iPad: Getting Beyond The Simplistic Consumption vs Creation Dialectic

Blogger Fraser Spiers says when the iPad first launched, many people opted for a quick analysis that it was a device “only for content consumption,”observing that despite time and experience having proven those people quite obviously wrong, debate seems to persist as to what the iPad is, precisely, for.

Spiers thinks the iPad can now serve satisfactorily for about 80% of all tasks you can conceivably do on a computer. Your editor would peg it more at 50%-50% based on empirical real-world experience, but its a moving target and your mileage may vary of course.

Spiers is probably correct, however, that the consumption/creation split is far too simplistic a curve to grade these devices on, that there’s far more subtlety that we can reach for, and that we have to move beyond simplistic arguments about consumption and creation, proposing that we can instead look at the ‘sweet spot’ for each type of device along two axes: task complexity and task duration.

Task duration is the more obvious of the two: how long of a continuous period will you be using your device for the task.

Task complexity requires a little more unpacking…..

You can check it out at:
http://goo.gl/4kV5W