Apple sold more iPads last quarter than any computer manufacturer in the world sold PCs. Read that again.
Apple sold 15.4-million iPads between October and December. Compare this to HP (15.1-million PCs), Lenovo (13-million PCs), Dell (11.9-million PCs) and Acer (9.8-million PCs) and suddenly you’ll realise why we saw over 100 tablet competitors launched during 2011 by every hardware manufacturer.
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Tablets > PCs.
iPad > PC.
And, as much as Twitter and tech blogs tried to have you believe otherwise, the use of the phrase “Post PC” at the new iPad launch was not the first time we’ve heard it. In fact, despite Tim Cook repeating it throughout Apple’s keynote on Wednesday, it was Steve Jobs who foretold the future. The PC is just another device, Jobs reminded us at the launch of iCloud. By then the Post PC revolution was already real.
You need to think back to the launch of the iPad (the first one), where we saw Jobs demoing the device while seated on a couch/sofa. The implication was that iPad was a consumption device. It would be the way to consume content, media, movies and the web.
Apple knew all along that the content creation tools and experiences would come.
The launch of GarageBand last year with iPad2 perfectly illustrated Apple’s intent. And it wasn’t GarageBand for OSX ported to iOS, this was completely repurposed for a touch experience. It also rebuilt the iWork suite for iPad.
iPhoto, which made its debut for iPad Wednesday, was widely expected and is a continuation of this strategy. Editing photos on a PC has never felt natural. Sure, the pros and semi-pros love wading through hundreds of pics in Lightroom or Photoshop, but consumers want to be able to do simple editing and sharing of their photos. iPhoto for iPad wins. This is about the experience.
I never use iPhoto for Mac to edit photos, just organize them. I absolutely will use iPhoto for iPad to edit.
— MG Siegler (@parislemon) March 7, 2012
The ever-so-slight mention that iPhoto would also be available for iPhone was perhaps the biggest understatement of the entire keynote.
Beyond the creation tools that Apple announced, the upgrades to iPad have been widely reported as “evolutionary” rather than revolutionary. What is not revolutionary about a retina display that has greater definition than an HD television?
Perhaps we’ve become used to expecting too much from Apple.
And despite Apple’s insistence (and validation) that we’re living in the Post PC era, nearly every single news report goes into excruciating detail about the new iPad’s technical specifications.
Headlines like this are just plain daft. Very few people are going to notice the size and weight difference. Consumers do not care. They don’t care how much RAM it has, what processor it uses, or how many wireless bands are supported (apparently the most ever in a device).
I want to know that it is better, faster and that its battery lasts longer.
I want to know what I can do with it.
And this is why Apple is winning. It’s not selling you dual core and quad-core, 7 inch, 7.7 inch, 8.9 inch 10.1 inch and 12 inch tablets.
One iPad. The only decision a consumer has to make is how much storage they want.
It’s selling an experience.
And it is this good.
