Michael Doan » iPad

For Everyone

Michael Doan — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 14:39:25 +0000

As I mentioned in an earlier post, iPad removes the barrier between the user and the computer. There’s no need to learn about saving documents, file structure, or folders (yet). Need more proof?

From TUAW, a story about a 99 year old women who buys her first computer, iPad, and is able to read and write again. She suffers from glaucoma which makes reading difficult.

The future of computing is changing.

Pages for iPad, Simple for Kids

Michael Doan — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 17:22:35 +0000

A couple years ago I bought a OLPC for my daughter who was four years old at the time. Recently she has shown interest in learning to type. I pulled out the OLPC and started up the word processor. She would practice typing but never saved any of her work. One day she asked how she could save her typing. I showed her (after figuring it out for myself first).

With my recent purchase of iPad and Apple’s wireless Bluetooth keyboard, my daughter has been practicing her typing on the iPad using Pages. She asked, “will it save my typing?”

“Yes, it’ll save it. You don’t have to do anything,” I said.

Think about that. Here’s a list of things that she and I didn’t have to do:

I didn’t have to show her how to save a document.
She didn’t have to worry about losing work.
She didn’t think of a name for her document (Pages automatically assigned one)
She didn’t have to understand file/folder structure and decide where to save the document.

All she has to do is to exit out of the Pages app when she is done. Pages is definitely kid-friendly. As adults we don’t have to worry about this because we never lose work because we forget to save and we never forget where we save a file.

iPad is Bigger Than iPad

Michael Doan — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 13:34:33 +0000

A pretty darn good theory about where Apple is headed from Gruber:

Apple now owns and controls their own mobile CPUs. There aren’t many companies in the world that can say that. And from what I saw today, Apple doesn’t just own and control a mobile CPU, they own and control the hands-down best mobile CPU in the world. Software aside (which is a huge thing to put aside), it may well be that no other company could make a device today matching the price, size, and performance of the iPad. They’re not getting into the CPU business for kicks, they’re getting into it to kick ass.