Mom’s iPad
Anecdotal evidence on why tablets are the new mainstream computers
Almost two years ago I bought an iPad for my mom’s birthday. My dad had asked me if I could get one and, as you do, I brought one back from New York. I even got into customs trouble, but that’s a different story. My mom wanted one, because the “Family” MacBook was essentially just my dad’s.
Last week, as I was visiting my parents, something amazing had happened. The MacBook (a 15" Pro) was essentially sadly sitting on the desk as a decorative item — nobody seemed to care. It was waiting to be updated to Mavericks and being synced to the new iPhone. That’s it.
Both of them just wanted to use the iPad. To surf the web, to read the news, to check email, to go on Instagram and browse the TV schedule. It doesn’t appear to them that they have a 1500 Euro MacBook to do all this — it’s just way more natural to use the iPad. It’s their default device for everything.
The next day I visited my 79-year old grandparents (yes, both are the same age). Same setup here. They have a MacBook Pro and an iPad. They just use the iPad for about everything. They even bought an AirPrint printer to print from the iPad.
There is one exception what they use the MacBooks for. They use it to backup their photos as they don’t do it on the iPad. There is an opportunity hidden in there for somebody — maybe Everpix is already filling this.
Why am I telling you all of this? I hear many tech journalists write about how they rarely use their iPad and that it just doesn’t fit into their day. John Gruber very recently wrote about why he still uses a MacBook to write instead of just an iPad:
Part of it is as simple as having a hardware keyboard, but if that were all, I could easily solve the problem with a hardware keyboard for the iPad. But it’s also about software — BBEdit, MarsEdit, a web browser that can open several dozen tabs at a time without breaking a sweat, custom scripts and services that I’ve written for myself over the years — these things make me far more efficient on a Mac than I am while working on any iOS device. — John Gruber
It’s obviously not so easy to convince professionals not having all their special tools installed for most consumers the convenience outweighs the less efficient experience. While there might be still a certain divide between the contexts of consumption (mostly consumer) and creation (mostly professional) very soon many people will not understand if you talk about those with regard to tablets.
Say “Hello” to iPad Pro.
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