August 01, 2010

borthwick on the ipad

Great in-depth post from John Borthwick on his impressions of the iPad. I particularly loved the bits about reading apps (Flipboard and the like) and how they're filling a need created by the overwhelming streaminess of FB and Twitter on the one hand, and the glutted up u/x of websites on the other...

Something has to give here — surfing the web works very well on the iPad, the surfing works, the problem is that its the web sites that dont.

The issues embedded in these readers stretch back to the beginning of the web — all the way back to the moment that HTML and then RSS formed a layer, a standard, for the abstraction of underlying data vs. its representation.   Regardless of your view of the touch based interface its undeniable that the iPad represents a meaningful shift in how you can view information.    Match that with the insanity of how many web sites look today and you have a rich opportunity for innovation.

Worth reading in full.