J-P Teti

The iPad is 99% more open than any other computer

As you may or may not know, this is my 8th grade year. My school goes to 8th grade, so this is my gaduation year. It would be worth mentioning that I don’t have any nerdy friends at school. I’m the only nerd in the whole 8th grade. I have an iPad. I’m the only person in my class who has one (at the moment). Today, I had this conversation with a friend of mine named Sophie:

Sophie: So, J-P, guess what?

Me: What?

Sophie: I’m getting an iPad!

J-P: The new one?

Sophie: Yep!

J-P: That’s awesome. How are you going to get it when they’re all sold out though?

Sophie: What?

So I explained about that whole deal, which led to explaining a little about Garrett Murray’s Target Trick™ and the 11:00 AM Target thing.

Sophie: Oh, and you know the little cover thing that turns it on and off?

J-P: The smart cover?

Sophie: Yeah, that! I’m getting it too!

J-P: Awesome. Why are you getting it?

Sophie: Well, my grandpa was going to get me a laptop for my graduation gift, but we couldn’t find the one I wanted and my mom said “maybe you should look into that iPad thing” and it’s the same price and it does more. (emphasis mine)

Bam.

It does more.

The teenage market is where I like to turn for a prediction of where the general market will be in a few years. Because while teens aren’t nerdy, they tend to be early adopters because it’s cool— taking out my iPad (which I often bring to school in my backpack) is actually considered showing off by a lot of people. Everyone in my class has an Android phone or an iPhone. One of my friends, again, not a tech nerd, had the Droid within 2 months of it being released and had the Verizon iPhone the day after it came out.

And this market thinks the iPad does more.

This is the key to the iPad that nobody has figured out. The iPad does everything that a regular computer user does. Facebook. YouTube. Email. Web browsing. It does all this out of the box.

And it has all the apps.

The iPad is actually opening up technology to more people. None of this crap about it being closed is accurate. By giving people freedom to explore the app store without having to worry about anything (except their wallets), Apple has possibly made the best move they could make — by locking down the iPad’s installation sources. That’s the one that’s the most helpful for the general state of technology. Apple is encouraging people to explore and play around. The iPad only does less than a regular computer to us geeks. To everyone else, it does more. This is what Motorola and Google and Samsung and BlackBerry and everyone else, with the sole exception of Apple, do not get about “open” computing. It’s powerful, but for ordinary people, it’s too powerful.

The iPad is more open to more people, and this is why I’m super excited for OS X Lion. Apple gets computing for the rest of us. They’re just getting started. The Mac will take off even more than it already has when Lion is released. Mark my words.

UPDATE: See my followup post here.