The Impact of the iPad | Hideyuki Tokuda (Dean, Graduate School of Media and Governance)

2010.07.02

Apple's iPad was released in Japan on May 28, and it has been generating a lot of buzz. At the "Roundtable on Promoting the Use of Publications in a Digital Network Society" that I attended, the iPad and Kindle were compared to the "black ships" of electronic publishing. In fact, quite a few people around me have started using it. While some say it's just a larger iPhone, it seems to be filling the gap between conventional PCs and smartphones like the iPhone, just as the developers intended. Although it was initially introduced in comparison to Amazon's e-book reader, the Kindle, I see the iPad as establishing a new genre of smart devices. Here, let's look at the pros and cons of the iPad from the perspective of us computer science researchers.

Figure 1: The iPad and the family of smart devices

When I commute by train, I read the Sankei Shimbun on my iPhone. Instead of the style often seen on morning commuter trains—skillfully folding a paper newspaper to read it—I scroll through the articles I want to read on my iPhone. On the other hand, when I read the newspaper using the iPad version of the Sankei Shimbun, the number of scrolls decreases, allowing me to concentrate on the primary task of reading. The reduction in scrolling enhances the sense of immersion. The gap that Mark Weiser once pointed out between artifacts made with old technology, like pens, and those made with silicon technology, like PCs, is clearly narrowing.

When a group views photos taken with a digital camera on a PC, traditional PC displays rarely lie completely flat, making it difficult for everyone to see the photos at the same time. It was also hard to create a situation where everyone could easily pass the device around a table to look at photos. This shared display, with its size, thinness, and weight (though I still find it heavy), is suitable for various applications. Incidentally, a smart device called uTexture, developed in my laboratory, not only runs apps on a single unit like the iPad but also provides a collaborative work environment where multiple units can be connected and used by an individual or a group.

Figure 2: Example of a Smart Multi-Display Application using uTexture

While it's taken for granted that mobile phones are always connected to the telephone network, it's wonderful that a smart device the size of an iPad can be constantly connected to the internet via a 3G network. However, when reading newspaper pages with large images over the 3G network, there can be a bit of a wait. Furthermore, the domestic models are still SIM-locked, which is inconvenient as it prevents users from choosing their preferred carrier.

The initial setup process seems to follow the activation model for iPhone buyers, requiring tedious procedures on a PC, such as registering a credit card. For elderly people who thought they might be able to use it themselves, this is the biggest invisible hurdle. It seems that large retailers and Apple Stores offer support for this process, but it is one area that needs improvement.

We also discussed the possibility of replacing PCs with iPads for SFC students, but it's not feasible as things stand. In particular, the lack of a programming development environment and a file system is a serious limitation. Users who only consume media might not notice, but the fact is that it is inferior to a PC when you want to develop programs or record and edit videos. While the iPhone 4, which has a camera, allows for video editing on the device itself, a PC is still used for the programming development environment.

The media scholar Marshall McLuhan once argued that a change in media also changes people's behavior, and smart devices like the iPad will clearly have a major impact on our daily lives. This suggests the end of the PC era and the dawn of the age of smart, ubiquitous devices.

(Date of publication: 2010/07/02)