I can't imagine people keep repeating about 'giant ipod touch', 'just another tablet' and not accepting that it is a 'new' kind of device. It is not designed to be a laptop replacement or a phone replacement. It is something new and functions complementary to a laptop or desktop.

Anyways, here is my blog entry, some might find amusing.
http://srujan.org/wordpress/2010/04/03/the-dinner-plate/

When iPad was unveiled on Jan 27th I was following the live blogging of the event and a thought struck me. I felt that though it is a new device, it fulfills a very old need. The need that we had as early as the time when desktop computers were invented. I felt like we were living in a weird world where up until now nobody understood the basic need of such a device and nobody invented it. The world was as weird as the world where dinner plate was not invented.

Imagine this world without dinnerware. The people in this world do cook and eat food just like us and they do have very elaborate cuisine with lot of variety. They have well equipped kitchens and dining rooms, but till a few years back had no dinnerware. So what do they use for eating ? They simply use the cookware. Pots and pans are used for cooking and also for eating the food. It is not that these people are of any primitive kind. They have state of the art multipurpose cookware that can help make a wide variety of foods. “Why do we need a different utensil to eat food ?”, some of them say, as they feel the pots and pans are perfect for eating.

This world is not without problems. There are many people who are not cook-savvy and still need to eat food. They don’t know how to properly handle the cookware and get burnt while touching the hot surfaces. They don’t know the proper way of using spoons and forks in the teflon coated pans and sometimes accidentally scratch them. But who cares about the less cook-savvy people anyways. They can ruin their cookware as they wish or maybe use wooden spoons. Besides, the cookware is so cheap they can replace it every few months.

It is not true that these guys had no items specially made for eating food rather than making food. They did have cups and glasses, but there was no substitute for a nice frying pan if you want to eat your main course. It was about this time when a small plate, better known as saucer was invented. The saucer was a huge success. People liked the idea that it was flat and attractive and easy to clean. The less cook-savvy didn’t have to worry about spoiling the coating and there was no need of a proper way of using the forks. They could even eat the main course in it if they wish. They just had to eat small portions at a time.

Some cookware makers did understand the need of a cheap pan that was more suited for eating purpose. They made a small plastic pan called net-pan. The net-pan was not really suitable for eating as it had the handle, but the makers thought that just by reducing the size and making it cheap, a fry-pan could be used for eating and maybe for some light cooking. But then some weird guy thought that the net-pans are just a piece of junk and he came up with an idea of a Dinner Plate. He said the dinner plate fits between a saucer and a pan. Immediately, some started thinking it is a failed product. They said : “It is neither a saucer, nor a pan. What is the use of such an expensive item when you could not make an omelet in it ?”, while others thought “It is just a large saucer”. Many food and dining critiques are still contemplating the real use of this new object.

If you haven’t noticed, we have been living in such a weird world. Just replace the pots and pans with desktops and laptops and the saucer and dinner plate with smart-phone and iPad. We did have sufficient variety of computers to produce data and content, but had very few options to consume them, and among them was missing a device for large scale consumption of data.

Tomorrow, many people will get their first iPads (I am getting one at the end of this month). But it is quite possible that in a few months, the questions “Do we really need an iPad ?” might sound as absurd as “Do we really need a dinner plate ?”

Note :
I had to use the word iPad instead of some generic term as there is no such term invented yet. The tablets that we know today are not really consumption devices and the term slate is not accepted yet. Maybe in a few months, as the iPad clones start appearing, they will coin a new term. I bet it will be ‘Smart-Pads’.

I am a proud owner of a brand new laptop, and its a PC !

iTunes is free software and its development could be considered partly funded by ipods & iphones.
It is important to keep this in mind when deciding on whether it is a good / bad move by Apple to stop Palm Pre's synchronization.

iTunes is a very good piece of software, and I think most agree on that (if not, they don't have to worry about synchronization anyway). It is also freely available on both Windows and Mac, so it is not like it is tied to a platform. (I agree they should have it for linux).
So where does apple get money to develop and maintain this nice software ? I would say there are 2 possible sources.
1. iTunes store : Apple could be supporting the software from the money they get from songs sold on iTunes store.
2. iPod/iPhone sales : Apple could be supporting the software from ipod/iphone sales, since it is supposed to sync with them. The iPods would be useless without iTunes.

I don't think one can come up with a clear definition here, but it would be safe to say that Apple develops and maintains iTunes as a software meant to buy music from its iTunes store, manage the music on a computer and sync the music to its own devices.

I think it is also safe to say that the 'synchronizing' part of iTunes is funded by the iPod or iPhone sales. If you have this perspective in mind, it seems to me that Palm Pre was acting as a free loader. Trying to use the sync functionality of a software that it did not contribute anything to. It seems perfectly okay for Apple to plug this loop hole.

Now, lets think about what would Apple have lost by keeping the loop hole open.
Does it cost any extra money, resources or time for Apple if some freebies use its sync functionality ? I think it does, in long run and in an indirect way.

Any type of software, be it free or paid, always has to deal with backward compatibility, which has some development cost involved. The cost is also related to number of things that you support to be backward compatible. if Apple continues to allow Palm Pre (or other ipod-clones) to sync, it is indirectly committing to these devices. In a long run, in future, there will be lot more ipod clones that depend on iTunes for their synchronization and every new version of iTunes would have to either take care that it doesn't break the synchronization with these foreign devices, or incur the wrath of a much larger user-base if it stops supporting them later.
By plugging the loop hole today, Apple has made a wise decision. Incur the wrath of a smaller user base today (whom apple doesn't have to answer anyways) than to incur the wrath of a larger user base which may include many more smart-phones and ipod-clones that may try to follow Palm's example.

Finally, an analogy that would show the absurdity of all this : Lets say a Hotel 'Apple Suites' builds a beautiful lounge at an airport and opens it to the public. It also installs a monorail that can transfer its guests from airport to the hotel. Since there is no other establishment near Apple Suites, it doesn't bother to verify that all monorail riders are indeed Apple Suites' guests. Hotel 'Royal Palms', builds a new Hotel near Apple Suites and advertises that their guests could in fact use the Apple Suites airport lounge and Apple Suites' monorail to get to it as they have tested it and nobody bothered to verify their reservations. Apple Suites finds out about the monorail misuse and decides to stop it by doing a better verification. Royal Palms guests start to complain that Apple Suites free lounge is now restricting them to get to their Hotel !!! Some would say that they in fact booked in Royal Palms so that they can use Apple Suites monorail. Although this may look absurd, it is possible that if Apple Suites allows the misuse to go on, more hotels would spring nearby relying on the monorail for their transport. If Apple suites decides to stop the practice later, a court may rule that Apple Suites has stopped a legitimate mode of transport that people have been using, and so should open the monorail to public.

What most developers of poorly designed software forget is that the features are just part of your application's user experience. The larger portion of the user-experience is the aesthetics and usability of an application. aesthetics and usability help in two crucial areas : 1. The first impression : It is the first impression of an applications that would make or break a deal. Very few users would read the technical specs/feature set of an applications. Most will decide on whether to use an application based on its first impression. In my opinion, aesthetics is the major reason among windows to mac switchers. Many say they use mac because 'it just works'. However, they would be able to decide on whether it works only after they use the mac for a while (I mean not just the 5-10 mins in apple store). Some might get a chance to use the mac at their workplace or use a friend's mac. But I believe most of them really decide on switching based on aesthetics alone. [This might be a very controversial statement, but somewhere deep inside in our brain we are wired to make our decisions based on aesthetics (or beauty) if we have to make a quick decision, probably because the other factors like tech specs and usability would take more time] 2. Loyalty : This is another area where aesthetics and usability play an important role. I person might be using your software for its features (or because there is no other alternative) but he/she would switch to another software in heartbeat if the other software has almost the same feature set but a better looking UI. On the other hand a person using a well designed software would hesitate to switch to a feature rich application if its UI is crappy. Here is my personal experience. I had been a devout user of open source software including the Linux OS for quite a few years. Last year I decided to buy a desktop since my old machines couldn't be upgraded any better. I decided to go for mac instead of windows. Now when I need any particular software, I still try to find an open-source alternative, but then I also look for an equivalent software from apple or any other mac developer. Usually the apple/mac software has almost all the features that I need , is priced at $20-$40, and has a much more beautiful UI. After about a month of testing both, the open-source software and trial version of apple/mac software, I normally end up buying the apple/mac version.