Tyler’s Toolbox

I’m a big fan of Paul Buchheit, the guy coined “Don’t be evil” and created both Gmail and Friendfeed. Now he’s working at Facebook, cooking up exciting things I’m sure.  He’s wrote a post about product design, using the iPod, iPad and Gmail as examples today. It’s a great read if you’re thinking about how to build a new product.  It is required reading for all entrepreneurs.

He thinks about the iPad similarly to me, which makes me pretty excited — when smart people come to the same conclusion as you entirely separately, you are on to something; and Paul is very, very smart.  I’m humbled and excited.  Here are excerpts from our two posts, back to back:

Here’s what I wrote:

The most impressive innovation, and the one that truly makes Ambient Computing possible, was the A4 chip.  That chip is at the hart of the new devices speed and responsiveness. While, I hope this new chip design extends to the iPhone in the future, it currently, makes the iPad capable of near-instant boot and it empowers applications to be incredibly responsive.  It removes all of the experience associated with computing other than getting into your desired program and completing your goal.

If Apple has built a machine that almost entirely removes the starting cost of completing an action on a traditional computer (which, even in good scenarios, often takes 20-30 seconds on non apple machines), then it has created a machine that’s much more capable of capturing cognitive inspiration from it’s owner – making you, as the user, more likely to act on your ideas.  Apple is already good at this (going from sleep/closed to working on a new macbook is generally a sub-10 second proposition), but carrying a laptop with you everywhere is a nuisance, and pulling a computer out of your bag for a 1 minute task in most situations is awkward (and often rude). Smartphones already handle these issues well, but they are generally sluggish and unreliable for anything but the simplest tasks.

…

If I was Scott Forstall, I’d be focused on empowering applications that resonate heavily with this crowd:  cookbooks come to mind, board games also, news/photos/communication will be killer (and already are on the machine), what else?

Here’s Paul’s take:

So where does this leave the iPad, with it’s lack of process managers, file managers, window managers, and all the other “missing” junk? I’m not sure, but one thing I’ve noticed is that I spend more time browsing the web from my iPhone than from my laptop. I’m not entirely sure why, but part of it is the simplicity. My iPhone is ready to use in under 1/2 second, while my laptop always takes at least a few seconds to wake up, and then there’s a bunch of stuff going on that distracts me. The iPhone is a simple appliance that I use without a second thought, but my laptop feels like a complex machine that causes me to pause and consider if it’s worth the effort right now. The downside of the iPhone is that it’s small and slow (though the smallness is certainly a feature as well). That alone guarantees that I’ll buy one to leave sitting next to the couch, but I’m kind of atypical.

Ultimately, the real value of this device will be in the new things that people do once they have a fast, simple, and sharable internet window sitting around. At home we’ll casually browse the web, share photos (in person), and play board games (Bret’s idea — very compelling)…

Today marked an historic announcement. Surprisingly, I’m not talking about Obama’s first State of the Union, but rather Steve Jobs’ unveiling of the new iPad.  So, how has Uncle Steve changed the game? Let’s take a look.

A perfect machine for Baby Boomers

I’m convinced the iPad is the perfect unit for a selling into a large market that hasn’t been catered to yet, has plenty of disposable income, and is would benefit the most immediately from what we will all come to recognize as a new type of computer: Baby Boomers.

At the time of the 2000 census, there were more than 79-million Baby Boomers in the US whom are now starting to slow down the pace of their daily lives as they transition towards retirement. Their personal computing needs (outside the office) aren’t very intensive — they communicate via email, read the news, share photos, maybe use video chat and do light research.

So, it would seem that current laptop or desktop computers do far more than is necessary for this audience.  And since added complexity often causes frustration, there may be a better solution. What would the perfect “home computer” for a boomer look like?

That machine would be:
- Simple to understand and use
- Quickly capable of completing tasks (see below)
- Be available whenever and wherever a need to interact with the digital world arose.

Here’s what that computer should be able to accomplish:
- Email/Calendar
- Booking movie tickets or reservations online
- Looking up references (online recipes, fact checking, manuals, etc.)
- Video chating with their family
- Storing pictures of family trips or events
- Occasionally doing light amounts of work
- Online Banking
(note: this is not intended to be exhaustive list,)

When you think about a machine that handles those common tasks well, and does so in a very responsive and always accessible way, the iPad is really the first good answer (more will follow if the iPad is successful).

Apple creates Ambient Computing

This type of machine represents a new concept — Ambient Computing.  Ambient Computing is robust enough to handle most computing tasks but requires much less effort to access than a traditional computer.

The most impressive innovation, and the one that truly makes Ambient Computing possible, was the A4 chip.  That chip is at the hart of the new devices speed and responsiveness. While, I hope this new chip design extends to the iPhone in the future, it currently, makes the iPad capable of near-instant boot and it empowers applications to be incredibly responsive.  It removes all of the experience associated with computing other than getting into your desired program and completing your goal.

If Apple has built a machine that almost entirely removes the starting cost of completing an action on a traditional computer (which, even in good scenarios, often takes 20-30 seconds on non apple machines), then it has created a machine that’s much more capable of capturing cognitive inspiration from it’s owner – making you, as the user, more likely to act on your ideas.  Apple is already good at this (going from sleep/closed to working on a new macbook is generally a sub-10 second proposition), but carrying a laptop with you everywhere is a nuisance, and pulling a computer out of your bag for a 1 minute task in most situations is awkward (and often rude). Smartphones already handle these issues well, but they are generally sluggish and unreliable for anything but the simplest tasks.

Bridging the accessibility of a mobile device with the robustness and trustworthiness of a full computer, will appeal to the large audience generally — which will grow over time.  But, Apple’s best bet for establishing this device category is to put up impressive sales numbers for the first model.  There’s also a huge immediate ability to replace the standard machine for lightweight home PC users – like baby boomers, as outlined above — or families, as outlined by Kottke.  If I was Scott Forstall, I’d be focused on empowering applications that resonate heavily with this crowd:  cookbooks come to mind, board games also, news/photos/communication will be killer (and already are on the machine), what else?

Sure, there are fairly unacceptable limitations like no camera, no easy solution for printing/scanning periphery, and questionable support of other screens (TV) for media content, which will have to be ironed out in V2. There are also broader reaching issues that might cause trouble for Apple: like the lack of flash support and the inability to show and track most web advertisements in mobile Safari. But with the hardware improvements announced today, the content and consumer-billing relationships Apple has built, and the knowledge that they can improve over several generations (do you remember the first iPod?), I think we are looking at a large market that Apple has a good chance of succeeding in.

That’s why I’m bullish on the iPad. With the keyboard dock, this could be a full-on replacement PC for some non-power consumers (Think of  WebTV — and trust me, WebTV users didn’t need multi-tasking). For heavier users, this still provides a great “ambient computing” experience that can allow someone to act on their immediate thoughts with far lower effort (creating more personal value), while still having a more robust machine capable of handling more demanding tasks.

I’m concerned about the movement away from open systems, but, that doesn’t change the writing on the wall for this type of device need — kudos to Apple for seeing and defining a great first step at an ambient computing device that I expect to become a category definer.

Great job Apple.

I recently received a text message from my friend, Wes, that asked me when I was going to get back to blogging. One of the personal projects littering my to-do list was to get a redesign for my personal site so that I could start pointing people there with pride. The last design on this page was something I hacked together in Drupal – and while the basic template I started with was OK, what it became looked like Frankenstein’s monster.

Given some experience around working on a few WordPress sites (SWSF, HHU, WA) and the new job of my friend Marianne, I knew it was time to make the switch. It’s just the best blogging platform I’ve tried (which are: Drupal, MovableType, and Blogger). That was a few months ago, and this weekend, I finally got around to doing it. This new theme is beautiful!

So, I owe a few seconds of thanks. First to Wes for the kick in the pants, then to Marianne for the inspiration, and finally to Derek Punsalan for creating such an awesome theme.

For the blog, I’ll be trying to keep it updated with a good mix of both well thought out and half baked ideas; for most posts – I’ll follow the intention behind Michael Gruen’s “word sushi,” if not the rule.

As for design, I’ve identified a few things I love about this template.

• LtR navigation. Content on the left, other stuff I’m creating in the middle, and finally things I recommend on the right. The recommendations should be well thought out by me and easy to add to, but additions/changes should be rare as I want to be sure it’s worth recommending. Having to create an image to recommend somethig accomplishes that naturally.
• Color Seperation – My creations are black and white, the recommend images can be in color – esp. if I didn’t create them.
• The tagline at the top is a great place for expansion (favorite quotes, personal taglines, etc).
• The post layout itself is elegant.
  • The small comment bubbles highlight changes or activity without calling too much attention to the fact that my blog isn’t highly trafficked. The titles are clea, the text is comeptitive enough to be able to hold your eye with decent ease (not perfect, but good-enough).

I might end up moving the share this icon to the right side – but it would then be easier to confuse as part of the preceding post, and I don’t love the date placement – but I can’t think of a better place to put it. I’ll also need to fill in or parse down the menu bar contents, that blank space is an odd size. These are small issues in an overall beautiful design. I may begin to add more content to the middle column, as I’ve done with my twitter updates, but I think it’s important to keep them text links to maintain the look of the site.

OK, so I’m happy to show off the site and now I’ve got an easy medium to express some more lengthy thoughts (as opposed to: tumblr, which is to be inspired and to post inspirational or important ‘quick links, cheap shots, bon mots‘ — and twitter, which is for keeping people up to date on my life and my thoughts).