does exist in the factories of a developing country. And the worst atrocity was Daisey hiding these stories and instead calling them as facts — because now that the truth has been revealed, the play (and the original This American Life podcast, where he adapted the show into an hour long episode) has been discredited severely.

Most of all, I feel anger and frustration towards Daisey. After initially deciding to tackle a serious humanitarian issue, he surrendered to greed, using dramatic licence to sensationalise the story. His greed has likely set action on the humanitarian issue backwards, not forwards as I think he did set out to do.

With this retraction so heavily publicised, many may be under the impression that there are no under-age workers, that there aren’t people poisoned by chemicals, or that there aren’t terrible living conditions in dorms at Foxconn. Daisey created stories and people that personified these facts, to advance his story in a dramatic way. But whilst those individual stories might not be true, those circumstances, those injuries, that mistreatment of workers is unfortunately still a fundamental truth that exists. Now that the story is all about Daisey’s lies, the ugly truth that Daisey had initially tried to shine a light on has been relegated to insignificance again.

Max Fisher over at The Atlantic epitomises my fears surrounding this pretty much perfectly in this paragraph (though his whole article is also worth a read):

How receptive will they be the next time a reporter writes about how Chinese laborers are forced to stand for so long they struggle to walk, or that some workers weren’t even given gloves to handle poisonous chemicals? Will they believe the reports that say Chinese manufacturers could fix a number of these problems simply by rotating shifts or allowing workers to organize to ask for gloves, neither of which would cost them (or American consumers) anything? Will they bother to listen to the human rights NGOs who say that American consumers can help fix the problem simply by choosing to buy products that are manufactured under better conditions? Or will they think back to Mike Daisey, and wonder who else might be lying to them?

The Truth of the Situation

So what is the truth of the situation? This is an important question given the retraction and media circus surrounding Daisey’s lies. The answer is one we should keep reminding ourselves of, because the truth of the matter is that, whilst Apple is ahead of its competitors in working conditions, safety and anti-discrimination, they are still well behind what is considered acceptable in developed countries. Here are some statistics, lifted directly off Apples own Supplier Responsibility Progress Report from earlier this year:

  • 24 facilities conducted pregnancy tests, and 56 facilities did not have policies and procedures that prohibit discriminatory practices based on pregnancy.
  • 93 facilities had records that indicated more than 50 percent of their workers exceeded weekly working hour limits of 60 in at least 1 week out of the 12 sample period.
  • 67 facilities used deductions from wages as a disciplinary measure.
  • A total of 6 active and 13 historical cases of underage labor were discovered at 5 facilities.
  • 78 facilities had at least one instance where a workstation or a machine was missing the appropriate safety device such as a gear guard, pulley guard, or interlock.
  • 99 facilities had noncompliance in some aspect of their fire prevention, preparedness, and response, such as unmarked fire extinguishers and insufficient fire drills.

I also highly recommend listening to Act 3 of This American Life’s Retraction episode, which further delves into what the truth of the situation really is.

Let’s be Realistic

China is still a developing nation and as is mentioned in Act 3 of This American Life, it would be unrealistic to expect equal standards of a Foxconn factory and one in the US. But we are still a long way off from that threshold of what is an unrealistic expectation of Foxconn and other Apple suppliers - and of Apple itself. They may be doing more than most companies, and we should congratulate them for that, but also stress it is not yet enough. There are still unacceptable breaches of supplier responsibility, as Apple has set out themselves in their reports. Apple, like it does in its products, should always strive upwards to improve its record on the issue.

We should also be putting pressure on other consumer brands to step up to the level of transparency that Apple offers with its supplier responsibility reports and encourage them to do better than Apple at improving standards. Finally, we should be educating each other on the issues, whether it be pointing out what is fact and what is fiction from Daisey’s monologue or discouraging pointless arguments for Apple to move its entire manufacturing base to the US (also see Act 3 of This American Life for a great explanation).

The revelation of Daisey’s lies should not be a cause for relief or celebration. It’s a sad revelation that a man had to further dramatise the sufferings of other human beings in order to get the rest of us to listen and feel sympathy. It’s time we pay attention to the facts ourselves, and make sure we don’t just ignore them.

Comparing My Favorite iOS Text Editors

Earlier this year, I promised myself that I would get more work done using the iPad. The plan was an ambitious one: after three years of writing, researching, and online communication done exclusively using my MacBook (and, perhaps to an extent, my iPhone) switching to the iPad as my main work machine did indeed seem like a daunting task at first. Yet the more I thought about it, the more I realized the long-term benefits of giving the iPad a fair chance as a full-time writing tool would outnumber the perks of using a device I am accustomed to. With a mature ecosystem of apps that sees great new software coming out every week and a Retina display on the horizon, starting to use the iPad as my main computer was an investment.

The experiment has been a success so far. I use my iPad a lot more, I enjoy it, and, more importantly, the device is helping me work smarter because it lets me focus more on what I do for a living: writing.

If anything, the only negative note is that the iPad has given too much choice when it comes to picking a single writing tool. See, on the Mac, when I need a text editor, I usually fire up Text Edit (rigorously set in plain text mode) and forget about it. But there is no Text Edit for iPad. And all those text editors on the App Store look so tempting.

What follows is an overview of the four text editors (for writing, not coding) that I have preferred using in the past three months. Like TJ Luoma, I have bought many of them. Almost too many, to the point where I needed to stop fiddling already, and get the writing done. Because while I’m one for supporting developers and buying apps and paying for the tools I use, there is a line between “trying software” and “using software to work better”, and I had crossed that line with my curiosity for text editors. So I took all of them, tested them, and deleted the ones I didn’t like. I kept the ones with Markdown formatting and Dropbox sync. I didn’t include recent additions to the ecosystem like iA Writer (for iPhone) and Byword, as I need to test them more accurately. Eventually, I picked four apps.

Some smart folks have already written about the note-taking apps/text editors they like and use. Mine doesn’t want to be a comprehensive comparison that takes into account all the possible options from the App Store. It will likely lack the app you like, and yes, it’s also very likely that it’s not here for a reason. In this article, I am just comparing four apps that, taken singularly, allow me to write for the site; these four apps can stand on their own. However, they have their differences, which is why I am, ultimately, going to choose one and stick with it. The apps are universal, and while I am primarily looking at their iPad versions, almost all of the features I mention are also available on the iPhone.

I have no doubt new iOS text editors will come out, activating my curiosity trigger again. Until then, these are the four text editors I was most impressed with. Read more

Getting Your iPad App Ready for the new iPad

Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by Ken Yarmosh, the creator of the popular iOS apps Agenda Calendar and Buzz Contacts. Read more about him at his blog and follow him on Twitter.

With the announcement of “the new iPad,” developers are quickly readying their apps for the latest and greatest iOS device from Apple. Preparing an iOS app for a more powerful, Retina display device is a familiar task for those developers who got apps ready for the iPhone 4. Whether you do or don’t have that experience, it’s still helpful to have a checklist of sorts for preparing your app for the new iPad.

Here’s that list.

Download the Latest Version of Xcode

Before you get too excited, open up the Mac App Store to download Xcode 4.3.1. This will provide you with the “iPad (Retina)” simulator and the ability to build against the iOS 5.1 SDK. Even though an iOS 5.0.x iPad app will run on the new iPad (or any iPad running iOS 5.1), remember that the new iPad will ship with iOS 5.1. So, building against the proper SDK is always a smart choice.

Update Designs Assets for Retina display

Getting your UI assets updated for the new iPad’s Retina display should be relatively straightforward. Hopefully, you’ve built your application in a way that will mostly make it a design-related task of scaling up your images and applying the “@2x” designation to them. This can be slightly more involved than what was required for the iPhone 4 Retina display update because of the importance of both portrait and landscape on the iPad. Don’t forget to update your “Launch Images” for both orientations, as well as your “App Icons.” If you want more specifics on this topic, see the Apple-related documentation or read Marc Edwards’ post on designing for Retina display on the Bjango site.

Test in iPad (Retina) iOS Simulator

If you want your iPad app looking shiny the day the new iPad arrives, you’ll be stuck trying to use the ginormous iPad (Retina) simulator since the new iPad isn’t available now. Even on Apple’s 27-inch Thunderbolt or Apple Cinema Display, you’ll be struggling to view your app in portrait and barely be able to see it in landscape. Use the window scale and adjust it to 75% or 50% accordingly.

Check Wi-Fi Download Limit

Paul Haddad of Tapbots reported Tweetbot for iPad going from 8.8MB to 24.6MB post-Retina display upsizing. Since many iPad apps are content-intensive, definitely keep tabs on the total size of your app. Even with the new 50MB Wi-Fi download limit, Retina display assets will add up quickly.

Consider New Features

Should you be readying your app for the new iPad on launch day, you’re probably not going to add many new features to your app. But the new iPad does come with more than just Retina display, including the much faster A5X processor, a new camera, dictation (which is available to third-party apps), LTE, and Bluetooth 4.0. Think about how these new features can impact your app and consider how your app might be made better by specifically using them.

Submit to Apple

Apple is now asking developers to submit apps updated for iOS 5.1, including apps optimized for the new iPad. So, once you’ve gone through the steps above, submit to Apple and hurry up and wait. Make sure you mention in your “What’s New” release notes, as well as your version-specific App Store description that your app is now iOS 5.1 tested and Retina display ready. You’re not done yet though!

On-Device Testing

When you get that new iPad in your hands, the first thing you should do is open up your app. Do some pixel nitpicking and ensure everything is working as expected. Faster devices may cause certain parts of the user interface to load faster than others, can handle content pulled in from APIs to process differently, and more generally, may require some small tweaking.

iPad hero

iPad hero

Re-Submit to Apple

If you found issues during the on-device testing, prepare another update and once again, submit your iPad app to Apple. If any crashing or critical bugs were identified during on-device testing, consider (very carefully) requesting an expedited review.

Congratulations, you’re ready for the new iPad. Here’s to 25 billion more app downloads and many five star App Store reviews.

MacStories Reading List: New iPad Special Edition

What a week for Apple news. Last Wednesday, after much speculation and last-minute predictions, Apple officially took the wraps off its new iPad, simply called, well, the new iPad. Debates on the name aside, the new device sounds like a great achievement for the company: in the same design of the iPad with only minimum weight and thickness added (to allow for a battery with more capacity), the new iPad adds a Retina display, 4G LTE networking, Bluetooth 4.0, a quad-core CPU, A5X processor – all while keeping the same price. Make sure to read all the details in our new iPad overview and keynote roundup.

It has been a crazy week filled with news, hands-on impressions, and editorials, and it deserved a proper Special Edition of our Reading List. Grab your favorite read later app or browser of choice, and follow us along after the break as we collect the best links and articles about the new iPad. Read more

On Reviewing Apps

Over the past three years, some people have told me they don’t like the way I write software reviews. That I should just tell them whether ”they should buy the damn thing or not”. While I understand their point, with MacStories’ third anniversary quickly approaching I thought it would be appropriate to explain why I don’t do that.

An app is never ”just an app”. There are people behind the bits and buttons we use and touch every day. I have written about this before. When I am reviewing an app, I have to be honest to my reader and provide a careful and insightful analysis of the various features while taking into considerations other factors such as price, usability, and appearance. But at the same time, my writer’s instinct tells me that there’s more than just a checklist of features to mention. I want to tell *that* story.

There are a lot of sites that decide to focus their software reviews on enumerating features. That’s fine. Sometimes I believe, too, that simply telling our readers ”what’s new” in a specific piece of software is the only way we can cover a subject – otherwise we’d have to provide a disservice to our readers, by not covering it. This is especially true with software updates. And flashlight apps like Flashbot.

At MacStories, we carefully pick the things we want to talk about. We have been guilty of stupid rumors and speculation in the past, and we have learned a precious and invaluable lesson from that behavior: trust is important. Guess what, it’s about people again. You can only put so much of your soul on the Internet, and it can easily get lost somewhere along the line of rumors and linkbait. You’ll spread yourself too thin. You won’t tell a story. Some people excel at news reporting – which is an art by itself. Others, unfortunately, do it because they have to do it.

When I review an app, I want to find the story that needs to be told. I don’t want to be different just for the sake of originality – I genuinely believe that we’re witnessing a revolution of our digital era, and I don’t want to live it writing lists and inflammatory blog posts to drive our page views.

I want to tell this revolution. Or at least find a sweet spot where I, and my team, can contribute to providing a perspective that can make people think. Not just click.

Sometimes you’ll find an app that I love, while you think it’s terrible. That is fine, too. There’s no such thing as objectivity when you are reviewing something and expressing your opinions. There’s only honesty. Honesty and personality conflate in a number of ways, and when I write a review, my goal is to make sure the result is a balanced mix of facts, taste, and opinion. I try to tell the *why* and the *how* that are the sinew of my appreciation for fine software. Hopefully disagreements and constructive criticism will lead to a richer, variegate archive of software reviews in the future.

I have wondered if it was easier when our audience was in the order of hundreds, not millions. I ended up concluding that good traffic, besides allowing us to run this site, makes it all more exciting. It means we get to pick what we want to talk about, write it the way we want, and enjoy an intelligent discussion with more people because of it. And it’s getting better every day.

Perhaps we should just tell you whether you have to buy the damn thing or not. But that would take all the fun out of it.

That’s why we write what we write: because innovation never ceases to amaze us – and that’s a story worth telling.

The Essence of a Name

Following yesterday’s announcement of the new iPad, a debate has arisen as to whether Apple should have called the new iPad something along the lines of “iPad 3” or “iPad HD” so to give the device a unique name easily understandable by consumers. I think Macworld has the two smartest (and most balanced) takes on the subjects.

Dan Moren thinks going with “iPad” is a good move:

Constantly reinventing a nomenclature is unsustainable. Is every iPad between now and 2022 going to have a different number, letter, or some combination appended? Is Apple going to eventually reach the iPad 13GS+ Extreme? I’d argue that’s exactly what the company doesn’t want.

Lex Friedman disagrees:

I drive a Honda Accord. It’s a 2006 model. If Apple wants to keep the same names for its products each year like car companies do, adding a year to the product name seems like a fine approach. I always know which wipers to get for my 2006 Accord. I think the average consumer ought to know which case fits their iPad, too; making them instead rely on distinctions like third-generation—that aren’t in the official product names, or printed on the devices themselves—just makes things harder.

The first few seconds after Tim Cook was photographed on stage with a big “The new iPad” image behind him, I, too, was slightly confused and disappointed. Why would Apple want to go back to just iPad, after years of iPhone 4, iPad 2, and iPhone 4S? But then I, like Lex, thought about car companies. I am not driving a Polo 13. My mom doesn’t drive a Meriva 2S. Yet, in case of necessity, both my mom and I – the polar opposites on a scale from consumer to nerd – would know how to look up the company’s proper model name – the “version” – of the cars we drive. Mine’s a 2003 Polo. Not every car company does this, but it’s very common (and easy to understand).

I hear the concerns of people like Lex. Not having a unique name for each generation of device does make things harder when it comes to support, referencing a product in an article, or looking up information on Google. It means you have to do more work. It means you have to type a little more to find out – either in manuals or support docs or the Apple Store itself – what generation of device you are talking about. It’s about Apple not giving us a unique way to call the iPad – well, actually they do, it’s iPad, but that makes some people uncomfortable. It’s unsettling at first, because we were used to a different convention.

But here’s the thing: people are not stupid. Sure, some people are geekier than others, but as car companies prove, eventually people find a way to properly retrieve information about the products they use. Eventually, as in more work. Which could mean using Google, reading a manual, asking a friend, or driving to the nearest Apple Store. Apple has the best customer support around, and no tech company beats Apple’s online Support resources. No one ever died from looking up a model name. 1

But why? The trade-off is an increase in simplicity and elegance. Otherwise, we’d end up like Samsung and Square-Enix, naming our products with monickers like “Epic” or “XIV” (good luck telling a 10 year-old kid that’s 14, and not “xiv”).

More importantly, Apple’s new name puts the focus on the essence of the product, not the way it follows its predecessor year after year. It’s iPad, my friend Matthew was told by Apple. And I see the thinking behind such choice: by combining a more elegant name with new features, Apple will, yes, end up having to explain better its model numbers, but they will gain in user-friendliness and overall message. Because, again, our faith in humanity might falter every once in a while, but people know how to refer to a product. If anything, my dad would have a hard time differentiating between 3GS, 4S and 3G. But he sure knows how to say “that new iPad”.

It’s about context. People will understand, and will find a way to explain what they are talking about. And if they want to be precise, hey, Apple has a way for that too.

Peter Cohen writes:

I’d also like to point out that when the first iPad was introduced, its name was the subject of huge controversy in the blogosphere and among the tech punditry, many of whom considered the name silly or likened it to a feminine hygiene product.

I also like to see it this way: by going back to “iPad”, Apple reminds us that is the iPad that should have always been. The realization of a vision. The most advanced display ever seen in a mobile device, the fastest networking available, the most apps to choose from. It’s the new iPad, but it’s also the iPad that should have been here in the first place. Now we have the technology that makes it possible.

I thought the keynote’s theme would have been “the biggest leap since the original iPad”. Tim Cook said it better: “We have redefined, once again, the category that Apple created”.

  1. To those arguing that specific names and version numbers are necessary for support, especially in software: I agree, and indeed Apple has a complete name for the iPad on its site and online Store. I could also argue that it’s harder to describe software (bits) compared to a product (a physical object).↩︎

iPad 3: Where We Predict the Future

At 10 AM tomorrow, Apple will begin the presentation of one of the most (if not the most) anticipated products in the company’s recent history: the iPad 3. Rumored to feature a Retina Display, improved graphics, and a better camera, the next iPad will have to build on the amazing success of the iPad 2 (where by “amazing” we mean “just look at those numbers”) whilst giving owners of the original iPad a reason to upgrade after two years. And with the possible implications behind the rumored new features, it looks like those who stood in line back in April 2010 will have more than one good reason to consider the Next Big Thing.

As a team, we typically refrain from reporting every single rumor that shows up ahead of an Apple product release, leaving our crystal ball and teardrop-shaped hats under the editorial desk. Having considered the variables behind a Retina iPad 3 in the past, however, we couldn’t resist this time – much like we did back at WWDC ‘11, we had to get together (in a cozy Campfire) and share our March 7th Apple Event predictions. Our own Gabe Glick already explained why he thinks a big announcement will be about software – specifically, he neatly illustrated why Aperture may be coming to iOS and the iPad 3. Below, you can follow the rest of the MacStories team as we reflect on what we think has to happen, what could happen, and what we generally would like to see in a Retina-enabled tablet future. Lots of coffee may or may not have been involved in the editing process of said predictions – pardon the excitement, but we think the next iPad is going to be a fantastic upgrade.

After the break, you’ll find our predictions. We will check back on these later this week, and make sure to tune in on MacStories’ homepage tomorrow for our complete coverage. Read more