Christopher Herot's Weblog

What the iPad Really Means

Now that Apple has brought us the Second Coming of the tablet computer (actually, about the sixth or seventh), what does it really mean for consumers, technologists, and the media industry?

First of all, what the iPad does well:

• $30/month 3G data plan with no contract
• 10 hour battery (if you believe Mr. Steve)
• Bigger screen than the Kindle or iPhone
• Nice form factor for reading at the breakfast table or on the couch
• Access to books via the familiar iTunes store

What it does not so well:

• Costs at least $630 if you want 3G wireless
• Runs iPhone apps, not everything you can run on the Mac (not a notebook replacement)
• No Flash (!)
• No camera
• No memory slot or USB port so you can connect your own camera
• No multitasking
• Can't make phone calls (although maybe Skype will work on it)
• LED display - can't read it at the beach like the Kindle's E Ink
• Books much more expensive than at Amazon
• No deals yet with magazine publishers
• No deals yet with move studios and TV networks

So it's not a replacement for your phone and it's not a replacement for your laptop, but it's bigger than the former and costs as much as the latter. Some of the iPad's limitations are probably temporary. It probably lacks a camera because the proprietary 1 GHz processor can't handle simultaneous compression and decompression, but Moore's law will fix that in some future version, the display will get bright enough to read outdoors when OLEDs get cheaper, and I'm sure Apple will strike deals with magazine publishers, although they have reason to be concerned about letting Apple get between them and their subscribers.

But despite all these limitations, there are a few things about the iPod that indicate some significant change. The iPad is another nail in the coffin of the dominance of the big telecom companies. Just as with the iPhone, it was Apple and not AT&T that decided what this device could and could not do. That may be why Verizon still does not work with Apple, but its only a matter of time before they have to change their ways as well. The $30/month unlimited data plan is only a moneymaker for AT&T if people don't download a lot of video (Goldman Sachs estimates that it costs AT&T $1 for 100 MB) so it will be interesting to see if AT&T removes the restrictions on video from their Terms of Service to allow types of use Steve Jobs described on stage or if they just look the other way while they continue to add capacity to their network.

The other significant development, pioneered by Amazon with the Kindle, is getting people to pay for content. Amazon demonstrated that by bundling wireless connectivity with a new device, people would pay for content such as newpapers, that was otherwise free on the web.  Amazon also sells a lot of ebooks, although at $9.99 they are taking a loss on each one to build market share. Apple does not want to play that game. The publishers are happy to see higher price points, but consumers may not be so enthusiastic.  If Apple can bring magazines to the iPad, along the lines of Bonnier's prototype, that could breathe new life into the magazine industry, but curiously none of that has happened yet.

And of course there is always the possibility that the breathless of enthusiasm of Apple fans will make the iPad a success anyway. At a minimum if will give Apple time to further refine the device and add to its capabilities. Who knows, maybe Apple will become like Microsoft, where it takes three generations before they get the product right. At least with the iPhone is only took Apple two.

E-Mail Saves Time, but Video Says More

Business travel may be down, but it seems the hardcore travelers are flying as much as ever. On my recent United flight from San Francisco to Boston it looked like 25% of the plane was First Class, Global Services and 100K. Who are all these people and where are they going? The New York Times today quotes one 200,000 mile/year traveler on how face-to-face communication is as important as ever:

That’s an important message that does not necessarily come naturally to a lot of younger people today who have grown up with so much of their communications being by texting and e-mail. I tell our younger lawyers, if you think you are going to have a difficult interaction with a colleague or a client, if you can do it face to face that’s better, because you can read the body language and other social signals.

In texting and e-mails or even videoconferencing, you can’t always gauge the reaction and sometimes things can have a tendency to be misunderstood, or they can ratchet up to a level of seriousness that you didn’t anticipate,” he added. “In person, you see that somebody reacting in a way that you didn’t expect. Then you can stop and figure out what’s going on, and adapt.

I know all the technology, including videoconferencing, has not really cut down on my own travel. If anything, it has enabled me to work with people from so many different and distant places that I can't possibly visit them all, but I do need to visit them sometimes. Videoconferencing fills an important gap between email or the phone on one hand and an in-person meeting on the other. There is no substitute for sharing a meal or having a beer with a customer or colleague, but if you can't be there in person, modern video technology is remarkably effective.

[I posted different version of this at the VSee blog.]

Charged Up

Somehow it seems every tie I go somewhere there is one more device vying for space in my bag, but that's not the worst of it. Getting everything all charged up for the trip required more chargers than fit in the average plug strip.

Fortunately, more devices these days use USB power. Now if they could only agree on the connectors!

Patient Photographs Improve Radiologists Performance

[Thanks to e-Patient Dave for bringing this to my attention on Twitter.]

As someone with a long involvement in videoconferencing I've always felt that seeing someone improved communication, but the empirical support for that theory can often come from the most unexpected places. At the 2008 Radiological Society of North America conference, Dr. Yehonatan Turner of the Shaare Zedek Medical Center presented a paper, The Effects of Including a Patient's Photograph to the Radiographic Examination, which described an experiment where patients who got a CT scan where photographed and the photos attached to their file, such that the photo appeared automatically when the radiologist opened the file. Since radiologists often read the image at a time and place remote from the scan, this may be the only contact with the patient.

The results were that when the photograph was included, although the time spent reviewing the file did not change, the radiologists felt greater empathy with the patient, were more meticulous, and reported more incidental findings. Of 30 cases presented with and without the photographs, the same radiologists omitted 80% of the incidental findings.

As Dr. Turner said, "The addition of a photograph enables a more personal approach to the interpretation, especially when the radiologist is not in physical contact with the patient. It is important for radiologists to be aware that radiographs represent a patient, not merely just another case."

The Strength of the Apple Brand

Central to the enthusiasm for Apple's foray into tablet computing is that Apple will succeed because it will do it better. David Carr weighed in yesterday that it will be the second coming of the iPhone - the so-called Jesus Tablet. Carr graciously Tweeted that Mark Potts had an even more expansive vision that the Apple product could transform the media industry. Without detracting from any of these predictions, it's worth considering how much of the enthusiasm and possible success stems from the power of the Apple brand.

The strength of its brand allowed Apple to do two things its competitors could not: defy the conventional wisdom about what consumers would purchase, and upend the conventional power structure in the target market.

Before the iPod, there were numerous portable digital music players, but their limited storage capacity made them little more than a curiosity. Miniature hard disks were becoming available and could greatly increase that capacity, but the conventional wisdom was that consumers would not pay the extra cost. That may have been true for an unknown vendor, but Apple had already conditioned its customers to pay a premium for its perceived superior design and the cache of the Apple brand.

Even if other vendors had taken the risk of selling a high capacity player, the only way consumers could obtain music was through the cumbersome process of ripping a CD or the risky one of downloading a file sharing program. Apple wasn't the first company to recognize this problem - When Shawn Fanning started Napster he tried to strike a deal with the record labels but they blew him off. When Steve Jobs tried the same thing a few years later the labels knew he would sign up all their competitors anyway so they caved.

Similarly, before the iPhone there were numerous smart phones, but the conventional wisdom in the handset industry was that (outside of Japan) no one would buy a phone with a touch screen. Apple proved that to be wrong. While their execution was arguably superior, the virtual keyboard required a learning period before users became proficient. Apples reputation gave users the incentive to stick with the product until they mastered the keyboard, thus gaining the benefits of the larger screen.

The other piece of conventional wisdom in the phone world was that the carriers dictated what features were in the handsets, as least in the US market. Companies as large as Motorola have disabled features such as Bluetooth at the request of Verizon. Nokia refused to play that game and has largely been shut out of the US market as a result. Apple couldn't overpower Verizon, but it did strike a deal with AT&T that gave Apple control over the user experience, to the lasting benefit of both companies.

None of the above is meant to detract from the importance of Apple's innovation, but there are innovative people in lots of companies. A unique strength of Apple is a brand that allows to take risks that other companies can not, and to persuade its partners to do things that even they might not see are in their long term interests.