Wedding photographers offer iPads preloaded with the couple’s wedding album:

This only works because the iPad is itself both beautiful and intuitive. A photographer would need to be confident in both these qualities before presenting an iPad as an option.

NYT on Why HP Fired Mark Hurd:

The way H.P. made its numbers, Mr. House said, was not just cutting any old costs, but by “chopping R.&D.,” which had always been sacred at H.P. The research and development budget used to be 9 percent of revenue, Mr. House told me; now it was closer to 2 percent. “In the personal computer group, it is seven-tenths of 1 percent,” he added. “That’s why H.P. had no response to the iPad.”

Now I know why my HP LaserJet 3055 still won’t scan in Mac OS 10.6.

Your iPhone is a blank slate—a chameleon—by design. Consider what it says that there’s no Apple logo on the front of your iPhone:

Respectful. “You and your content are important.”
Tasteful. “Why mar an elegant design with logos. And how does that help you?”
Determined. “Hey, your carrier’s logo didn’t just not appear there all by itself.”
Confident. “You’ll recognize it’s ours even without the logo.”

Now, consider what it says when a competitor slaps a prominent logo on the front of their device:

Disrespectful. “We’re important. You take second place.”
Tasteless. “The logo stays, period.”
Timid. “Sure, we’re happy to put your carrier logo on there, too!”
Unconfident. “Without the logo, how will you know who made it?”

This goes double for wordmarks, which when placed on the face of a device on which you’ll be reading can only hamper that reading.

In this sense, good design requires courage. Apple’s not shy about displaying their logo, but they are judicious. On a small device like the iPhone, where there’s simply no room to display a logo without intruding upon the content itself, the logo goes on the back.

When Steve Jobs at the recent Antennagate media event said Apple loves its users, this is what he meant: “We work really hard for you, and when a tough decision has to be made, we ask the same question: How does this help the user?”

Derek Powazek, on Thoughts on Designing for iPad:

Nicely put.

If you haven’t yet played Spider: Bryce Mansion (iTunes link) for iPad, you should. You’re a spider in an abandoned mansion, spinning webs by shooting strands of silk between whatever’s handy: picture frames, statues, light fixtures. As you travel from the basement to the roof you uncover intriguing clues about the missing residents and what happened to them.

It’s beautiful. The subtle design really draws you in: different prey make different sounds—and different sounds again when they’re ensnared; spinning a web is near impossible in some spots where juicy flies lie just out of reach. Throughout the many levels gorgeous artwork and delightful detail surprise.

It’s fun. There are many extra ways to play the game, including two-spider play, where you can spin webs with a friend and race to eat the hapless prey. It sounds gruesome, but isn’t. Who knew that being a spider trapping insects in an abandoned mansion could be so enchanting? The thrill of taking down a hornet, or herding dragonflies towards a web adds to the pleasure.

It’s well-written. In two-spider mode the screen zooms in and out as necessary to keep both spiders visible—you over on the far left trying to complete a web between two tables and your friend over on the far right exploring an old cabinet. Despite the zooming and frenzied web spinning and leaping, the gameplay never falters.

Games like this, conceived on the iPhone but coming into their own on the iPad, show a fun future.

blackplasticglasses.com says Apple has aimed the iPad at education, particularly higher education, by first delivering iWork on a great content device:

By putting the horse before the cart, Apple will have given students what they want first, only then following it with the education content they will need. In other words, if the iPad can achieve the market penetration of the iPhone/iPod Touch, Apple will have a legion of students on campuses a year or two from now who will be ready to buy and read their textbooks on the iPad. No education hardware selling needed — just release the content and watch it work.

— The iPad: Gateway Drug to Digital Learning?, blackplasticglasses.com, May 5th, 2010

Apple’s thoughts on Flash couldn’t be clearer.

Flash was created during the PC era – for PCs and mice. Flash is a successful business for Adobe, and we can understand why they want to push it beyond PCs. But the mobile era is about low power devices, touch interfaces and open web standards – all areas where Flash falls short.

The avalanche of media outlets offering their content for Apple’s mobile devices demonstrates that Flash is no longer necessary to watch video or consume any kind of web content. And the 200,000 apps on Apple’s App Store proves that Flash isn’t necessary for tens of thousands of developers to create graphically rich applications, including games.

New open standards created in the mobile era, such as HTML5, will win on mobile devices (and PCs too). Perhaps Adobe should focus more on creating great HTML5 tools for the future, and less on criticizing Apple for leaving the past behind.

— Thoughts on Flash, Steve Jobs, April 29, 2010

Apple’s recent patent activity shows a clear interest in bringing Near Field Communications (NFC) to your iPhone (and any other iPhone OS devices, including iPod touch and iPad).

This patent describes how travelers might use their iPhone to:
* make travel reservations
* purchase tickets
* check-in, including luggage
* prove identity
* pass through security more quickly

It’s fascinating to watch this broad vision being implemented piece by piece. NFC is about to explode onto the world in surprising ways, from controlling your living room entertainment center to buying concert tickets.

And those many scenarios will help to promote the iPhone still further: imagine you’re waiting at the ticket counter in the airport and you see someone walk up, wave their iPhone over a piece of machinery—beep, beep—and walk away, job completed, while you’re still in line. Or you attend a concert and your friend shows you afterwards in the parking lot that she has already downloaded the new music you just heard.

First you’re going to think: How did they do that?
And then: How do I get an iPhone so I can do it too?

There’s an interesting article in today’s Philadelphia Inquirer on Peter Bohlin, the creator of the glass cube in front of Apple’s Fifth Avenue store in New York City. Jobs’ vision for the stores was remarkably prescient:

Jobs, who met Bohlin when the architect was overseeing a new headquarters for his Pixar animation studio, was aware that he had never designed a store interior. But he didn’t care about that handicap, said Karl Backus, the principal in BCJ’s San Francisco office who manages the firm’s Apple projects. That’s because Jobs thought of the stores not as retail spaces but as social spaces.

Jobs believed it was more important for the stores to offer a unique and compelling experience, in much the way that a Frank Gehry-designed museum does. Otherwise, why would people bother to make a special trip to buy a product they could order more easily on the Web?

— Old-school architect creates an iOpener, philly.com, March 22, 2010

An interesting glimpse (with videos) of how Penguin Books envisions next-generation books for iPad.

A copy of Pride And Prejucide might conceivably come with videos of Keira Knightly and Colin Firth (the movie adaptation’s cast), he said, but: “We need to understand how much the consumer will pay for that, we need to engage in dynamic pricing.

— First Look: How Penguin Will Reinvent Books With iPad, paidcontent.co.uk, March 2, 2010

“Prejucide” made me laugh, but including a video with the book sounds questionable to me. You interpret books as you read them, including envisioning the characters. A filmed version of the book is unavoidably interpretive and cannot help but color your own interpretation, even taint it.