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The unfortunate aspect of the iPad is that it has never been and may never be able to reach its potential.

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Editor’s note: Unconsciously, the 10th anniversary of the birth of the iPad. At this milestone, some people have commented on this revolutionary tablet. Well-known fruit powder John Gruber is disappointed with the status quo of the iPad, and some even think that this product is a failure. But well-known tech blogger Ben Thompson has a different opinion. He believes that the iPad is unfortunate. The iPad’s misfortune is not that it failed, but that it has never been, and may never be able to realize the potential that can be expected ten years ago. The original article was published on strategyy.com and the title is: The Tragic iPad

From The Verge:

Ten years ago today, Jobs took to the stage to launch the iPad to the world. He admits that this is the third type of device, between smartphones and laptops. A few days after the annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES) closed in Las Vegas, Jobs launched the iPad.

Apple has an answer for this netbook: a 9.7-inch tablet that allows you to hold the Internet in your hands … Apple also hopes to create a task that performs better than a laptop or smartphone Better third-class equipment. iPad hopes to do better in web browsing, emailing, photos, videos, music, games, and e-books. Jobs said: “If you want to do a third type of device, it must perform better than a laptop or smartphone in this type of task, otherwise there is no reason to do it.”

Stratechery is not my first (or second) blog. Back in 2010, I had a Tumblr blog, and I imported some of these posts to Stratechery, including this article I wrote when I published it on the iPad:

iPWhat ad does is to give Apple a product that excels in every dimension of the mobile experience, that is, content creation, content consumption, and mobility.

Apple’s mobile device products

This is so important because the vast majority of users are primarily content consumers. These people buy netbooks as their main computer, or to avoid using the computer as much as possible. They just want to go to Facebook, check emails, browse YouTube, and upload photos at most. Apple’s value proposition to these customers is: iPad provides an excellent content consumption experience and has enough creative features to meet your needs. This is why iWork is so prominent in the keynote speech-this is the guarantee that iPad can be used as your only computer (I will introduce iWork in more space later).

If I want to evaluate myself, this article is pretty good, but the most interesting thing is what went wrong.

Disappointing iPad

John Gruber is disappointed with the status of the iPad:

But ten years later, I don’t think the iPad has reached its full potential. When the Mac was born 10 years ago, it had redefined many industries. In 1984, few graphic designers or illustrators would work with computers. But by 1994, almost all graphic designers and illustrators were working with computers. The Mac is a revolution. The iPhone is a revolution. iPad has achieved remarkable success. Thousands of iPads have become one of the darlings of everyone’s daily life, but so far, the iPad has not achieved revolutionary achievements …

In what direction is the iPad lost? software. iPad OS’s “multitasking” mode is much more powerful than the iPhone, yes, but somehow Apple has put it in trouble. Compared with Mac, its consistency and coherence are much worse, and its ability is also If many. iPad multitasking: more complex and less powerful. What a combination.

I totally agree with Gruber’s criticism. In my opinion, on the iPadMultitasking is definitely a mess, it ruins the entire interface. I don’t like to use iPad very much right now. My iPad is now used for watching videos and making illustrations for Stratechery. Its merit is that it is difficult to find.

What’s fascinating, and, in my opinion, unfortunate (both literally and connotatively), is how the iPad has come this far. When iPad was released, Steve Jobs lying on the sofa was used to advertise-it is not difficult to think of the main promotional angle of “content consumption”! However, you can still see more potential from it. I wrote at the end of that article:

What’s particularly fascinating is its long-term vision, and back to my point at the beginning of the article. Although the notebook computer has almost reached its full potential, its consumer experience can never exceed its current level, but the creative experience on the iPad will only gradually become more and more. In fact, I believe that the iPad will be remembered as the pioneer of the default way of computer interaction in the future like the Macintosh.

Go back and look at that keynote, especially the iWork demo that started in 57 minutes. iPad not only lets you create documents. It also lets you create documents in ways that ordinary computers simply can’t. Users who are accustomed to the keyboard and mouse will quickly adapt, the operation will become more natural, more intuitive, and more importantly, users who are accustomed to multi-touch will never understand why they use the mouse. I truly believe that my two-year-old daughter (who has learned how to use an iPhone herself) will never look at the mouse.

I solemnly declare that my daughter is now 12 years old, but she has not used a mouse yet, but this is because she has a laptop and uses a touchpad. I obviously missed this. However, a year later, when Steve Jobs released the iPad 2 in his second keynote, the future I envisioned seemed to be on the right path. The highlight of the conference was GarageBand (digital music creation software from Apple).

The surprised expression of Jobs is more telling than his words:

This thing impressed me. Playing your own instrument or using this smart instrument, anyone can now make music with this thing weighing only 1.3 pounds. It’s incredible … this is not a toy. This is something you can use to work.

GarageBand is the kind of app that can only be done on the iPad, which is only as good as iWork. Of course, the app name is the same as the one on the Mac, but the magic isOther than that, the two have little in common.

Then Jobs died, and this particular vision of the iPad seemed to disappear with him. It felt like I had never wavered.

The missing ecosystem of iPad

In hindsight, the last part of introducing GarageBand seems to be an ominous future:

GarageBand release price for iPad

The idea of ​​associating the iPad with Jobs is tempting-I do think that the iPad is the product that misses Jobs the most-but in fact, the source of long-term sustainable innovation on the iPad should come from third-party developers. Look at the examples of Mac graphic designers and illustrators cited by Gruber: Although MacPaint shows what can be done, this revolution was created by Aldus (PageMaker), Quark (QuarkXPress), and Adobe (Illustrator, Photoshop, Acrobat) Software to lead. When the Mac entered its 10th year, Apple was a company with a market value of $ 2 billion, and Adobe’s market value was $ 1 billion.

It goes without saying that even in the situation where the total reachable market is already much larger, no iPad-based company has a market value of $ 1 billion. This is still calculated based on the US dollar price in 2020 and calculated in 1994. There are even less, one of the important reasons is the price point of $ 4.99. Apple has set a standard that even highly sophisticated and innovative software can only earn $ 5 on the iPad (and upgrades are still free).

This is still one of the biggest mistakes Apple has made. When Apple first released the iPad Pro in 2015, I wrote in the article “From Product to Platform”:

Speaking of iPad, Apple’s product development capabilities are not enough. Cook described the iPad as “a simple multi-touch glass that can instantly turn into anything you want.” When you open the application, the glass will deform. Your iPad was just a music studio, then it became a canvas, then a spreadsheet, and then a game. However, most of these applications are developed by third-party developersThis means that, in a broad sense, third-party developers are more important to the success of the iPad than Apple itself: Apple provides the glass, and developers provide the experience.

Then this means that Cook said that Apple can best improve the iPad by making a new product. It is wrong to conclude that if Apple wants to improve the iPad to the greatest extent, it should make the iPad a better one. Good developer platform. To be specific, if you want to be an excellent platform for developers, you need more than just a complete SDK or an app store: the most important thing is to ensure that those developers have a sustainable business model available, thus proving the complexity of development app-An app that turns the iPad from a piece of glass into something indispensable.

But this is not the case at all on iOS. In particular, pay attention to the apps that are successful on the iPhone: these apps are either ad-supported (including usage-dominated social networks) or specific types of games that use in-app purchases to remove consumables (editor’s note: Equipment, props) are sold to a relatively small number of digital whales (Editor’s Note: players with strong financial strength). Neither type of app performs significantly better on the iPad than the iPhone. Because the former is less portable, it tends to actually be worse.

However, a few applications on the iPad perform better: all the illustrations in my blog are drawn with Paper. This is a well-conceived digital whiteboard. Unfortunately, it did not make any money. . Most of its developer FiftyThree’s revenue comes from the sales of Pen, a physical pen (now slightly inferior to Apple’s new pen in terms of name and function). Apple’s apps such as Garageband and iMovie are also very good, but there is no burden to make money.

But things have improved since then, mainly by increasing the subscription price of the app. However, from a customer’s point of view, this is a bit unsatisfactory compared to the previous “pay-for-purchase version 2” model that has supported developers on the Mac for decades. For regular paid apps, we have never received upgrade pricing or limited time trial features.

Instead, because Apple is too reluctant to do so, it tries to solve this problem by making the iPad a suboptimal version of the Mac. Therefore, this has led to the multi-tasking disaster that Gruber blame, which not only makes it difficult for consumers to use, but also greatly increases the difficulty for developers, thereby making the chances of getting a positive return on investment for developing iPad applications even more remote. Indeed, the number one developers of deep iPad applications are Microsoft and Adobe, both of which serve their own subscription models. Unfortunately for the iPad, itsSuccessors have never had room for birth, which ultimately limits the iPad’s ability to truly replace the Mac.

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In fairness, is it as “failed” as the iPad? Can anyone of us do it? This was a $ 21 billion business in the previous fiscal year, about the same size as Mac’s $ 26 billion in revenue. That’s why I don’t call it a failure: The iPad’s misfortune is not that it failed, but that it has never been, and may never be able to realize the potential so clearly visible ten years ago.

Translator: boxi.