Word: usefulness
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...Nobody - not even Jobs, by his own admission - is sure what consumers will use the iPad for, but I'm guessing it will be the first true home computer. Conventional PCs live in studies; laptops make brief, furtive forays into the living room. The iPad will become the first whole-house computer, shared among an entire family, passed from hand to hand, roaming freely from living room to kitchen to bedroom to - look, it's going to happen - bathroom, at ease everywhere, tethered to nothing. It's not a revolution, but it's a real change, the kind of change...
...delight, detail, finish, polish and design come not, it seems, shallow high-end toys for the affluent but increasingly products that are ... well, awesomely functional. The iPhone App Store has certainly offered silly digital tchotchkes, but more and more serious professional tools are emerging for medical, military and industrial use too. The iPhone, like the Mac, was derided upon introduction as a plaything, but it transformed the smart-phone landscape, causing Apple's competitors to scramble out their own version of touchscreen phones and app stores with unseemly haste. If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then Google...
...think is right and offer it up." Ive's focus and perfectionism are legendary. Any conversation with him is about hours of work, about refusing to be satisfied until the tiniest things are absolutely right. He's most pleased with what consumers will never notice. He wants them to use the iPad without considering the thousands of decisions and innovations that have gone into what seems a natural and unmediated interaction. "If it works beautifully, it should also work robustly," he says. "It's made for people to chuck onto the car seat and thrust into luggage without thinking...
...thinking, but it's the truth. I do believe Jobs to be a truly great figure, one of the small group of innovators who have changed the world. He exists somewhere between showman, perfectionist overseer, visionary, enthusiast and opportunist, and his insistence upon design, detail, finish, quality, ease of use and reliability are a huge part of Apple's success. Where Ive is quiet, modest and self-effacing, Jobs is confident, assured and open. For some, his personal magnetism is almost of a dangerous, Elmer Gantry kind. They call the charisma emanating from his keynote addresses "Steve's reality-distortion...
...Grant, though, is convinced there's a connection. The question now, she says, is whether seismologists can do anything with her research to try to predict the next big one. "A lot of people are asking, 'Can we use them as a kind of monitoring tool, keep one at home and watch to see if they run away?' " says Grant. "That's obviously not going to work." But she's hoping something might...