KeyLimeTie Blog

Apple's iPad Opens Opportunities for New Applications and Interactions

By Tim Courtney – 1/29/2010. Posted to Thoughts.

Wednesday's much anticipated iPad tablet device appears to be, at first glance, a scaled-up version of the iPhone. By releasing the iPad, Apple is carving out a new category of device, and a new way people will interact with computers. Over the past ten years, there have been many unsuccessful attempts at building a widely-adopted tablet PC, so of course there is skepticism.

It would be easy to dismiss this device as nothing special, before considering how the App Store made the iPhone and the iPod Touch into the outstandingly popular devices they are today. At this point, we've just seen what Apple (and a select group from the developer community) have done with the iPad. The real applications are yet to come, thanks to the limitless creativity of the iPhone—and now iPad—developer community, including companies like KeyLimeTie.

Further, industry reporters like TechCrunch's MG Seigler explain why the iPad will succeed; its target audience is the 75 million iPhone and iPod Touch users. These people will know how to use the iPad right out of the gate.

Those people will also grow more and more accustomed to a web you can touch, with full web pages now practical on the iPad screen and people used to pinching and swiping their way around your site, making purchases, downloading documents, playing games, writing comments. The web as we know it will evolve, interaction design will shift, as the iPad and other tablets capture our share of screen time.

Many people will opt to leave the laptop at home and use the iPad for communications, eBook reading, entertainment, and even productivity when larger screens and computing power aren't required. But, imagine for a moment a restaurant menu displayed on an iPad, or iPads being used to process transactions in a retail store. That, of course, is just the start.

Here are some others' thoughts on the iPad's viability: