A Secret Message from Steve Jobs
Part III : To Fix iPadOS
The iPad’s Identity?
Back to the future, eh? If the GUI of computers (and their many versions) are designed to be outputs so the bio-mechanized user can operate through experience driven by mimicry, where is the crisis coming from?
Let’s jump ahead to the desktop computers of Apple’s (from the 1984 Macintosh to today’s M3 iMac, Mac mini, Mac Studio and Mac Pro). For one, we know upfront that these computers are designed (and have been designed) to simulate work from a desk. We know this because the main home section of the GUI has the identity “Desktop”.
A Desk has folders, which are used to file documents. To simplify this process, the created documents are just called files.
Because of the Internet, upgrades were added to MacOSX (then MacOS) which included a search bar (yes, these elements have other names), tabs in windows, and apps (formerly called software, then programs…and eventually apps) have been made to function out of a window (not all, but most).
The windows are not physical windows; rather these are virtual bulletin boards where we can work, minimize and move away, all while looking at them.
The UI name element is about promoting similarities. If Apple called them bulletin boards, humans that didn’t have bulletin boards in their homes would have taken longer to adjust to interpreting than say a U.S. citizen. There is often a sense, when adapting to a UI, to quickly learn the name or the icon as if in quick acceptance to grasp onto navigating one’s bearings.
This is an oversimplification, but in totality, Desktop computer GUIs have a purpose resembling activities on a desk.
So why have a laptop, if work is done in the home or office? Typewriters were portable, so a computer just had to be (just one of thousands of reasons why).
Before the Apple Macintosh was released, in 1980 R2E Micral CCMC a French computer company (did you know there were French computer companies?) introduced the earliest non-commercial all-in-one version of a laptop called the Portal.
However, this laptop version followed the interpretation of the Desktop whereas a smaller space, like one’s lap could situate a computer. Maybe the name tabletop computer would have more of a definitive edge in a shared interpretation, however, “Laptop” stuck and it was mimicked. The layout became “L” shaped which further pushed towards uniformity and resemblance. The Desktop GUI was carried over.
Essentially, the identification of a laptop came from making a desktop. Desktops and Laptops are still in existence.
From Desk to Sound
Jumping ahead again. Before the days of Napster, in 1998, South Korean company SeeHan introduced the world’s first mp3 player called the MP Man (Sound & Vision).
It did not have a digital interface, except for the track number. The UI was similar to that of a CD player, with analog physical buttons on the front and the sides.
Here’s a video from Modern Classic YT Channel on it:
From the late 1970s cassette players to CD players, the language of electronic music players became very uniformed.
The play button was iconified through a right triangle, the pause function, two parallel thin rectangles side-by-side, a square for stop, and a circle for record. Notice that word association was still very much a key design element with buttons at this point in time.
The interpretation of the player was, and had been, pretty consistent especially from the record player to the CD Player. Sure, these machines are different from one another as to the memory storage the devices are used to read an output from, but behavioral mimicry was certainly there.
A player was a machine that could use external or built-in speakers that could dictate storage into sound. MP3 players went a step further, to promote a large collection of music which would be accessible inside a single device.
Steve Jobs, in his 2001 keynote, brought up that the concept of a player with a large amount of songs was considered as being a “library”.
It is a very small detail, but the interpretation flourished through the keynote.
It’s not a player, it’s a music library; it’s not a computational machine, it’s a desktop computer.
Now, while many users saw the famous iPod selection and interaction wheel, the design was very reminiscent of two identities at once. The device itself resembled the original Macintosh with a black and white screen in the upper half, and the lower half was emblematic of a speaker box.
The interaction on the device was key to linking the screen to the identity of the iPod. The mini-monitor displayed a playlist and the actual play content, while the wheel controller acted like a crank or moving element to the top.
It combined the concept of a vinyl record, the rotation of a cassette player, and the movement of a CD all into one visualization. The iPod design was about getting users on the same page both figuratively and literally through a playlist screen no matter their electronic player experience before.
Yes, the iPod introduced a faster way to transfer files to the device, and the product itself was made of premium materials, but the GUI combined with the player element, combined with the notion of browsing a complete library is what made the iPod a user interpretation success story.
The wheel was the function that the user was working on while using the device, much like how they were “working” on a Desktop; but it was also a reminder that users now had the role of managing a library- one that they could possess in the palm of their hand.
The crank motion was replaced by early touch technology, and the screen, was soon in color with improved graphics.
Now, we gallop to the GUI of the iPhone in 2007. It brought out a colorful touch screen, a front facing camera, and a single “Home” button on the bottom. It was however, the GUI language of the device that internalized the identity of the iPhone.
Going from the iPod to the iPhone had a similar language: they were both libraries.
The iPhone, however, displayed icons in the style of a bookshelf, and it was very clear that the device emphasized storage creation by the user. A camera, a way to use apps that could record and store activity, moving book-like app icons on a screen. This wasn’t about a computer phone, or a phone as a computer, it was all about organizing and creating for your handheld library and sharing it.
The iPhone was definitely the most share-cessible device at its time. Take a picture, share it; send a text message in colors; gift an iTunes song, and showcase your library.
The iPhone’s identity made/makes the library part of you and your own “User identity”.
Having a phone where visual content could shift from landscape to portrait also gave a sense of perception which no other device had given before. It gave/ has given users an option to read the screen from different views like reading a book.
Had iPod been a sketch device, or an early “rotary” style smart phone, the library language would have never taken off.
So, now we get to the iPad in 2010.
The keynote did not really have a consistent “personality” language, but the excitement is there.
Let’s see: it’s a device that is better than a MacBook at displaying websites, and other MacBook content, and it’s better than an iPhone: vague.
Jobs ends the keynote with a catchy rhyme phrase:
“ Our most advanced technology
in a magical and revolutionary device
at an unbelievable price. ”
Despite it being a “capable” device, which is revealed throughout the majority of the presentation, it’s never disclosed as to what the identity of the device is. The only personality to the OS, it seemed, was its resemblance to iPhone’s iOS.
Using what we know up to this point, there is an answer, but it does make me wonder if the iPadOS was rushed to get the product out earlier.
If the computational platform became set in a GUI promoting a desk and desk-like interaction, and the modern portable player and the smartphone in the interface of a user’s library (creation and storage kept with a user), and the modern day headsets like Apple Vision Pro are focused on “spatial” design with an interface that emphasizes the space around you as a constant office of work and interaction, what should the identity of a tablet be?
So:
a. Desktops & Laptops are designed to act like a Desk.
b. Electronic players & Smartphones are designed to act like a portable Library.
c. Mixed reality headsets are designed to act like a space planner and manager.
As Jobs stated it’s between an iPhone and a Laptop.
Riddle me this: what is it?
The answer: the desk drawers, the toolbox, a closet, the place of retrieval.
In other words a magical device (as Jobs stated) can only go so far before customers realize that the product’s identity is a variable.
Because of not disclosing this personality trait from day one, designers and engineers have played a nearly fourteen-year-long tug-of-war with the device’s design and function, and iPad users see the variation of such implemented results in each OS updates.
The iPad, whether it’s agreed upon or not, began as a big iPhone without the phone functionality, and it had more space to touch-interact with. And with its likeness to the iPhone, came a simplification of such touch elements to support a myriad of desktop elements and applications over time.
Stacking on top of that premise, users and organizations have looked to the iPad not as the “device for _____”, but rather as the Blank Device: a device which they must repurpose for their personal or business needs.
Oh, the angry contractors and workers I have seen who would rather physically write something out on a yellow carbon copy receipt for customers, instead of waiting to see if their is a cellular connection to their employer’s finance database software connects. This Blank Device complex is exactly why this list exists:
[The Blank Device Purpose List]
a. Emulation
b. Kiosk-tech & Single-Use
c. Monitor with Touch Capabilities
d. Smartphone UI
e. Portable Platform Gaming Console+Monitor
f. Group Activity Input Device(GAID): incl. students and employer using these devices to fulfill company/organization standardized location-based recording; i.e. all students in one class must use their iPads to complete their activities / all employees can only use company iPads when on-the-job.
g. Laptop with a front-facing camera (Phone+laptop function)
h. Visual demonstrations (incl. AR)
i. Dashboards and/or Control Panels
j. Drawing Pad + Monitor as one
Today’s current iteration of the iPad in the form of the Pro M4 model, is a complete fracture from being the proposed in-between and more of a 60% Desktop, 40% smartphone ratio.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s still magical, and it sports a brand new AI-ready Apple Silicon chip, but the tablet is still a blank device trying to be less its own purpose while meeting the needs of Desktop and Smartphone consumers.
Just imagine if all laptops had to serve the needs of punch card computer users… or technicians. One could say the iPad has become a MacBook Air Junior that can’t run MacOs; others have still stuck with the Big iPhone complex despite the integration of Stage Manager.
Users have started to apply iPad apps to their iMacs and other devices as if the tablet is the disk storage. In other words, why not store portable apps on a device and then connect the mobile device to a bigger screen. Take into consideration that an iPad can also be an external storage with controller-like functionality for itself and the larger display.
While iPad might be labeled as a blank device, this repurpose has a unique personality.
Although, laptops have long connected to external desktops, the behavior of the tablet as an interactive storage-controller “speaks volumes”. But, it does not resonate loudly as the iPad (tablet) needs an identity which can hold such a voice.
Let’s Begin
We’re going to have to reanalyze the iPad in the lens of a drawer, a place of retrieval. Let’s start with the GUI, and then portray the application integration of this drawer-toolbox.
As we know, the GUI design motif Apple had available was to use the library shelf / launchpad app arrangement grid from the iPhone. This was and has been the first interfacial flaw pushing the nature and design of the iPad as having a Big iPhone complex.
There is no evolution to the device as we have no idea of its purpose of origin.
Sure, Star Trek, and sci-fi entertainment series on multiple mediums have created tablet props to showcase the futuristic behavior as a necessary function in application, but these well-designed props do not represent iPads specifically.
This same shelf/grid layout appears in another Apple device’s home screen:
tvOS
Let’s bring to mind another key element, or should I say key Jobs element that helped shape the iPod to the iPhone: the player circle, the crank, the dial, we’ll call it the Jobs Circle:
The Jobs Circle, even before Jobs forged it into an Apple fundamental, has appeared over and over again throughout history in communication and in technology. You could visualize a vinyl record, a roll of film, a hard drive wheel, and of course, the wheel itself just by how you associate with its image: its identity of identities.
Steve Jobs’ quoted purpose behind Apple centers on projecting simplicity to drive the understanding of personality to realize identity.
The company’s GUI development was the cornerstone propelling user association to how to enforce behavioral mimicry through interacting with a computer via an interface of such nature.
The strategy was never to make or break the wheel, the Jobs Circle, but rather to repurpose the circle — of which a user could approach from all angles regardless of their vantage and advantages.
A circle is a barrier, a circle with personality permits you, the user, to associate with it.
When you use a camera with its circular lense, a Blu-Ray or video game disc player/console, you don’t necessarily know how to make all the storage content which goes into each of these storage retrieval/output systems. You use these devices on the basis that the barrier was never a barrier to begin with, rather the barrier is what you learn to associate with: i.e. because you can interact with a mouse, you’re on your way to developing computer skills; now that you have written your first line of code: you can code.
Adaptation and association have always been a circular process on computers (and more so on Apple products). Much like sewing or weaving a needle through material, using a computer centers on approaching and returning; thus, the reason why Apple’s keyboard has a “return” key, and Microsoft’s keyboard has an “Enter” key instead. Two different approaches to establishing identity.
The first Apple Television box set was introduced in 2006 (and released in March of 2007), the year before the release of the iPhone. Surprisingly, it didn’t start out with tvOS as its main operating system.
The GUI was directly taken from the iPod’s screen UI layout. The GUI was entitled FrontRow. On the right-hand side displayed a list, and to the left was a visualization of each list item selected. Yes, there was a wheel: the remote carried on the iPod touch wheel without the scrolling capability of the iPod.
Unfortunately, FrontRow made the first Apple TV set box feel limited; it was as if the Apple TV was trying to be a bigger iPod yet still promote TV behaviors.
In the late 90s to early 2000s, hotels in the U.S. had on-demand platforms for guest room televisions. These grew in popularity, because of the “Pay-per-View” dial-up movie service offered on cable television. One of the most popular of the pre-streaming systems, or gateway systems, was called LodgeNet. LodgeNet was also historic in that it had the option to select films and video games. Hotels with that secondary option included a plugged-in (to the TV) Nintendo 64 controller. Here’s the GUI used in the LodgeNet video game menu section:
The FrontRow system-screen proved less cyclical when it came to a user viewing experience. After the release of the iPhone, the grid library app icon style with a built-in app store revolutionized the direction of all Apple GUIs including Apple TVs going forward.
The 2010 release of tvOS featured a step away from the black screened list of FrontRow, and shifted to a design resembling the home screen of an iPhone in landscape — but there was a twist; or more definitively a turn.
The grid-library layout resembled the interface of a jukebox, whereas the cursor (via the remote) when highlighting an icon, would display a gallery image (up above) or a preview viewing window; a sort of album/poster cover visualization from the highlight of an icon.
The language shift?
To promote a player organized as a library shelf without barriers where users could operate the experience. To do this, Apple applied the familiarity from iOS’ library home screen. This same strategy was applied to the soon release iPod Touch (of 2007) which readily cloned the iPhone library grid GUI.
Circling
Stepping back a little bit:
Computers became user-friendly through a process of implementing desk mannerisms by creating interfaces of graphical personalities. The electronic player, particularly the Apple iPod promoted user-friendliness not through desk behavior, but through …. sorting as an interface.
It hasn’t been identified as a “sorting interface” because what sort of interface would that be? Could Apple have gone with a LodgeNet-like menu screen from the get-go?
When a system exhibits sorting as a form of work or interactive capability, the interface becomes more personalized: the system behaves like you from your perception. And if a system behaves like you, you are more likely to respond and react to a system than to refract it. You are encouraged to read it, because it invites you to be the identity creator.
The Desktop — shapes the user through a definitive identity
The Library/Sorting Place — allows users to shape a (and from a) system as an identity
Jobs called the experience of the iOS screen a library because the system is not a system library; what data you choose to create and store on this device builds a library which defines you. As noted in the marketing for Apple’s first App Store from 2008, “there’s an app for that”, conveys that there is not only the option to select, buy and store this data, but that apps were being created to serve all your needs (see Apple Newsroom App Store 10th Anniversary).
Why do you write and learn from a desk?
The word “desk” originated from Latin, “discus”, which meant a platter or a dish. From Roman to Greek, the word changed to “diskos” (Etymology).
The first usage of disks in computers came from IBM’s laboratory in San Jose, California, with its creation of the first hard disk drive in 1953; and would you know that the Jobs Circle or the IBM tape circle was prominent in the data storage design from the beginning.
The secret to the universe might be that exact circle. One day it fell from the sky, and this particular circle has found its way into all sorts of technology.
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