I am getting frustrated with continuing arguments over whether the iPad, or tablets in general, are capable of ‘content creation’ or whether they are only good for ‘content consumption’; and what ‘post-PC world’ even means when PCs are still the most used device in professional computing.
The whole “is it any good for content creation?” question needs to be taken out back and quietly disposed of – for one thing because the answer is “Yes” (that’s why there’s so many text editors, photo editors, drawing apps and music apps available in the App Store), and for another thing because the question is a classic strawman, limiting respondents to a binary answer that doesn’t accommodate all the options.
iPads are, I would wager, largely bought by average members of the public. How many average members of the public ‘create content’ on any device at all, even on their desktops and laptops? Just because a lot of people don’t create content on the device does not by any means relegate it to being purely a consumption device by default, and yet that seems to be the argument so many critics subscribe to.
A much better question to ask, if we’re going to analyse how the iPad is used, is “how can it be used to assist you in your job or hobby?” or to spell it out, “how can it be used for things other than reading books, watching videos, listening to music, and other activities typically referred to as ‘consuming content’?
(And don’t get me started on the glibness of reducing the appreciation of an artists work into mere ‘consumption’ of their ‘content’ – I imagine the sorts of people who use the phrase willingly as soul-less shallow husks of humans. Just so you know.)
Off the top of my head, here’s a few that are neither creation nor consumption as usually defined in this argument:
- using it as a teaching aid
- making photo selects during a shoot
- taking payment via Square
- flogging wares on eBay
- running a stocktake from a spreadsheet
- using a reference book/app specific to your vocation (hello doctors and pilots!)
Why ask this question of tablets, anyway?
Let’s take an average multi-functional office in an average industry that doesn’t focus on creation (think ‘The Office’ if it helps) in which everyone uses a computer for variety of officey-things, such as analysing finances, making purchases, organising shift patterns, closing deals, chasing leads. Whatever. I don’t work in this (or any) office so I don’t have much experience, but you can’t tell me that everyone in that office that uses a computer in some way for their work would categorise everything that they do that isn’t ‘consumption’ as, by virtue of it being the only other option, ‘creation’. Their computer is a tool.
If you wouldn’t demonstrate a computer’s validity as a tool by asking “But can it do content creation?” why is it appropriate for a discussion of tablets?
Of course, just because you can do something work-related on a tablet doesn’t always mean you would want to. I could perform tweaks to my RAW photos on an iPad using Snapseed, but unless I need to in order to send a client a shot quickly, I’d rather just wait till I got home and put them through Lightroom due to the extra power, screen space, functionality and finesse of control.
Instead I use my iPad on a shoot to transfer photos, review them with the client and make selects there and then while still shooting. I’m not creating content with it in this instance but it’s still a valuable work tool and far more than the dumb consumption device it’s often made out to be purely because a sizeable segment of users do nothing else with it.
(I could do this on a MacBook Air and gain powerful on-site editing, but I rarely need the editing, it’s harder to pass around, and the client navigates it less intuitively without my guidance, so I don’t.)
The Post-PC World
That’s another phrase that’s getting everybody riled up for nothing, “the post-PC world” – it’s a currently-hot phrase often used by those looking for a zippy buzzword to tie their computing article to, but it’s been mis-appropriated or at least misunderstood ever since it was handed to them on a platter by some cunning tech man (Steve Jobs?) looking to neatly highlight the shift in computing trends towards tablet-like devices.
The way it’s being mis-used to portend the imminent death of the desktop or laptop is not how it was intended, in my opinion. It doesn’t mean we are in a ‘PC Is Dead’ world, because it’s clear the PC is not dead at all. It means we are in a world where PCs are no longer the only way to compute. Tablets, particularly iPads I guess because that’s all I really know, are computers that have adapted to a new way of using them: with our fingers. So are smartphones, frankly, in so far as they are computing devices that allow you to do computery stuff.
So ‘post PC world’ to me means ‘post All-Computer-Stuff-Must-Be-Done-On-A-Desktop-Or-Laptop world’, which clearly isn’t as slick.
Am I making any sense at all? I do to me, but sometimes I lose sight of what I’m saying as I spew it across the screen. Feel free to get involved in the comments.
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