Yes to everything

Every time I gather observations and thoughts for a piece on the iPad, I feel I keep returning to the same old insights I’ve had for years. I knew Apple would complicate the iPad’s user interface this way. That many people are happy with it doesn’t mean it’s inherently a good idea.

Anyway. The other day, Apple introduced new iPad Pros, and an updated MacBook Air line-up. Most notably on the iPad hardware front, along with improving whatever feature was improvable, Apple has presented a new accessory — the Magic Keyboard. It has a trackpad. And on the software front, the upcoming iPadOS 13.4 will offer full mouse and trackpad support.

Trackpad support was of course well received by iPad fans and all the people using the iPad as a main (or sole) computing device for work and leisure. Some praised the innovation of the new cursor, which Apple in their marketing describe as being The biggest thing to happen to the cursor since point and click. (Let me pause and eyeroll for a moment here). It’s an interesting take and a good execution. It’s also the least Apple could do on such a device — devising a cursor that is more context-aware and responsive than the one you find in a traditional computer is frankly more consequential than innovative.

As is consequential the fact that now the iPad supports mouse/trackpad input. Some of the comments I saw floating around mentioned how Apple has finally given in to the pressing requests from the iPad community, from people who wanted a more ‘Surface-like’ approach for the iPad, so as to make it a more suitable device for productivity.

While that may also be true, what I think is that Apple has actually given in to adding mouse/trackpad support to the iPad because they were essentially out of options. And because for them it is a convenient problem solver. It’s Mr Wolf in Pulp Fiction: the one you call when you need a professional to clean up your mess.

And the iPad’s user interface still looks a bit messy. You may be accustomed to it. You may be so proficient at moving inside of it that you even love it. I’m not here to criticise your preferences or the iPad as a device. You wanted a ‘faster horse’ — enjoy your faster horse[1]. I’m simply speaking from a conceptual standpoint. And from that standpoint, what I see is that the iPad’s user interface is a patchwork. Features, gestures, combinations of gestures, user interface layers, all stitched together over the years.

Steve Jobs was quoted as saying: “People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I’m actually as proud of the things we haven’t done as the things I have done. Innovation is saying ‘no’ to 1,000 things.”

By contrast, it appears the iPad is increasingly saying yes to everything.

Those who have no problems with the poor discoverability of several gestures or features still see the iPad as a flexible device that adapts to the needs of its users. They say, “If you feel that the multitasking interface is opaque, it’s okay. You’re not accustomed to it, and you probably don’t need it. The iPad keeps being intuitive for those who only use it at a basic level.”

From a visual standpoint, there might be very little difference between a feature that is not visible and a feature that is out of the way. Conceptually, this is a big deal instead. A feature that is not visible and your only way to find it is by reading about it somewhere, or seeing a video tutorial, is something undiscoverable and poorly executed. A feature that is out of the way, but you get hints of its existence by the system, is an indication of at least a modicum of design-oriented thinking behind it. If the iPad’s user interface were truly well thought-out, the more so-called ‘pro’ features would be more discoverable. I wouldn’t get feedback messages from regular folks telling me, I didn’t know I could do this on my iPad, with some even adding that they discovered some gesture or feature while erroneously performing a known one.

The more layers of interaction you give to the device, the trickier things get. If the solution to a previously undiscoverable feature is to make the feature (more) discoverable through the use of a different input source, you may have found a way out of the dead end you got stuck in, but it’s not good design, strictly speaking. (I remember an exchange between a woman and an electronics shop’s employee: after buying a Windows laptop she returned to the shop to complain about the poor trackpad performance, and the employee told her to “just use a mouse”. Why not make a better trackpad, instead?)

The comparison with Microsoft’s Surface

The iPad getting proper mouse input support, and the new Magic Keyboard for the iPad featuring a regular trackpad, have naturally invited people and reviewers to draw comparisons between the iPad and the Surface. But I don’t see it as Apple ‘catching up’ with Microsoft. I see it more as Apple bringing their racing car to a different kind of championship.

Microsoft’s Surface may have its flaws. Its user interface may have its inconsistencies and limitations, but it doesn’t bear the signs of the iPad’s long-standing identity crisis. The Surface and the iPad have different origin stories, and those are reflected in the way you approach and use these devices.

The Surface wasn’t really born as a pure tablet with a tailored mobile operating system on it. The concept Microsoft wanted to contribute was of an ultracompact laptop first, with tablet functionalities added on as a convenient alternative to perform quick tasks as needed, without burdening the user with a device fixed in its laptop configuration and behaving like a laptop all the time.

Still, all the devices in the different Surface product lines are essentially laptops (of different weights and capabilities) that can work as, or transform into, tablets when the need arises. Even the first generation of Surface devices back in 2012–2013 were hardly ever seen in the wild without their keyboard, despite it being ‘optional’. They’re very much touchscreen computers with a tablet mode, with productivity as their main purpose. Technically, their Apple counterpart would be something more akin to a ModBook than an iPad.

Their operating system, in a way or another, has always been some version of Windows with additional touch- and tablet-friendly features enabled, to make the Surface a more versatile device.

The Surface knows what it is. And Surface users know what to expect from it, in terms of functionality and interface. The user interface could be improved here and there, but it’s not ambiguous. The levels of interaction comfort aren’t either. There is a distinctive best/good/okay comfort range as you go from operating a Surface like a Windows laptop, to using it as a tablet with pen input, to using it with touch input with just your fingers. But that feels fine because that’s the experience the Surface is supposed to provide.

What Microsoft has strived to do over the past eight or so years has been to improve the Surface experience within that model, within that paradigm, and I’d say they’ve been rather successful at that. The next step is represented by devices like the Neo and the Duo, that introduce the new dual screen idea in form and function. The aim is, again, to improve productivity by creating a literal dual space to multitask and facilitate interoperation between apps and tasks, if and when needed.

The iPad, on the other hand, has had a more varied history, and has been more of a chameleon — with regard to both purpose and interface. It was born as a separate device with unique characteristics to fill the perceived void between a laptop and a smartphone. In 2010, when introducing the iPad, Steve Jobs said, In order to really create a new category of devices, those devices are going to have to be far better at doing some key tasks. They’re gonna have to be far better at doing some really important things: better than the laptop, better than the smartphone.

And in its first iterations, the iPad was exactly that; its identity pretty clear — ‘a big iPhone’ that could be just as easy to use as an iPhone, but better at doing certain things due to its bigger display. And better than a laptop because certain basic tasks and operations were simply more intuitive to carry out thanks to the multi-touch interface. That really killed all the remaining netbooks still in use at the time, and many non-tech-savvy people were happy to use a small laptop-sized device that was much less intimidating to use than a traditional computer. All thanks to its user interface and its very operating system, that was not Mac OS X slapped on a touch-based device, but something that felt much more integrated and suitable for such a device. The learning curve was also low because people already knew iOS thanks to the iPhone’s success.

Then, unfortunately, Steve Jobs passed away.

I can see your eyes rolling from here, but bear with me. Although I’ve never denied my utter preference for Jobs’s leadership over Cook’s, I’m not trying to argue that the iPad would necessarily have had a better development and trajectory under Jobs, but it’s undeniable that the iPad is perhaps the device that has suffered the most from Jobs’s absence. Under his tenure, Apple released the first-generation iPad and the iPad 2. The iPad 2 was a first real improvement over the iPad 1: it was thinner, more powerful, and it had cameras. The iPads that came out afterwards, between 2012 and 2015, were essentially the same thing as the iPad 2, with obvious improvements in the hardware, and some improvements in the software. Conceptually, very little moved forward. The iPad Air 2, produced between 2014 and 2016, for all intents and purposes was just like the first iPad, just faster, better, and with more capable apps.

As for its conceptual evolution, as for changing the computing experience altogether, however, the iPad felt like a device stuck in stagnant waters. And it still felt pretty much like a device that didn’t know what it wanted to become. It was created as a consumption device first, with the ability to serve as an artistic tool for creation and to do the occasional productivity task if you tried really hard, with the right apps, and jumping through the right hoops. Styluses and external keyboards have always been usable on it, but the iPad has always been a ‘touch-first’ device, meant to be used like a tablet, not like an ultraportable laptop. I can’t speak for Jobs here, but I’m pretty sure he would have said something like, If you need to use the iPad as a laptop replacement, maybe it’s better if you just used a real laptop.

But then an increasing number of people, especially tech nerds, started to demand from Apple something more akin to Microsoft’s Surface in features and functionality. And Apple, from 2015–2016 onwards, started to oblige, little by little. And so they have been repurposing the iPad as it goes along without really jettisoning anything. The process has been utterly additive. Employing the famous Jobs’s analogy of trucks and cars, I’d say that from its origins as a sports car, the iPad has progressively become a sports car that can be retrofitted with a trailer, off-road tyres, a 4WD transmission, and so forth.

Some look at the latest iPad Pro, at the full support for mouse input in iPadOS 13.4, at the new Magic Keyboard with trackpad, as a winning combination of tools that make the iPad a truly versatile device. And maybe it is so from a practical standpoint. Again, conceptually, I look at ten years of the iPad and I see its trajectory as going from being a ‘jack of some trades, master of some’ to being a ‘jack of all trades, still master of some, but not all’.

The story and evolution of Microsoft’s Surface are perhaps simpler and less ambitious, but over the years have proceeded with a much clearer process, iterations, and intentions. Apple now probably aims for the iPad to be a sort of blank-slate device, so technically capable that it can do anything you want it to do. But all this retrofitting to make it also behave like a compact laptop has been — still is — a painful process to behold. I keep feeling the iPad could have been so much more in so many different, countercurrent ways, and all it has done in ten years is to become something more conventional.

Where the iPad is truly at the forefront today is hardware (industrial design + manufacturing + tech specs). But idea, concept, purpose? Not anymore. Others are trying to match the iPad in hardware, Apple is borrowing ideas and purposes from others. If there’s combined progress in all this, it’s inertial.

Again, I can’t be sure, I don’t have the ability to see alternate timelines, but I truly wonder what was Jobs’s ultimate idea for the iPad. What direction he wanted to point it. I’m not saying that things would have been better if Steve Jobs were still among us. But I’m sure we would have felt a stronger sense of direction for the iPad. A clearer vision, even if more polarising, perhaps.

What I felt back in 2010–2011 was that Jobs’s plan could have been to gradually evolve the iPad into a unique computing device, using the tablet format and the multi-touch interface to effectively revolutionise what it meant to be productive using something that is not a traditional computer; to end up with a device that could go beyond the old and established paradigms and metaphors of traditional desktop computing. If he had wanted the iPad to progressively become a Surface-like device, he would have probably sherlocked the aforementioned ModBook and create a touch MacBook with Mac OS X.

Maybe this is the root of my general feeling of disappointment in the iPad — that Apple didn’t make enough efforts to come up with a transformative UI that could revolutionise how people can be productive on a tablet, without having to resort to traditional paradigms and input devices. Without reinventing the computing wheel for so many tasks just so they can be easily carried out on an iPad, even when it would make much more sense to just use a laptop.

Yes, maybe my expectations have always been high on this front. But not unreasoningly so. Is it really too much to ask of a tablet today, after seeing how innovative certain parts of the Apple Newton’s user interface could be more than 20 years ago?

For some, having an iPad acquire more Surface-like capabilities may be a success, a much awaited move that will solve so many things. For me this move, that brings the iPad even closer to a Mac laptop in functionality, in turn makes the iPad even less compelling.

The big picture

Judging by previous feedback I received after publishing other articles on the iPad and ranting about my disappointment, a lot of people think I’m still clinging to the past, to the Mac and traditional computers, that I’m averse to change, that I’m ‘old’ and not flexible enough to adapt to this bright future of computing spearheaded by this incredibly awesome and innovative device that is the iPad.

Others mistake my criticism for the iPad at the conceptual level for criticism aimed at the device itself. Nothing could be further from the truth. I do think the iPad is an impressive device. I don’t deny it’s an engineering feat. I absolutely think you can do all kinds of serious work on it. And I’m happy for all those who are able to make the most of it. (Yes, whenever the iPad vs Mac debate rages on Twitter, I have indeed indulged in some sarcasm. But come on, who doesn’t on Twitter?)

However, as someone who for several years has cultivated a deep interest for the history of computing and the user interface, I simply can’t look at the iPad (or the Surface, for that matter) and see real progress. Again, I’m not talking about computing power and features. The iPad Pro today is so much more powerful than a supercomputer from the 1970s. I’m talking conceptually. The ideas that drove the computer scientists at RAND corporation to create the RAND tablet in the mid-1960s were more advanced in scope than the ideas behind any tablet available today. And in certain respects more daring, as that tablet was meant to be operated without any keyboard whatsoever. It had an amazing handwriting recognition for the time, and all input came via its stylus. And some of the capabilities of Sketchpad, the groundbreaking program written by Ivan Sutherland in 1963, are still hard to beat in intuitiveness and execution, almost sixty years later.

So when I see a tablet device in 2020 become more usable thanks to it finally supporting mouse input of all things, and not because of some other advancement in touch technology, input method, user interaction or user interface design, forgive me if I feel underwhelmed and a bit disheartened. What we do with our devices today is something people like Alan Kay envisaged in the 1960s and 1970s. So no, I’m not clinging to the past or averse to change. I see where we are today and I’m baffled we haven’t advanced further. Or rather, the hardware has. But concepts, paradigms and metaphors are still the ones that have been circulating for more than sixty years. Today I see future-looking hardware marred by backward-looking software, interfaces, and interactions. In a sense, everyone’s clinging to the past, in a way or another.

Then why do I still choose the Mac over the iPad? Until I see real progress on those fronts I mentioned above, why should I waste time, money, and energies to be able to do on an iPad the same things I can already do with ease, experience and efficiency on a Mac? I would gladly undergo the re-learning process if that meant mastering a new device or interface concept that would bring significant benefits over ‘the old ways’ in terms of interaction, productivity, fulfilment, and so forth — or even something new in a meaningful way, something that was not possible before. But for now I keep seeing ‘the old ways’ re-emerge here and there behind the external layer of coolness of the iPad. I can’t be averse to change when I don’t even really perceive change in the first place.

1. A reference to the famous quote attributed to Henry Ford (used by Steve Jobs as well): “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” ↩︎