Best iPad advice for digital marketers: don’t hold back
May. 28, 2010 | by Antony Mayfield
Happy UK iPad day, everyone.
When the iPad came out in the US, I and some colleagues offered our thoughts on this blog’s American equivalent, Great Finds. I was certainly excited about the new device, but also tempered my opinions with caution:
the iPad is faced with a massive volume of polarized [sic] opinions and resulting uncertainty, due to a difficulty to see through what I call “the fog of blah” surrounding the launch. This device is an argument magnet, battles over a ton of digital media issues from DRM to the (yawn) PC vs. Mac debate have all converged on the iPad for a few weeks.
Having owned an iPad now for close to six weeks (I was lucky enough to be in the States just after its launch there) I have revised my opinion. This is an incredibly significant device, both in its own right as a product and as a new phase for computing.
Wait and see isn’t good enough, dive in and find out what it’s all about is better advice…
What should marketers have 
in mind? I’ve made some notes:
in mind? I’ve made some notes:- Invisible computing: The experience of using the iPad is incredible because of what has been taken away – the mouse and keyboard. Touching content, typing into the screen changes your relationship with the content somehow, makes things more intimate. More than anything else I have used the computing bit of the iPad fades away, you don’t think about the technology very often – you focus completely on the content. The most powerful moment of realisation for me in this regard was when I finished the first novel I had bought on the Amazon Kindle application. I’d literally forgotten I was reading on the iPad.
- Emotional devices: Living with an iPad in the UK for six weeks before their arrival here has meant demonstrating and discussing the thing with anyone passing. And it’s not just geeks: everyone from Octogenarian ladies on planes to my three year old daughter everyone is fascinated by the device, wants to know more. This, as much as the lightning speed of sales should tell marketers and media owners everything they need to know about whether to invest in exploring the possibility of delivering content and services on the iPad.
- Expansion of the web into every corner of our lives: The iPad represents the latest phase in a trend we have been living with since Tim Berners-Lee flicked the “on” switch on the first WWW server: the web’s expansion into every part of the commercial, political, cultural and social world. The iPad expands the web’s presence into some more spaces where paper still ruled until just now – places where I read books and magazines, took notes.
- No panacea for content owners: There are some impressive magazine applications out there, but the most enjoyable and practical content experiences I’ve encountered have been using normal websites like the Guardian, Telegraph and Economist (my usual “newspaper” reads) via the iPad’s browser and also via RSS feeds in the incredible NewsRack application.
NewsRack on the iPad - better than a newspaper app?
- Apples are not the only fruit: I’ve been accused of being overly partisan in my favourable opinions of Apple. Fact is, I can’t wait for the Android and Microsoft responses to the iPad. But for now, the iPad is truly one of a kind and something every digital marketer should become familiar with.
- You have to own one to understand its full impact: I was expecting great things of the iPad when I bought it, but I had a clear idea of where it would be used, in between my smartphone and my laptop. The surprise has been how much it has come to be the most useful computing device that I own, stealing most of the uses I have for both of them. Picking one up and playing with it for a few minutes tells you something, but the only way to understand how significant this device is is to live and work with one for a while.
- A playground for innovation: The future of the iPad is not written, we don’t know all of the ways it might be used, might be useful. All the more reason for all marketers and media owners to commit to playing with it, find the ways it could work for them.
So, the best advice for any brand or media owners is – get one and start playing. If you’re feeling bold, commission an app right away with the thought that “learning as a deliverable” will be enough ROI in itself.
Please note: the opinions expressed in this post represent the views of the individual, not necessarily those of iCrossing.
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Comments (5)
Philip Buxton so what one should I get :)Jun 1, 2010 03:08 pm
Mark Higginson Your comments highlight a key point. Bill Gates was talking about a tablet computer. OLPC are talking about a $100 tablet. Apple don't do concepts. They ship products. Let's speculate again when either of these two pretenders have more than vapour to show us.May 31, 2010 11:48 pm
Gregory Lyons If they can produce a tablet computer at that price point ($100) with those specs running an open system like Android I think it'll blow the ipad out of the waterMay 28, 2010 04:33 pm
Antony Mayfield I find it fascinating that Microsoft has yet to produce a device like this (no tablet PCs don't count) - but I expect they will get there soon.
May 28, 2010 03:19 pm
Gregory Lyons Interestingly back in 2007 Bill Gates was talking about the tablet computer (ipad) and how he believed it would be the future and Steve Jobs was talking about the PC
Link to video
Gates: "I don't think you'll have one device. I think you'll have a full-screen device that you can carry around and you'll do dramatically more reading off of that... yeah, I mean, I believe in the tablet form factor [...] You'll have some way of having a hardware keyboard and some settings for that. And then you'll have the device that fits in your pocket, which the whole notion of how much function should you combine in there, you know, there's navigation computers, there's media, there's phone.
Jobs: "It will be the PC, maybe used a little more tightly coupled with some back-end Internet services and some things like that."May 28, 2010 12:30 pm