Lee Gomes

Lee Gomes, Forbes Staff

3/01/2010 @ 12:00AM

Three Questions For Steve Jobs

People about to buy a computer tend to fixate on speeds and feeds–megahertz, megabytes, megapixels. After watching Steve Jobs talk about his iPad tablet computer, though, I had the notion that a better way to approach a new gadget is to ask three questions: How much do you have to think about the decision to carry it with you? How long does it take to turn on? How do you tell it what you want it to do?

Remember these, and you have the only computer advice you will ever need. I can use them to explain my initial, somewhat lukewarm, reaction to the iPad.

The first issue measures the mental and physical energy required to lug something about. There are three possible categories. With “unconscious carries,” like watches and mobile phones, you can have a gadget on you without even realizing it. On the other end of the spectrum, notebook computers, especially those more than a few years old, entail a very conscious decision about when to take one along. Carrying these heavy objects is a chore.

In between are very light netbook computers and e-readers such as the Amazon Kindle. Like a newspaper or paperback, you are aware you’ve got it with you, but the physical effort required is slight. The mental effort, though, is not small. You have to be careful not to drop the reader or sit on it. You have to worry about leaving it behind on an airplane seat or at a restaurant. That’s a big difference from a newspaper.

We want gadgets to be as close to unconscious carries as they can possibly be and will make sacrifices to get them that way. The doll-size screens on mobile phones are the price that must be paid to always have them with us. Thus the question to ask is this: Is the sacrifice I am being asked to make for the gadget at least as small as its worth to me?

Next is turn-on time. Here technology is the scene of conflicting trends. Computers, at least those of the Windows variety, until recently took boot-up time as an infinitely renewable resource; they used more and more of it with each passing release. Finally, with Windows 7, Microsoft made a conscious effort to make the machines start more quickly. They don’t get up and running nearly as quickly as a Mac, much less a microwave oven, but things are moving in the right direction. (Unfortunately in the living room the trend is going the other way. As DVD players and televisions become smarter they become more sluggish. With digital TV, even changing channels now takes time.)

The last question concerns how you talk to your computer. This is the tale of the continuing triumph of a 19th-century technology–the mechanical keyboard, complete with moving parts in the form of keys that go up and down in response to pressure from your fingers. Acres of the Amazon basin have been deforested to print all the patent applications for alternatives to keyboards. To no avail. The fact that the “virtual” keyboard on an iPhone looks like the real thing, only on a screen and much smaller, is a tribute to the continued usefulness of the original.

To judge the iPad we can bring the three rules together. First, what is it like to carry? Unlike an iPhone, an iPad is something that you will always know you have with you. In this regard it approximates a netbook (though it weighs half as much). This is a strike against the device. While it is almost as hard as a netbook to carry around, it isn’t as capable as one, lacking such basics as a disk drive and the ability to run more than one program at a time. The iPad’s screen of 9.7 inches (on the diagonal) is about what you get in a netbook.

Fewer capabilities but a similar size? Not a good start.

Next question: turn-on time, which for the iPad is the blink of an eye. That, of course, is great. Our grandchildren will never believe the amount of time we spent waiting for computers to turn on. This is one of those stakes in the ground that Steve Jobs is known for and for which all tech users should be grateful. Advantage: iPad.

Finally the keyboard–or lack of one. The iPad is supposed to be a real computer and not just a new way to gambol through YouTube and FailBlog. Writers tend to be exceptionally old-fashioned about this, but unless something is going to fit in my pocket, there is no excuse for it not to have a physical keyboard. That is another mark against the iPad.

The final score is two against, one for. It’s okay if you don’t rush to buy an iPad.


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