Knee Pad Computing
Posted in Inspiration, Latest, Thoughts - March 31, 2010 - tim
Maybe it’s just me, but in watching Apple’s predictably beautiful new video guided tours of the iPad I got completely distracted by knees.
Do I have a knee fetish?
But they’re everywhere. As I watched one video after another (there are about a dozen) it was like “ok, here comes the knee shot …”. By the fourth video I couldn’t even follow the story it got so self-conscious.
When the “laptop” came out it was pretty cool. You could kick back on the couch and set the thing in your lap and we all thought how cool we were. But you could also just as easily set it on a flat surface, tilt the screen just right, and work just as easily: keyboard flat, screen up.
But with the iPad – and the whole tablet thing in general – we’re entering new territory from a usability perspective. There’s been lots of discussion about how the iPad should/will be used, whether it needs a “kickstand”, how to type. Ad nauseum.
But really. Click through the pictures above: they’re all pulled from the videos. The “ok, now I have to find something to prop my feet on” awkwardness pops up in all but two of the videos by my reckoning (and even then you have the “what do I prop this thing against on the table” awkwardness, mixed in with the “ok, now I have to lay it down to type then prop it back up” awkwardness).
Look, let’s be clear. I’m obviously going to buy one of these things like everyone else (although I usually wait for v2, which was a good idea with the iPhone), but it’s going to be interesting to see – starting this Saturday – how we all “lean back” together.
It’s the lean back revolution.
(Maybe this allegorically speaks to our standing as the great American aggressive inventive lean-forward busy society: are we “retiring”?)
Who makes ottoman’s and coffee tables? I’m buying stock.
Velcro pants?
