Near the end of yesterday’s unveiling of the iPad (that’s really the name, cue middle school jokes), Steve Jobs presented this slide (Gizmodo):

While I cannot weigh in on the magical properties of the iPad until it flies from Hogwarts on its broomstick into the hands of perspirating Apple fanboys the world over (narrowly missing its chance at catching the Golden Snitch), I believe we have enough information to contest how revolutionary it actually is.

Princeton’s WordNet defines revolutionary as “markedly new or introducing radical change.” How so?

The device uses an improved version of the iPhone OS, and its apps are written using the same SDK. Applications are accessed via a paginated grid of icons (as on the iPhone). Like the iPhone, only one application may run at a time with occasional, Apple-sanctioned exceptions (such as iTunes playback).

It connects to the web via WiFi or, if you pay for a premium model and a monthly subscription, a 3G connection (just like the iPhone or Kindle, minus the subscription fee in the latter case).

The hardware is essentially a cross between a first-generation iPhone and the top half of a unibody MacBook. The screen is capacitive multitouch, with an onscreen keyboard larger than that of the iPhone or Windows 7. The display size is 10 inches (about the size of an average netbook). The display resolution is 1024 by 768 pixels, the same as Lenovo’s Thinkpad X61 Tablet (released in 2007). It is roughly the same thickness as the MacBook Air.

The iPad introduces an iBooks store that sells basically the same catalog as Amazon and Barnes & Noble offer for their respective e-readers, though slightly more expensive. The books are downloaded in ePub format, the standard for most reading devices with the exception of the Kindle.

The cheapest iPad model starts at $499, a few hundred dollars more expensive than a typical netbook. The most capable model is priced at $829, a couple hundred dollars more than a multitouch laptop.

What’s “markedly new?”

I anticipate many will respond “the product category,” but that’s a flimsy explanation at best. The iPad is basically a giant iPod Touch with optional 3G, no phone service, no camera and no additional storage. Apple continually questions the legitimacy of the netbook category, but they’re in a glass house on this one. If “giant iPod Touch with optional 3G” is a product category, then so is “cheap, tiny laptop” (also with optional 3G).

Even newly-introduced features like iBooks barely surpass the competition, largely through the use of superfluous interface niceties like page turns and three-dimensional bookshelves.

In nearly every respect, the iPad is a strictly evolutionary product. Cool-looking, probably fun to use, but not revolutionary in any sense.

What could have been

Like many, I had high hopes for the iPad. I was enamored with the possibility of the additional screen real estate coupled with multitouch and a 3G connection.

I thought for sure that iBooks would include support for periodicals. As nice as the iPad’s screen looks, what a waste for it to render page after page of black-and-white text! I want to flip through WIRED or Communication Arts on this thing. Steve Jobs is Disney’s largest shareholder, which just bought Marvel Comics for crying out loud! Support for the magazines and comics I love without having to wastefully plop them into the recycle bin each month would have made this a no-question purchase for me.

Video on the iPhone is impractical due to a dearth of storage space, with tiny screens banishing playback to the realm of mere novelty. The iPad has a gorgeous screen, but no additional storage and no subscription-based service or even Hulu/Netflix integration to circumvent it. In foregoing these possibilities, Apple may have inadvertently allowed a natural successor to the Apple TV pass them by.

I’m not shocked that they didn’t include a front-facing camera for video conferencing via iChat or Skype, but the exclusion of any camera at all is quite baffling.

iPossibility

While the iPhone innovated both as a device and as a platform, iPad’s future seems wholly staked in the latter. As mentioned earlier, it shares an operating system with the iPhone, and for good reason. As much as I love my tablet PC, traditional desktop paradigms do not translate gracefully to a touch interface. Apple wisely decided to force developers to create touch-friendly interfaces through a familiar SDK rather than offer clunky support for more open OS X applications. The unfortunate side effect of this is that the iPad’s usefulness is reliant on developers and the App Store approval process.

An iPad version of the Adobe Creative Suite would be a killer app for artists and designers, but creating a device-centric version of necessary scope would require a daunting amount of time and money to develop for a market largely dominated by 99-cent applications. This makes the future of these platform-specific productivity apps uncertain at best.

This doesn’t mean the iPad isn’t right for anyone. If you were planning on buying a netbook in addition to an e-reader and a 3G card for your laptop, the iPad is a usable and comparatively affordable convergence of all three. If you find desktop computers scary but enter a calm, trance-like state while using your iPhone, you might avoid a Mac or PC in favor of one of these puppies.

Otherwise, my verdict is to hold off. In a year or two we’ll likely see more revisions of the device, and developers will have either breathed life into the platform or let it die on the vine. Personally, I’m hoping for the former.

One of the biggest disappointments I continually encounter when teaching web design is losing students to rich media plugins, most commonly Flash. These closed, proprietary sirens singing talented designers and developers out to sea rob the Semantic Web of some truly creative minds.

Students often look at the Web and see a minefield of limitations. Several times I’ve approached students with stellar HTML/CSS/JavaScript-based work to ask about their career plans, only to hear “I’d rather pursue Flash work.” No matter how many times I offer tomorrow, many students are only interested in now.

I evangelize the Semantic Web clearly and passionately in my lectures, but arguments of principal, search engine optimization and accessibility often flounder in view of visually-engaging, rich web media. There is a fine line between designer and artist; in order to appeal to these minds, we must impress them on a more visceral level.

Given time, I think HTML5 and CSS3 are up to the task. My arsenal of compelling examples has been growing exponentially.

Mouse over the DVD cases when viewing For A Beautiful Web in Safari 4 and you’ll encounter some gorgeous and purposeful rotation-based animation that degrades gracefully for less-abled browsers.

In Mac OS X Snow Leopard, Guillermo Esteves has recreated the Star Wars Episode IV marquee for Webkit users (perspective and all).

Firefox 3.6 introduces support for the File API, making drag-and-drop file selection possible (thereby trumping Flash’s previously-superior selection capability).

Webkit users who opt-in to bleeding edge features can now experience YouTube and Vimeo sans Flash players using only HTML5′s built-in media support. The result is stunningly indistinguishable from Flash video playback.

These examples may appear to be small victories, but their importance cannot be overstated. We are watching the capabilities of HTML and CSS progress more rapidly (and with farther-reaching effect) than their rich media cousins. In a Web where the capabilities of Flash and HTML are roughly equivalent (or perhaps even lopsided), the choice will be abundantly clear.

Address all audiences via the Semantic Web, or keep playing in your sandbox. Which sounds more fulfilling to you?

In just a few short days, Collins Design (an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers) will release Designing for the Great Good, a new book celebrating the best in marketing and design for nonprofit and organizations (incidentally the first of its kind).

I’m extremely pleased to be included in the publication. The logo I created for the Vancouver-based music and dance organization Luceo is featured therein. Luceo taught me to play an A, B and G on my guitar before I moved back to Oregon, so seeing their logo in print is extra special for me.

From the publisher’s press release:

Created as a comprehensive resource for designers, creative professionals, marketers, corporate communications departments and nonprofit leaders, Designing for the Greater Good is based on authors Peleg Top and Jonathan Cleveland’s nearly 40 years of combined experience working with nonprofits and corporate communications departments across the country.

“After nearly a decade of studying cause marketing campaigns, I know that strong design is absolutely critical to success,” commented David Hessekiel, president, Cause Marketing Forum. “As a unique showcase of campaigns that stand out from the crowd, Designing for the Greater Good is a valuable addition to the cause marketing literature. This collection of work, often created in spite of low budgets and organizational impediments, should be an inspiration to creatives, nonprofit and corporate marketers alike.”

The official release date is January 26th, but you can pre-order the book now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Borders. I’d want a copy for my shelf even if I wasn’t in it!

Update (January 28): I received my copy today, and it looks amazing! The cover has a beautiful metallic finish to the type that has to be seen to be appreciated.

I’m very glad that my name is spelled correctly and even happier at how nice the logo looks (on page 227 if you’re curious). I am a bit puzzled as to why they listed my city as Newberg, Oregon. I’m sure Newberg is lovely, but seeing as I’ve never been there, my association with the town is grossly inaccurate.

Most of you know that I’ve been a Senior Experience Designer at Waggener Edstrom since August, and today I began writing for their recently-redesigned Thinkers & Doers blog.

My debut entry declares with gusto that It’s Time to Abolish “Click Here to…”. It should interest anyone who creates content for the web.

This is not a shift away from my journal here at good ol’ Me Dot Com, but merely a chance to speak to a subtly different audience. If anything, it’s re-invigorated my passion for writing in general.

I encourage you to read the post and, if you dig it, let me know.

Oh, and stop writing “click here.” Sound good?

I think this has happened to every web developer at one point or another: You complete and launch a site, revel in it’s glory, January 1st passes you by and suddenly, embarrassingly, the site proudly proclaims the previous year in the footer!

Ack! How’d you miss that? So unprofessional.

Many of you have probably used the following solution to combat this troublesome oversight:

<?php echo date('Y'); ?>

In PHP, this displays the current year. But what if you want to intelligently display a span of time, regardless if your project launched this year or five years ago?

Here’s a fun little function my good friend (and ace developer) Peter Wooley showed me some time ago:

function copyrightYear($start,$between='-',$echo=true) {
    $current = date('Y');
    $result = $current > $start ? $start.$between.$current : $start;
    if ($echo) echo $result;
    return $result;
}

The first attribute ($start) is the launch date of your site, the first year of the date span. $between is what goes between the start and end year (when applicable). If you set $echo to false, the value will be returned instead of echoed.

So if your site debuted in 2009, you would use the following:

<?php copyrightYear(2009); ?>

If the year is 2009, it will echo ’2009′. In 2010, it will echo ’2009-2010′.

Now sit back and rest easy next New Year’s Day knowing your footers shan’t go out of date again!