WIll you buy the iPad?

Will you buy an iPad? At around $700 plus tax for a reasonably well specified device it isn’t exactly cheap. Factor in extras like a carrying case and camera connectors, you’re looking at a good chunk of change. The question is whether you see it as a luxury toy or a viable business tool. While in San Francisco last week I succumbed to the temptation and bought an iPad. In a post on ZDNet I pointed out some of the pros and cons of this device. My take:

…this is a version one device and a darned expensive one at that once taxes and the obligatory protective case are taken into consideration. Add in 3G and you’re looking at a serious amount of money for what can best be described as a great looking piece of hardware that’s crippled by less than whole applications. At least from a business perspective.

A few days on and the jury is still out with opinions varying. My biggest beef is with Numbers, Apple’s take on the spreadsheet, as ported to the iPad. I said Numbers:

…is gorgeous to look at but will fail the accountant’s taste test. I found it was possible to create a confusing error formula. Ahem. That will require fixing. While Numbers has masses of functions (see illustration), there is no ability to create Pivot Tables. Those are the accountant’s stand by for reporting and the like. It’s boring but essential stuff. Without Pivot Tables, the iPad won’t get a sniff in the hands of this powerful and influential group.

One correspondent wrote back on personal email saying:

Numbers’09 actually has all the functionalities required for what most accountants call pivot tables. Just enable Table Categories and that’s it, you can collapse and re-order them just as you would in Excel. This is not a full substitute to a real pivot table if you want to carry out multi-dimensional matrix calculations, but will fulfill most of the accounting requirements. I must add that I do not know many people that are able to perform matrix calculations in Excel, though it’s been there since Excel 4 as far as I remember.

The main stopper for me is rather the way formulas are entered, which is plain weird when coming from Excel. It’s still a pain to see that you can call a cell only once in a formula (don’t know if that’s been fixed in the iPad version), and takes a little time to get used to. But the main – huge – advantage over Excel is that spreadsheets can be presented, styles are easily applied, and seamlessly integrated into eg. Pages and Keynote.

I cannot see a way to define table categories in the iPad version. There may be a workaround. To repeat: while the office productivity tools have been ported to the iPad form factor, they’ve been partially crippled along the way. The question comes – would you use an iPad for serious number crunching anyway? That’s something of a personal decision though many colleagues don’t see the iPad as the sort of device that can replace the laptop/desktop. Would you be prepared to learn a new way to handle spreadsheets? I don’t know. History tells us that change is tough and resistance to the ‘new’ is a well known problem in technology adoption. But if the advantages of the kind my correspondent described are good enough for you then maybe so. It’s beyond having something that’s ‘cool.’ It’s about demonstrating that you’re in touch with things that make life easier, better and more fulfilling.

Another correspondent in comments to the original post said:

Clients love it and it’s an instant ice breaker for our salespeople. Productivity is still a bit hindered, but I think Apple and the community of developers will narrow the gaps shortly.

If a device wows clients then I’m in. In the video at the top of this post I show some elements of the Numbers application. Despite its limitations and quirkiness, Numbers on iPad is stunning. There may be a lot of truth in what my correspondent says about development. To paraphrase what I said in my original piece, iPod touch/iPhone applications will need redeveloping for this new device because many look silly and don’t take advantage of the extra available screen real estate. See this video as well. Even so, Apple should be congratulated.

It is perhaps an indication of where we’re going that Apple is saying the iPad sold more than 1 million units in its first 28 days. My colleague Larry Dignan comments:

Apple’s 1 million iPads 28 days after launch is impressive. Most companies struggle to hit the 1 million unit mark with a new product. Apple gets to that target as fast as any company. The company said that iPad users have downloaded 12 million apps from the App Store and 1.5 million e-books from the iBookstore. Apple CEO Steve Jobs said “demand continues to exceed supply” and that developers have created 5,000 iPad-specific apps.

That 5,000 number is interesting. The iPhone has well over 100,000 apps in the Apps Store. That took roughly two and a half years years. Given the relative success of the iPad, refactoring of existing apps will happen quickly. That refactoring process may happen more quickly than I imagine. According to the San Francisco Chronicle:

• As Apple points out in its press release, it only took 28 days to sell 1 million iPads. It took 74 days – more than twice as many — to sell 1 million iPhones in 2007. (At a slightly lower price.)

• It took Apple almost two years to sell 1 million iPods.

• Apple is already likely the tablet PC market leader. As The Guardian noted last month (via TUAW), IDC analyst David Daoud projected that sales of non-Apple tablet PCs would slip to 1.25 million units in 2010. If Apple hasn’t passed 1.25 million iPads sold yet, it will soon.

Regardless of how you look at Apple, these are stunning results and despite the fact others like HP and Dell are racing to get their own tablet devices out, Apple has already won this market. Professionals should be considering this trend and asking themselves fundamental questions about next generation computing. Unlike many things we’ve seen in the past, this is not something that is 3,4 or 5 years out. Combine what the iPad offers with cloud computing and you can see that this is now and into the immediate future. Maybe one year to 18 months out. If you want a feel for how cloud apps might look on the iPad then check out this screenshot I took of the FreeAgent front page.

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