By JOHN
How Media Consumption Is Changing
With the introduction of the iPad, Apple is signaling a new phase in how the media world will work. There are certainly things about the new device that lack “wow” power, but there’s something going on here that signals where Apple is going, and why we should pay attention. Consumers, not manufacturing companies, are driving the media revolution, and this is yet another technology that will affect our media buying and consumption habits.
It is obvious that Sony’s eReader, Amazon’s Kindle, and now the B&N Nook all have their merits. They make it easy to carry a lot of books and to read multiple titles any time a person wants. They all have an ability to download various books, at various prices and in various formats.
To date, though, none of them does other media very well. You can’t listen to radio, surf the web or watch video on their E-Ink gray scale screens, nor would you want to. This is where the iPad will instantly make itself more appealing to many people. One device that does…one thing? Not gonna survive. These days, how many people have a cell phone that just makes calls? Or who has an MP3 player that just plays songs? So, by limiting their functionality to books, a dying medium (I hate typing that, but its a fact that fewer people are reading – and buying books, so let’s just live with it, okay?), the current offering of “readers” will find itself looking for an audience while mainstream culture goes with the flashy, color-screened, multi-functional iPad.
Read a book? Sure, anyone can carry around a small tablet-sized screen on which to read – all these devices can do that. That’s easy.
Carry around a business book AND a “guilty pleasure” fiction, too? Yep, the “readers” can do that.
Read the local “newspaper” while I listen to some classical music I downloaded? No, can’t do that on the “readers.” They do text really well, but not much else.
Interrupt my reading so I can check e-Bay for that item I was bidding on? No, sorry, the “readers” can’t do that. You’ll need to have a better tablet for online use – these things are for…reading.
Finish that video I started online last night before I begin studying my textbook for that upcoming quiz? Don’t think Sony can help me do that with their “reader” (despite the fact that Sony makes some gorgeous televisions these days).
Take a break from my book to in order a photo book of pictures from my trip – so it is waiting for me when I return from this trip? Um, I’ll need something more than a “reader.”
I’ll admit that these are all nice, hypothetical examples of how the “reader” will want to be replaced by something more. They don’t necessarily describe your life and how you operate – yet.
By making the iPad a multi-media device, Apple has tapped into where many of us are at – living in a fast-paced, media-saturated world. Apple is correctly seeing that if you do one thing really well, you’ll likely be obsolete very soon (this is why the iPhone is so popular. It does many things well. Not everything perfectly, but it has enough of the capabilities that I want, and delivers them well, so that I’m finding it hard to imagine life without such a smart “phone.”).
The truth is, we want more more more from our technology, and we want to do do do things anytime, all the time. Apple may have made a big mistake here, that is possible. My guess, though, is that in a few years the iPad, and its various permutations and the inevitable competitors, will change how we do books – and every other media, too.
