I just wanted to add, the iPad was not at all what I envisioned before Apple’s announcement and the ideas I have about using it aren’t things I thought I would want.  I think that’s really the sign of a good product, one that fills needs you didn’t even realize you had.

On the iPad

I think too many people are focused on the iPad and comparing it to the Kindle.  The surprising point where I differ from people is in the belief that the iPad is meant for power users.  Many people have pointed out that it would be silly to have both an iPad and a laptop.  If a power user has a laptop as their only computer, it is likely because they need some portability, but they would probably rather have a desktop for their main computing.  Frequently, to satisfy themselves with the laptop, they get a specced out 15 or 17 inch macbook pro so the computer is bearable.

For a while, that was my story.  What I discovered after buying a desktop for home though was that I don’t really need a powerful laptop.  The laptop has mainly become a device for giving presentations (something that the Keynote Demo indicated was possible, and should be equally possible with my Beamer presentations as pdf).  I want a device that lets me make my presentations and surf the web during conferences.

But all of that is not what excites me.

What does excite me?

I remember about 18 months ago when Bosco Ho came to visit my lab as a random spur of the moment type event, he had a video of some simulations that he wanted to show us, but all he had was his iPhone with the video on it.  We had to crowd around it to watch.  The iPhone is barely adequate for showing video to one person, much less 7 or 8.  And with molecular dynamics simulations, you often want something even better.  Before Apple’s recent bent on games, PyMol was cited as a graphics intense application for high end macs.

The iPad is the first device I can see carrying around at a conference and being able to show videos of simulations to people and having a viewer to easily explore these results.  The iPhone was never going to be it.  The Kindle just isn’t meant for it.  Laptops are just the wrong form factor (for the same reasons they are the wrong form factor for watching a movie on a plane).  IBM/Lenovo Thinkpads had the wrong interface for interaction, a stylus.

Apple’s hardware has the graphics capabilities, the correct interface, and the size that I can finally both show movies of molecular simulations, but also pull up models from a simulation and explore them.  The software to do this isn’t on the platform yet, but it will be, even if I have to be the one to port it.

Today I bathed myself in some interviews from the past on ideas around e-books.  Does anyone remember the time when there was idea that we would have e-ink pages?  And you would flip through pages, like it was a magazine or book?  That idea just sounds so silly now.