How a 'perfect storm' will make iPad the biggest cultural phenomenon since The Beatles
April 3 is the big day, when everything changes. Are you ready?
I think the iPad is the most important launch in Apple‘s history — bigger than Mac, iPod or iPhone. More important, I think it’s the most important cultural phenomenon of this generation. It’s bigger than technology.
I’m no fanboy. I’ve tried to envision some conceivable series of events that might leave the iPad as only moderately successful, but I can’t come up with any. All circumstances, facts and events in technology, media and elsewhere seem to point to the same inexorable outcome: The iPad will be huge.
Pundits, bloggers and gadget enthusiasts are talking about the iPad like it’s just another device, on a par with other devices. My view is that the iPad is utterly unique.
I and the others part company because they’re looking at the device, for the most part, and I’m looking at the markets. That’s markets with an s. There are many of them.
The success of a consumer electronics product depends not on how powerful, functional or fully equipped something is, but entirely on the answer to a simple question: How many people will buy it? And how many individuals buy something depends on how many types of people buy it.
Normally, when we tech journalists or others consider a product, we have one type of person in mind: people like ourselves. When a new gadget comes out, pundits say “I want this, and therefore it’s going to be successful.” That’s just faulty reasoning.
When you look at the massively popular tech products, only those with the broadest possible appeal, spanning the greatest number of groups or types of people, truly succeed. Examples include Google, Facebook and cell phones.
I’m predicting that old people, toddlers, baby boomers, teenagers, twenty-somethings — OK, all age groups will use the iPad in significant numbers. It will be the first consumer electronics product in recent decades to match the age demographic of the TV.
Everyone from engineers to neo-luddites will buy iPads. It will be the first device in recent years to match the technical-enthusiasm range of the cell phone market.
Gamers, readers, TV watchers, movie enthusiasts will get one.
Schools, churches, libraries, small businesses, restaurants, nightclubs, malls and other organizations will put them to use.
Pilots, teachers, public speakers, artists, contractors, writers, and other professionals will enhance their careers with iPads. The Pentagon will go nuts for this thing.
The combination of touch, rich media, third-party applications and familiar (iPhone-like) user interface make it ideal for people who would never dream of buying most other categories of consumer electronics.
In addition to thrilling existing types of users, I think iPad will convert people. For example, I believe many people who have never embraced gaming will be converted into gamers by the iPad, much like the Wii did but on a much larger scale.
iPad just wants to have fun
A blog called PadGadget did some digging in the iTunes “Preview” database, which shows apps not shipping yet but coming soon. Many of these were clearly iPad applications, because they used designators like “HD” or “XL” to distinguish them from iPhone versions. Most of them were games. Here’s a partial list:
* Ammoin HD
* Azkend HD
* Flight Control HD
* Grind HD
* HD Recovery
* Labyrinth 2 HD
* NBA Hotshot HD
* Numba HD
* Plants vs. Zombie HD
* Sparkle HD
* Worms HD
(Since the blog was posted, the titles have all been removed.)
Big deal. There will be games on the iPad. We already knew that. What matters is that iPad is an incredibly appealing casual gaming platform — a kind of portable, Internet connected Wii that comes free with your tablet.
Some of the biggest runaway hits are likely to be connected games. Chess games played by people on other sides of the ocean. Multiplayer first-person shooters are going to be enormous.
And I think iPad will be the first gaming platform where traditional board games will become a major category — games like Monopoly, Scrabble and Battleship. I also expect it to mainstream Vegas type games like Texas Holdem, Roulette, slot machines and so on.
That’s important because gaming is one area where iPad sales will enjoy something called “network effect,” which is when the value of a networked system increases as more people join the network. The more people play connected games on iPad, the more valuable it is to users. The more valuable it is to users, the more game developers will create games for it. The more games there are, the more users. This cycle continues until iPad has millions of dedicated games fans and more games than any other platform.
Remember when Windows clobbered Mac in part because all the games were on Windows? The reverse will be true on touch tablets. All the games will be on iPad. Toss in remote, connected play and — forget about it. The iPad will be the Mother of All Gaming Platforms.
iPad goes to work
In addition to converting users, I believe it will transform professions.
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Education, for example, appears ready to aggressively embrace the iPad. (Any sort of school buying iPads in bulk, in “packs” of 10, will get a $20-per-device discount.)
The iPad is ideal for education because it will be easy to develop for, cheap to buy, easy to carry and store (no cables, peripherals and so on) and will come with seemingly infinite content and media.
As with games, the network effect phenomenon will affect education. It won’t take long for apps to emerge that pull together courseware with downloadable instruction and live lectures, events and so on. It will become a medium by which far-flung schools help each other. But you can’t get in on all this collaboration unless you’re using the iPad. So schools will. Students will. Teachers will. iPad will be very big in education.
Pilots — both profession and private — have been clamoring for something like this for decades. The pilot supply industry will go crazy with the iPad, creating what are now called “electronic flight bags,” as well as charting and navigation products.
The military is already embracing the iPhone. The iPad is even better because of its size and superior firepower.
Many other professions, from real estate to medicine will jump into iPad app development, and create new markets.
The media is the iPad’s ‘killer app’
In the realm of books, magazines, newspapers, TV, movies and other media, iPad is poised to take over. In addition to offering its own conduits for all this — the new Bookstore and the existing iTunes stores for music, movies and TV — the iPad will co-opt existing channels.
For example, for people reading classic books via Google Books, the iPad will become the best place to do that. They’ll be able to read all Project Gutenberg tiles — 30,000 free classics — and all Amazon Kindle books. Because the iPad will be the best place to read not just one channel of books but all channels, readers will gravitate toward the iPad. This big reading audience will attract book publishers and eBook related app developers (already huge on the iPhone).
The iPad is obviously perfect for viewing video, including TV shows, movies and YouTube-like videos. Of course, the iPad can’t play Adobe Flash-based videos. But I believe Apple will win this battle. If video producers of all kinds want to stream to where the eyeballs are, they’re going to have to offer non-Flash alternatives — and they will.
Will the iPad succeed? Oh, yeah. As Joe Biden would say, this is a big f***ing deal.
But more important than that, I believe the iPad will become such a cultural phenomenon that it will become a symbol or an icon of the coming decade. Future generations might refer to the two-thousand and teens as the “iPad Era.”
I know I’m going to catch a lot of flak for this column. I’ll be accused of being an Apple fanboy and worse. I will be told that netbooks are better, or Windows- or Linux-based tablets will do better. I’ll be told that iPad will just be a niche product of little significance.
My answer: Wanna bet? If so, get an iPad. It’s going to take over online gaming, too.
Mike Elgan writes about technology and global tech culture. Contact Mike at mike.elgan@elgan.com, follow him on Twitter or his blog, The Raw Feed.
