I finally got around to watching the iPad 2 event video. While the one movie showing the iPad's unusual uses was up, an idea hit me when it came to the DJ app. I wanted to share and talk about this, thus.
You know how The Future is always depicted as having technology that basically does everything and more than individual pieces of hardware once did?
Basically, it seems Apple has brought us that future. Though there are thousands of examples, the most immediate one is that DJ app: with the iPad, a piece of software has replaced what was once a piece of hardware.
TV, jukebox, Scrabble, camera, musical keyboard, guitar, empty canvas to draw artwork upon. Fifty years ago, these were all physical things — and what else could they be? There was no other option. In the last couple of decades computers brought things like Scrabble to the screen, along with video and music.
Now, in Apple's 'post-PC' era, seemingly everything that once required hardware to offer an interface that didn't react to any external substances can now be a piece of software. (You can't build, say, a blood dialysis machine onto the screen of an iPad, but you could (theoretically and with a bit difficulty, I admit) replace a car's dashboard — steering wheel, gear shifter, and windshield wipers included — with a piece of software on a screen.)
Apple's obviously been the leader in getting us here. If it weren't for the iPhone and touch-based iOS, the smartest phone might still be a Treo and its stylus.
Though the technological future shall inevitably arrive, I think Apple might be the integral player for a long time to come (and I believe this has a basis outside of fanboyism). With their mountains of gold just sitting in the bank, they can leverage a lot of things.
I really have no idea, but it feels to me that one of the reasons the cheapest iPad is only $500 is because Apple can afford to not make the full R&D&design cost for all of its products from the MSRP (note, the true cost of the cheapest iPhone is what, $800?) Through the "Apple tax", Apple has been able to gain money, and sometimes I think they use it to help the consumership. Where did that giant North Carolina data center come from? If MobileMe goes free and it Revolutionizes™ the device-to-cloud interraction, it's because Apple has the money sitting around to do very many things if they so choose.
Microsoft, on the other hand. Surface, anyone? If MS had any idea of what they were doing, they could have beat the iPad into tablet existence. If they wanted to make an advanced tablet and put it in users' hands at $200, taking a bit of a loss for the sake of building a new category just to mark one check off on the to-do list of the future, they have way more money, and means, and publicity than Apple to do so. But no. And they scrapped the Courier. And Engadget just reported a rumor that the first MS tablet OS won't be out till 2012. But hey, the Xbox is nice and successful (when its ring doesn't red). Money is only a route to New Things when you know what the hell to do with it, and I believe Microsoft has no idea (and other tech companies with ideas don't have a lot of money).
In conclusion, I can safely see Apple building a lot of the technological infrastructure for the Future that movies like to depict.
I wouldn't be surprised if, some day in the next three decades, they are leaders in developing smart roads for cars to drive themselves on. Sure, they won't be the first (the technology exists today), but they might be the ones to make it work and not kill you because of a broken driver (
). And one of our fellow 'Novers mentioned this in the iPad 2 thread I think (or was it an Engadget article?): Apple's not in the game to be first, nor to one-up other devices' specs just to have the best hardware. They're in it to do what hasn't yet been done. It's this mindset that makes the future.
The first spaceship to get us out of the solar system might just be possible because of something Apple helped to perfect, eh? (If we haven't committed global suicide by then, mind.) Maybe my personal robot overlord will have an Apple logo too.
So, what do you think? Does any of this seem not surrealistic or insane? Will Apple fall and leave use with Windows 500 and its permanent Start menu on a touch screen?