Apple is organized around functions, rather than divisions:

The result is a command-and-control structure where ideas are shared at the top — if not below. Jobs often contrasts Apple’s approach with its competitors’. Sony (SNE), he has said, had too many divisions to create the iPod. Apple instead has functions. “It’s not synergy that makes it work” is how one observer paraphrases Jobs’ explanation of Apple’s approach. “It’s that we’re a unified team.”
…
Specialization is the norm at Apple, and as a result, Apple employees aren’t exposed to functions outside their area of expertise. Jennifer Bailey, the executive who runs Apple’s online store, for example, has no authority over the photographs on the site. Photographic images are handled companywide by Apple’s graphic arts department. Apple’s powerful retail chief, Ron Johnson, doesn’t control the inventory in his stores. Tim Cook, whose background is in supply-chain management, handles inventory across the company. (Johnson has plenty left to do, including site selection, in-store service, and store layout.)

This doesn’t just mean that the best person is handling a specific task (like the photos in Apple’s online store)—it also means that the company is interwoven and has no choice but to work together. Rather than have engineering lay out the specifications for a new product, hand it off to the design department so they can create a design that meets them, and then hand it off to marketing, Apple instead integrates design, engineering and marketing from the beginning of the process.

There’s a lot to learn from Apple’s corporate and business strategies, but I think there is even more to learn from how the company’s organized. Apple is defining how companies must be organized and managed to succeed in this century.

A week ago, we received a pleasant surprise. Apple had featured our ebook, "Rabbit and Turtle's Amazing Race" in the iTunes App Store. The publicity came with an immediate 3-5X pop in paid downloads of our book, pushing it to the #12 Top Grossing Book for iPad.

"Rabbit and Turtle's Amazing Race" is a children's rhyming book with illustrations, quirky interactions and sound. It's "pop-up book meets the iPad." That's the design goal, at least.

I would love to tell you that building a book was a straight path from concept to storyboard to launch and inevitable success. The truth, however, is a bit more complicated.


In the paragraphs ahead, I will try to give you a sense of how we built our book, the mistakes we made, the discoveries, course corrections, and how it all worked out for us. If I miss something integral to you, please follow up in the comments.

Fragmentation lives: Building for iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad

At my company, Unicorn Labs, we have now built 13 apps for Apple's iOS Platform. Eight of them are optimized for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Five are built for iPad.

From a technical perspective, I can say that developing for the platform is not a simple matter of write once, run everywhere.

That is not to say that the experience building iOS Apps and plugging into the iTunes App Store has been unfavorable. Quite the opposite. I am very proud of the productivity that we have realized, the global, automated reach and distribution that we have been afforded, and the goodness of frictionless billing/payment.

But, I would be less than intellectually honest, and strategically dumb, if I failed to underline that that matrix that I talked about here is upon us.

One small example of this is that the newest version of the platform is iOS 4.x. The new OS gives you some wonderful capabilities, such as video capture services, multi-tasking and of course, taking advantage of functionality like Retina display on iPhone 4 and the new camera on Gen 3 iPod touch. Simply put, it is a case of a really solid system just getting better. Don't even get me started on how experientially enhancing iOS 4.2 is on iPad.

However, the point is this: once you call certain functions or use certain libraries that iOS 4 gives you access to, you pretty much no longer will run on iOS 3.x devices.

While this issue will be resolved later this month when Apple rolls out it's unification release for iOS across all devices (the aforementioned 4.2), the other truth is there's now a feature matrix that one can access as a developer to varying degrees, such as camera, telephony, video capture, audio, and photos.

Deciding which of these functions to use, abstract or ignore exposes you (as a developer) to all sorts of reach, performance and support complexity challenges and tradeoffs.

Moreover, in building our family of apps, we have leveraged two different development platforms that are complementary to Cocoa Touch. They are Ansca's Corona and the Cocos2d middleware. Even here, actions like plugging into Facebook and interfacing with native Cocoa Touch functions are slightly different in each of these realms.

Android devotees, I hear you snickering. Before you do so, know that these complexities are materially worse in the Android world, where not only do you have to contend with these same challenges across far more device types, but also the meta-platform "forking" decisions of different handset makers and carriers.

Nothing is free, but the cost is relative to not hopping aboard the greatest rocket ship ride since the advent of the web, and the rise of the PC before that. The apps lifestyle -- aka "There's an app for that" --- is the real deal. The mobile age is upon us.

What exactly is an ebook, anyway?

I have written in the past about where I think ebooks are headed ("Rebooting the book"), but the essence is this.

The advent of sound in motion pictures transformed not only how films were made, but what they were and the economics behind same. This is the rapidly approaching future for the book business and print media in general.

The current state of the ebook business is nominally better than a PDF stuffed into a bookish-sized reader. Think: Amazon's Kindle. It's mostly text, devoid of sound and/or interaction.

By contrast, in iOS an ebook is an app, and there are few limits to what an app can do. Touch, interact, be read to, savor high-definition art and stereophonic ambient sounds and special effects.

"Rabbit and Turtle's Amazing Race" was built in Corona, and we're happy with the decision. Our next book, scheduled for release in time for Christmas, is also built using Corona. In fact, the Play-Doh-like qualities of Corona enabled us to almost simultaneously come out with both full (paid) and lite (free) versions of the book on both the iPad and iPhone/iPod Touch.


Finally, a non-trivial benefit of Corona is the fact that porting to Google's Android is straight-forward, closer to a compile option than a re-architecting.

As noted earlier, we looked conceptually to the pop-up books from our youth for inspiration in cobbling together a book that has a solid story (a re-envisioning of the "Tortoise and Hare" fable) but is also packed with lots of cool sounds and visual interactions.

Now that I built it, will they come?

Here's the rub. The App Store model is hugely competitive. It's got around 300,000 apps, and the ease of development and distribution means that clone versions of your app are coming.

Worse, pick the wrong category, and your chances of being discovered by your target audience get lower.

For example, the Games and Entertainment categories are fiercely competitive. Choose Photo instead. Many iPhone categories are seemingly saturated. Their iPad counterparts are in an earlier stage in the product innovation lifecycle, albeit targeting to a much smaller base than the combined base of iPhones and iPod touches.

So how do we approach this from a go-to-market perspective? For one, we committed to iterating the book. Over a few different releases, we added new features, fixed bugs, and generally improved the product based upon user feedback and proactively monitoring usage data.

This turns updates into pseudo marketing events. And who doesn't like a solution provider that is committed to making their products better for its users?

The idea of marketing events brings to mind the indelible truth that with apps, the initial launch date is such a significant milestone that there's a tendency to underplay events like product updates and market validation news. Don't fall for that trap.

Similarly, we baked social sharing into all of our products. We live the medium by Facebooking, blogging, micro-posting, and tweeting. It's the ultimate drip marketing methodology.

We also assembled a media list and reached out to the folks that we hope will be advocates for our products. We customized, tweaked and tested messages and media kits. Obviously, the product has to deliver.

Finally, We approach app building like a shark that has to keep moving to keep alive. It's exhausting and exhilarating at the same time.

Related:

Rebooting the Book (One Apple iPad Tablet at a Time)
Apple, the Boomer Tablet and the Matrix
Apple's segmentation strategy, and the folly of conventional wisdom
iPhone economics and lower barriers to entry
The expanding influence of apps and mobile

With the iPad's arrival this weekend, a holiday weekend for many Americans, this new iPad owner had the chance to see the device in action. In fact, "see" is the operative word here. Not, "play with myself," as is the case with most new tech gadgets I purchase. Instead, I simply watched from a distance as, over the course of the day, the iPad found its way into the hands of nearly every family member from ages 4 months to 87 years old. The incredible thing? No one walked away confused, frustrated or disappointed. It did precisely what they wanted it to do and with such ease that my tech support was not required - not even once - allowing me to sit back and relax...with an old-fashioned, paper-based magazine.

Sponsor

After hearing the hoopla from the iPad launch, the crowd of "not-so-early" adopters has likely been left wondering if this is a case of media over-hype or if something revolutionary has truly occurred. If you count yourself among this group, then perhaps the spec-filled, analytical reviews won't sell you on the device's potential.

You already know what the iPad can do: apps, games, eBooks (or rather, iBooks), media and so on. But what can it do for you? How does it fit in with your life? This anecdotal review may help you to answer that question:

A Day in the Life of an iPad

The morning after the iPad's arrival - incidentally Easter Sunday here in the U.S. - I spent the first half hour of my day with the iPad in one hand and a baby bottle in the other. While the little one ate, I read the New York Times. For free. Well, at least some of it. Although a full-featured paid application is on its way, the "Editor's Choice" app available now is a great way to hit the highlights from the paper's top sections. The iPad's weight here was a bit of an issue - 1.5 pounds may not seem like a lot, but holding it aloft away from baby's grabby fingers was a bit tricky, especially because, unlike an actual, dull grey-colored newspaper, the iPad's glowing screen and colorful images is an invite to touch that can't be denied.

Morning Newspaper

Later, in the car to the family gathering, I finished reading the articles I missed in the NYT's offline mode. I have the Wi-Fi version of the iPad, so Internet access is limited. But the articles were still available, cached to the device for just this situation. I then passed the time with a game of iMahjong. Like most iPad games, Internet isn't needed to play.

Upon arrival at our destination - the sister-in-law's house where extended family would meet, dine and relax, I mistakenly imagined that the only two people who would be interested in my latest purchase were the teenage nephews, already iPod Touch owners and avid gamers. Although they were immediately engrossed, to be sure, they weren't the only ones who would spend time with this new device, as I would later find out.

Game-Playing Device

The first question from the oldest nephew: "I heard iPad apps are a lot more expensive than those for the iPod Touch - is that true?" Unfortunately, it is. For whatever reason, iPad developers have mistakenly assumed that a bigger screen means a bigger price tag. This is not how the minds of penny-pinching, allowance-earning tweens and teens think, though. And although they may not be the target market per se, their moms and dads are. A game priced too high will simply be ignored - or worse, torrented, the nephews tell me. There are plenty of iPhone apps on torrent sites, I'm being told - referring to the online stores of cracked, hacked and otherwise ill-acquired software programs, movies, TV shows, music and media made available for download for those running free torrenting client applications on their computers. iPad apps will soon appear here, too. Should developers be worried about this black market for their super-sized creations? Yes, possibly. Unlike the more moderately priced iPhone apps, iPad apps can be much more expensive. And if their prices extend beyond the comfort levels of today's consumers, you can be sure the apps will leak out on backchannels such as these.

With pricing in mind, I tell the nephews they could download anything they wanted so long as it was free. And so they set forth upon their iPad adventure. After playing a number of games, including the Guitar Hero-like "Tap Tap Radiation," a tilted maze in "Labyrinth Lite," the role-playing game "Aurora Feint 3," some sort of shoot-em-up called "EliminatePro," and several others, my iPad was soon filled with a screen of apps I knew I'd never touch but would be regularly accessed time and again at subsequent family functions.

Child's Plaything

Once the older nephews had their fill, it was the 5-year-old's turn. With adult supervision, he enjoyed Disney's interactive book app, Toy Story and created works of art fingerpaint-style via Doodle Buddy. (He got a real kick out of the sound effects that accompanied the paste-in clip art in the program, too. Animal sounds, apparently, are incredibly funny).

We mistakenly thought that the Marvel comics book application would also be a fun diversion for this second-youngest of the family. (Don't laugh - comic book aficionados we are not.) But after a second-page reference to "Girls Gone Wild" in the free Spiderman comic and a third-page image of our favorite superhero shouting "Shut the @#*% up!," we realized that, at some point, comics must have grown up. These one-time children's past-times are now adult graphic novels. Oops. App closed. Back to doodling.

Grandma's Photo Album

Later, with bellies stuffed by Easter ham and dessert, the iPad found its way to the baby's grandmother. One guess what she looked at? Yes, baby pictures. "Can you email me some of those later?" Of course I could, but not later, now. Like the iPhone and iPod Touch, photos (a max of 5 at a time) can be sent directly from the iPad's built-in Photos application.

...And Everything Else

Now hours had gone by, and the iPad was still in circulation. With nothing else to do, I opened a wrinkled, balled-up magazine I had thrown into my bag precisely for this reason. I didn't expect to get much iPad-time myself, I just didn't realize that it would literally never return to me. As one person played on the iPad - reading, watching a video, playing a game, etc. - others relaxed with TV, a book of Sodoku puzzles, toys, and (gasp!) even printed newspapers.

On the iPad, someone was playing cards. Then someone was watching Netflix. Grandma is showing great-grandma more photos. Look! The baby is doodling! Now someone is trying an iPhone app on the iPad. (Verdict? Not a good experience. Forget the fact that the iPad runs all the iPhone apps - they look awful. Don't bother.) Interestingly enough, one "app" that was never launched was Safari, the iPad's built-in web browser.

By nightfall, the iPad had been in rotation for hours upon hours and still had nearly 40% battery remaining. The battery longevity claims (10 hours+) are true, it seems.

A Family Computer

Debates about the iPad's worth as an eReader, aside, fears that it will somehow transform us from a population of content creators to passive consumers (most of us already are just that), hopeful claims from big media that it's the "future of publishing" - I'd argue that none of these are reasons to buy or not to buy an iPad.

Simply put: the iPad is the first real family computer. No longer is computing an isolated experience with one person staring at one screen, fingers clacking away on the keyboard while the rest of the family does something else. The iPad was shared between brothers, giggled over by children, and downright snuggled up with by parent and child. It was no more isolating an experience than someone reading the paper in the next chair over. It was easily just another everyday object. And that may be its biggest selling point yet: the iPad hides away the technology, and makes content king. And at the end of the day, that's not really such a bad thing.

Disclosure: The New York Times is a syndication partner with ReadWriteWeb.

Discuss

There's been a ton of criticism, including from me, over Apple's restrictions on the App Store. How it restricts the freedom of developers by blocking applications users definitely want to use, or yanking apps that fail to meet a changeable standard of appropriateness or legitimacy. I originally thought I would never buy an iPhone because of that policy alone, and I felt like quite a hypocrite when I decided to buy one anyway. As many people have pointed out, the iPad, if successful, will further extend Apple's control over the code its users are able to run.

One of the main pitches for Google's Android platform, in contrast, is that it is more open, freer, more consistent with the principles that the open source world (and this blog, and I) espouse. For the code, and applications running on it, that certainly seems to be true. I can go to source.android.com and download the Android source. The Apache license applied to most of the project is very liberal in the use of that code. As a developer, I can publish applications for Android at www.android.com/market, where, Google says, "developers have complete control over when and how they make their applications available to users." How much more free could you get and still call it a platform? The Android stance is nearly 180 degrees from the iPhone's. One is free and the other is closed.

And yet, I don't think the contrast is as clear as that. Freedom means different things to different people. Hence Richard Stallman's quip, "Think free as in free speech, not free beer." While there's no question the code is much more free on Android, I think Steven Levy's point in his piece on the iPad is worth repeating:

While Apple wants to move computing to a curated environment where everything adheres to a carefully honed interface, Google believes that the operating system should be nearly invisible. Good-bye to files, client apps, and onboard storage -- Chrome OS channels users directly into the cloud ...
Funneling users to the cloud means storing their data for them, on Google-owned and controlled servers. And Google is at least as restrictive about the data on its servers as Apple is about the apps in its App Store -- maybe, I think almost certainly, a lot more restrictive.

Google has long taken the stance that users should trust it with their data (famously enshrined in the company's "don't be evil" motto). And indeed, Google has taken stances I believe are favorable to users' interests, including fending off subpoenas from the U.S. government for search data when other search companies did not, and, last week, advocating for better privacy laws (meaning, privacy of Google's data from government demands).

Google often seem to take those admirable stances, though, when users' privacy interests coincide with Google's business interests. When they don't, Google sometimes argues for its business interests above users' privacy interests. For instance, see Google's arguments for the benefits of log retention, which as the AOL search data case showed, can certainly be harmful to users' interests. In these cases, the protections -- that is, the freedom offered by Google -- is limited to "trust us."

I'm not just spouting off, here. At my company, we promise users what we call the "Data Bill of Rights," which states in very plain language the control our users retain over their data. We also recently released an open source server framework that helps "cloud" applications responsibly store user data. If Google wanted to make promises to users about data that were as strong as the freedoms it offers around the Android code, it could, and it doesn't.

I have no hard evidence that Google is untrustworthy with my data, but nor do I believe that the emailed report I got from my doctor's office in my Gmail account was completely removed when I hit "delete." I've had conversations with Google engineers that have creeped me out to no end and made me reluctant to use its services, as good as they are, and I feel like quite a hypocrite when I decide to do so anyway. Likewise, I have no hard evidence that Apple wields its control any more or less responsibly than Google does.

I disagree with calls both companies have made with their respective points of control, but in general I believe both are trying to create fantastic products in a responsible way. And the guarantee I have that that is true for either company? None. Apple can and occasionally does abuse its control over the App Store to further its business interests Google can and occasionally does abuse its control over hosted data to further its business interests.

What brand of freedom do you prefer? I find myself undecided. I don't like either brand, since neither really seems free to me. I'm sure, though, that saying Apple is an overly restrictive platform and Google/Android is a free and clear platform is a false dichotomy.

My Dad sent me this video today. Apparently it's been doing the rounds since 2009 but I'd not seen it. The video is from the TV show Ukraine's Got talent and contains eight and a half minutes of astounding 'sand animation' by Kseniya Simonova.

Take a little break and watch the performance of 'The Great Patriotic War' here. Link to large size video, which I recommend. 8:30 long.

There are three exceptional things about this video. One — it's great art — enthralling performance, emotional themes, beautiful imagery. Secondly, the performance itself is technically amazing, yet, apparently the artist has only been doing this for one year. Finally, all of this is being achieved with some plain sand on a flat (backlit) surface. The tools for art don't get much simpler.

And yet…this is exactly the type of real-time, subtle, organic, sensual and fast art I always imagine computers could be capable of. Unlike many swooshy multitouch demos, this is not art for art's sake, instead the animation covers very human topics; one of every four people in the region died in WWII's Eastern Front. And she's using every last creative aspect of sand, from brushing, to finger and palm painting, throwing sand and scraping with the edge of her palm.

Two Hands are Better Than One
So this is how great it can be with some sand. How about some silicon? Matt Gemmell wrote a great piece on iPad application design I enjoyed. On the topic of the iPad's large, multitouch area, he writes…

The important point is that there are other, more obvious ways to accomplish these things; the two-handed input features are conveniences and power-user features. They’re useful and time-saving and possibly discoverable, but they’re not the only way to accomplish those tasks. We’re only just beginning to come to terms with the possibilities of dual-handed input; essential functionality shouldn’t require it yet.

You can see in the video that Kseniya rarely uses two hands. My stopwatch recorded only 1:15 minutes of two-handed use in the eight-and-a-half minute performance. That is, she only uses two hands simultaneously in this performance — 15% of the time. When she does, it's to do something quickly like clear an area. She also seems to use two hands when she's wants to draw symetrically, like the hair at 3:43.

 The matter is not that simple though. Many times she switches hands in the performance because she wants to draw on the far left (she appears right-handed) or because she wants a particular shape, or needs to approach from a particular side. 

Sometimes she switches for speed, and artistic effect; alternating left and right throws.

 

Just the Tip(s) of the Iceberg
I love this video because of the richness in the interaction. It's an encyclopaedia of gestures, from a single finger-painting, to multi-finger dabbing, parallel lines with thumbs and middle-inger. French-curve arcs with a palm, broading erasing strokes with the whole hand and intricate air-brush effects with sand released from above. I agree with Matt: we are at the beginning of this whole wonderful adventure. I'm going to keep Kseniya performance in mind as something to strive for. This is a great interface. 

 

Air Video is an amazing app I have wished for but never thought I'd see actually happen, given the App Store's dodgy rules about approving applications like this.

The other day I had a bit of insomnia, noticed my phone on my nightstand and wondered to myself if there was any hack, any way I could somehow stream videos from my desktop computer downstairs (both downloaded video and iTunes movies/shows). I was just thinking about trying out some media server apps to see if I could make it work when I saw this pop up on Lifehacker today. I've downloaded, installed, and gotten this app to work wonderfully. You can even jump ahead to different parts of a streaming movie and it'll render in just a few seconds.

It's a pretty handy app if you use one desktop computer as a "base" for a media center with other devices (like AppleTV, iPhone, etc) talking to it. Plus, you don't have to take up any space on your iPhone (and I guess iPad eventually) with the movie itself, as it is just streamed in real time. 

I haven't tested remote access outside my network, but if I could stream a new show from home to an iPhone sitting in my hotel room while traveling, I would say we're truly living in the future now.

The first part of my post of 1 February was not an attack on Flash. It described a way of working with Flash that also supports users who don’t have access to Flash. I’ve followed and advocated that approach for 10 years. It has nothing to do with Apple’s recent decisions and everything to do with making content available to people and search engines.

It’s how our agency and others use Flash; we’ve published articles on the subject in our magazine, notably Semantic Flash: Slippery When Wet by Daniel Mall.

We do the same thing with JavaScript—make sure the site works for users who don’t have JavaScript. It’s called web development. It’s what all of us should do.

My point was simply that if you’re an all-Flash shop that never creates a semantic HTML underpinning, it’s time to start creating HTML first—because an ever-larger number of your users are going to be accessing your site via devices that do not support Flash.

That’s not Apple “zealotry.” It’s not Flash hate. It’s a recommendation to my fellow professionals who aren’t already on the accessible, standards-based design train.

THE SECOND PART OF MY POST wasn’t Flash hate. It was a prediction based on the way computing is changing as more people at varying skill levels use computers and the internet, and as the nature of the computer changes.

There will probably always be “expert” computer systems for people like you and me who like to tinker and customize, just as there are still hundreds of thousands of people who hand-code their websites even though there are dozens of dead-simple web content publishing platforms out there these days.

But an increasing number of people will use simpler computers (just as we’ve seen millions of people blog who never wrote a line of HTML).

THE THIRD PART OF MY POST wasn’t Flash hate. It was an observation that Google and Apple, as companies, have more to gain from betting on HTML5 than from pinning their hopes to Adobe. That’s not a deep insight, it’s a statement of the obvious, and making the statement doesn’t equate to hating Adobe or swearing allegiance to Google and Apple—any more than stating that we’re having a cold winter makes me Al Gore’s best friend.

(Although I like Gore, don’t get me wrong. I also like Apple, Google, and Adobe. My admiration for these companies, however, does not impede my ability to make observations about them.)

THE THIRD PART OF MY POST ALSO WASN’T a blind assertion that HTML5, with VIDEO and CANVAS, is ready to replace Flash today, or more adept than Flash, or more accessible than Flash. Flash is currently more capable and it is far more accessible than CANVAS.

We have previously commented on HTML5’s strengths and weaknesses (Exhibit A, Exhibit B, Exhibit C) and are about to publish a book about HTML5 for web designers. HTML5 is rich with potential; Flash is rich with capability and can be made highly accessible.

That it is unstable on Mac and Linux is one reason Apple chose not to include it in its devices; that this omission will change the way some developers create web content is certain. If the first thing it does is encourage them to develop semantic HTML first, that’s a win for everyone who uses the web.

Carry on.

Why the iPad may be just what we need for Digital Inclusion. Chris Thorpe: “It may not be a Jesus phone, a Moses tablet or something that lives up to hype and hyperbole, but if it does something for the digital inclusion agenda it might live up to Steve Jobs saying it’s the most important thing he’s ever done.”

"I think this will appeal to the Apple acolytes, but this is essentially just a really big iPod Touch," said Charles Golvin, an analyst at Forrester Research, adding that he expected the iPad to mostly cannibalize the sales of other Apple products. - The New York Times

There is an axiom that the biggest game-changers often result from ideas that, at first blush, seem easy to dismiss. So it goes with yesterday's launch of the iPad, Apple's entry into what they call the 'third category' of device -- the middle ground that exists between smartphone and laptop.

Why is the iPad (seemingly) so easy to dismiss? Well, for one, it is an evolutionary device when conventional wisdom suggests that it needs to be a revolutionary device to find a wedge into a new market.

After all, the iPod and iPhone that came before it were truly revolutionary devices, offering wholly new functionality, delivering new value chains, and fundamentally changing the relationship that consumers had with, first their media (in the case of iPod) and then their communications (in the case of iPhone).

By contrast, the iPad truly does look like a really big iPod Touch, and given its evolutionary nature, it begs the question of who buys this thing and why, especially if you already have a smartphone and a laptop?

Confusing the Tail with the Dog
Thus, a reasoned analysis is that the iPad is to the iPhone & iPod Touch as the MacBook Air is to the MacBook. In other words, a cool product with a devoted base of happy customers, but in relative terms, a niche product in Apple's arsenal of rainmakers.

In fact, the opinion of the above-referred Forrester analyst is hardly unique. Quite the contrary. Check out the discussion boards across Engadget, AppleInsider, and Silicon Alley, to name a few, and do a twitter search on iPad, and the sentiment is 5 to 1 to the negative, with recurring phrases like 'fail,' 'yawn,' 'over-hyped' and 'apple blew it.' Heck, even two-thirds of the audience invited to Apple's own event look bored, offering only feint applause when prompted by Apple CEO, Steve Jobs.

So is Apple hosed? Did they blow it? Not even close.

But before I get into the 'Why,' let me present, to set some contrast, a favorite saying within Google. Google, after all, is Apple's open 'ish' frienemy, and the company who so many cite as being 'destined' to beat Apple in the mobile wars (if interested in that fork, check out 'Android's Inevitability and the Missing Leg'). If what's good for Google is not so good for Apple, then perhaps the opposite might be true, right?

In any event, within Google they like to say that what is good for the Web is good for Google, the premise being that the more the Web evolves as the core fabric from which applications, communications, entertainment, social engagement and information exchange proliferate around, the better it is for Google as the company that organizes it, makes it searchable, and then monetizes it via advertising.

So if what is good for the Web is what is good for Google, then what is good for Apple?

It's the Platform, Stupid!

As I am listening to and watching Steve Jobs deliver what very well could be his last launch of an entirely new product for the same company that he birthed (with Steve Wozniak) 34 years ago (in 1976), I am struggling with two conflicting sensibilities.

One is that some of the heart-stopping, holy-sh-t, gaming-changing aspects of Apple's tablet creation still lie below the surface, like an iceberg that only reveals a fraction of its actual mass above the waterline. (More on that in a bit.)

In other words, add me to the list of expectant Kool Aid drinkers struggling (then) with a cupful of 'that's it?' punch.

But, far more resonant is a second sense that a rapidly rising tide called iPhone Platform is lifting all boats derived from it; namely iPhone, iPod Touch and now iPad (and I still very much believe that Apple TV is due for a near-term reboot to plug into the same ecosystem).

And here's the thing, if this was a presidential debate between Apple and Google for the hearts and minds of consumers, developers, media creators, publishers and businesses of all sizes, then the launch of the iPad is Apple's closing argument for why they should be #1 (watch the full video, and let me know if you agree//disagree).

Consider this: A $50 billion company that is so profitable that in the last quarter alone they dropped another $5.8 billion of cash into their coffers (now they have $40 billion in cash). Assertion one: not only do we build great products, but we run our business the right way (read about Apple's Q1, 2010 Earnings Call HERE).

No less, this same company has been the game-changing innovator at not only the inception of personal computing and not only in transforming the music business, but also the mobile phone. Assertion two: we are the only game-changing innovator who has both stood the test of time and repeatedly matched past successes with new successes.

But, here's the kicker; in iPad, Apple is presenting multiple levels of leverage that virtually assure that they will be successful with this new entrant. Why? Because even if iPad (somewhat) cannibalizes sales of another Apple device, as the afore-mentioned Forrester analyst proffers, it's money going out of one Apple pocket and into another.

In fact, far from shying away from this truth, Apple wholeheartedly embraces it, with Steve Jobs specifically noting in yesterday's presentation that "because we've shipped over 75M iPhones and iPod Touches, there are already 75M people who know how to use the iPad."

A note aside, this premise that existing iPhone and iPod Touch users simply pick up the iPad and know what to do with it is a concept that not only has been affirmed by virtually everyone I know who has played with the device, but is an idea that should be wholly unsurprising to anyone that currently owns either an iPod Touch or iPhone.

Now, perhaps you might argue that that's fool's gold, tapping into a mine that is destined to run dry, but that belies the fact that Apple just recently sold their 250 millionth iPod, so I would argue that 'there's a lot more gold in them thar hills.'

And that is the key thing that you should take from the iPad launch event; namely, that being evolutionary and doing the same thing over again - by creating a derivative product from the original mastering effort (just as the iPod and iTunes gave rise to iPhone, iPod Touch and App Store) - is good strategy when the strategy not only is working in the market, but also rewards the investment your customers and partners have already made in your ecosystem.

Along those lines, virtually the entire library of 140,000 iPhone Apps will run unmodified in iPad (with pixel for pixel accuracy in a black box, or pixel-double running in full-screen), a decision that takes care of both current iPhone Developers and iPhone/iPod Touch Owners. As you might expect, the same is true with iTunes libraries.

I can tell you that when I bought a second iPod Touch for my kids over the holidays, the premise that my entire library of apps and media (not to mention, photos) from my first iPod Touch could seamlessly be re-used in the new device was a bit of an 'AHA' moment. Leverage, after all, is a good thing.

Mind you, this is independent of the iPad-specific optimizations that developers can take advantage of within the updated SDK (a note aside, now with two flagship devices that are not phones, calling the platform 'iPhone Platform' seems decidedly out of date, and I noticed that in referring to the updated SDK, Jobs & Company referred to it as the SDK, versus iPhone SDK. Expect a developer event, likely tied to the release of iPhone OS 4.0, that brings some order to the naming confusion, in addition to formally conveying clearer constructs for harmonizing development across the two different form-factors).

Okay, one last chess move laid out by Apple yesterday, and seemingly, a more focused shot across the bow of Google, and their loosely-coupled approach, was the assertion that "we're the only company that can deliver this type of solution with this price and performance."

This point, which is also amplified on the Apple web site (check out the iPad intro video, which feels in its presentation style akin to getting the co-creators of iPad to sign their name on the product), is bolstered by the fact that the iPad is the first device using Apple's own proprietary silicon - the A4 chip, the first offspring of the P.A. Semi acquisition - yet another piece in Apple's proprietary integration chain, including battery technology (iPad touts ten-hour battery life), hardware design, software, developer tools and online services.

Google, your move.

The Good, Bad and (not so) Ugly of iPad
Let's start with the good. The consistent refrain from users that have actually played with the device is that it is fast, surprisingly fast. As John Gruber of Daring Fireball notes, "everyone I spoke to in the press room was raving first and foremost about the speed. None of us could shut up about it. It feels impossibly fast." In other words, unlike netbooks, there is nothing underpowered about this device.

Secondly, is the fact that with over 1,000 sensors in the touch-based user-interface, Apple is effectively doubling down on the core belief that they have found the future of personal computing, and it doesn't involve a mouse and a physical keyboard.

In fact, noteworthy is that not only did Apple deign to completely re-design it's iWork productivity suite for the iPad (it looks very functional,), but a number of the demos spotlighted how having a larger touch-based user interface facilitates all sorts of interesting innovation around virtual controller schemas, since you simply have more real estate to play with, and the level of sensor density translates to a high degree of responsiveness.

For example, EA's […]