Of course I’m going to write a post about the iPad – isn’t it obligatory if you’re a blogger?

First up, I need to say that I don’t really get the way that people feel affronted when a product falls short of their expectations. Crap products are made all the time, and in a supply and demand environment, we’re all free not to buy them. If the iPad turns out to be a pile of crap, we don’t have to buy it, Apple will be left with loads of them unsold and will have to go back, do some better market research and make something we want.

That said, I do take issue with the way things are marketed – marketing is a very powerful force, and not generally held as a conversation. So when someone makes statements about something that are patently untrue, and does it with the weight of a multi-million dollar marketing budget behind them, I get a little antsy.

So, the iPad – what don’t I like about it?

In a nutshell, I don’t like what it says about the relationship between content producers and content consumers on the web.

What I mean is this: if you have a laptop, with a keyboard, a mic and a webcam, you have the same tools at your disposal to respond to online content that the person posting it has. Sure, there are degrees of quality of camera and editing equipment, but I can post a response via text, audio, video or photo in exactly the same way as the content producer. If someone writes something I like, I can endorse it, if someone writes something I disagree with, I can express that. Built into the hardware I’m using is an equality of opportunity that says ‘go on, do it! join in!’ – there’s the implicit tug to break out of the 1:9:90 ratio of content producers to content sharers to content consumers and become part of those putting good things on the internet.

And, I think that that potential for collaboration – for ideas to be developed, built on, for blog posts to become joint works between author and commenters - is the single most awesome thing about the internet. Certainly my own online content would be about 1/10th as useful without the people who take advantage of that technological parity and add their great ideas to my thoughts.

The iPad breaks that. By marketing it as a replacement for a Netbook, Apple are saying “you don’t need a computer optimised for content creation – you’ve got a camera somewhere else, use that, if you must. If you need to comment on something, we’ve put a crappy touch-screen keyboard on here so you can slowly type ‘hehe, LOLZ’ onto a youtube video, or hit the ‘like’ button on Facebook. But srsly, you can consume without thinking about responding, remixing, mashing-up, creating your own thoughts, ideas, media in response to it – just watch what the big boys and girls do and consume.”

Everything about it says ‘consume don’t create’:

• The keyboard is an optional extra
• There’s no camera
• All the software has to come through the app store
• there’s no USB socket for peripherals
• >no jack socket for an external mic (though there is one built in – whoop-di-doo!)
• no removable media (though there’s an optional ‘camera connection kit’ – more proprietary BS to stop realtime video happening…).

Everything about it says “walled garden”: do it our way, use our platform, our software.

The heirarchy is there not just between content producers and consumers, it’s there in the only access point being iTunes and the app store.

Apple are free to make whatever crap they like, to fill it with DRM bullshit, to lock down their software and content delivery mechanisms, to leave off keyboards, and instead make massive phones that don’t even work as phones. But please, don’t put your marketing weight behind a campaign that says this has anything to do with replacing a netbook without acknowleding that is breaks the single best thing about the internet.

• It’s an iPod touch for people with clumsy fingers or bad eyesight
• a digital photoframe that shows websites (though not Flash-driven ones, apparently)
• it takes everything that’s bad about the mobile web and makes it less mobile.
• Instead of streamlining the laptop computing experience, it clumsifies the mobile experience.
• You’re going to need some effing big pockets to make this thing truly portable in a way that beats a netbook or laptop.

So, if that all works for you, please, buy one – I’m not against people who want that feature set having one, I don’t think Apple are the bad guys for making it. I’m not an iPad hater, any more than I dislike any other fairly rubbish poorly thought-out incomplete piece of tech (like V1-3 of the iPhone, iPod, iMac… there’s a pattern here…). I can’t see any use for it for me that isn’t already met by my Nokia N97 and iPod Touch combination, or a proper laptop.

The basic laptop design, let’s not forget, is brilliant – the built in keyboard works as a lap-stand and screen cover, as well as somewhere to house CD drives and sockets. If you want a smaller one, you can get one with a breakout connector to those sockets and add-ons. Need to put it away? no problem, close the lid and your screen is protected! hurrah! what’s not to love about that? If Apple add touchscreen tech to their laptops, and update OSX for touch, the way we were hoping they would for the iPad, I’d be all over it. even a lappy with a detachable keyboard for trips where those extra few ounces of weight are critical. That’d be cool…

For now, I’ll not be buying one, and will happily tell anyone who asks why. Via some typing, on a keyboard, the old fashioned way

So, the iPad is here – massive Dom Joly iPhone? half a laptop? eReader? The Daily Prophet for Muggles…?

I read a couple of people on Twitter making claims that it was going to ‘kill books’. In response I tweeted this quote from Douglas Adams, which I got via Neil Gaiman:

“Nothing is as good at being a book as a book is.”

And commented that eBooks ≠ MP3s for written words.

So what’s the difference? Why are book-sellers in a different position to those who were in the business of selling music-in-bits-of-plastic that are now crapping themselves that their livelihood is vanishing?

Firstly, digitally downloadable music is the most malleable, useful format ever for music, and we lose nothing in the quality of experience by going that route. Sure, the quality of files sold on iTunes is lower than CD, but don’t forget that CDs are just containers for digital music – they’re overly large computer discs – and that the audio on them is of a quality deemed acceptable to all but the most audiophile of listeners. With digital downloads, there’s nothing to stop us upping the quality to the point where the changes are undetectable – 24bit, 96k files are probably about as good as you need to go before the changes are imperceptible. We can do that, and once the headphones are on, or the speakers are playing the music, the experience is the same as any other format for listening to recorded stereo (or in the case of DVD-A, 5.1) music. Nothing is lost, portability and positively variable quality is gained. If you want the experience of popping something flat and physical in a slot while listening, you can make a piece of toast at the same time.

eBooks are a whole different proposition – the act of reading requires us to continually look at the thing we’re reading from. That’s what reading is. Otherwise, it’s memorising, and the act of memorising requires us to read – or listen to – the words before we learn them.

So books and eBooks aren’t just a delivery mechanism – they are the stereo system as well as the record. They are carried around as part of the experience.

This isn’t to say that eBooks ‘aren’t as good as books’, just that they AREN’T books. They are a wholly different way to consume the written word, with all kinds of fun multimedia potential too, but also with all kinds of issues surrounding readability, shareability, discovery, portability, flexibility, the ability to scribble notes in the margins and the format for gifting.

Comparing once again with music – if I want to give someone a CD, it’s quite possible for me to record a digital file onto any kind of transferable media I like and pass it on without losing anything. The same can be done with an eBook, but it’s much tougher to transfer from eBook to book – the cost of printing a document of book length at home is not comparitive with the cost of dubbing a CD and printing a nice picture on it.

Readability is a huge issue – the Kindle gets round it by using ‘E ink’ or ‘virtual ink’, rendering it much easier on the eyes, but making the screen much less multi-purpose. As far as I know, no-one yet has done a hybrid E-ink/normal screen. So you have the variable use of an iPad-style screen with its eye-strain issues for longer documents, or the Kindle which is a one-trick pony, all be it a fairly brilliant one trick pony.

The Kindle is utilitarian – it does its one function very well, without too many concessions to pointless stylization. The iPad may well be used by a lot of people as an eReader, but the experience won’t be the same as reading a book, it won’t be any more portable than an individual book, won’t fit in your back pocket and even if it did, would break if you sat on it.

This isn’t an anti eBook rant – I love the idea of downloadable, sharable books, I love the idea of subscribable news, of blogs and newspapers and novels living side by side in harmony, like Stevie Wonder and Paul McCartney, but it’s worth considering the fundamental differences and why, as I said at the top, eBooks ≠ to MP3s for the written word.

….if you don’t believe you, go and download my eBook… for free!