It’s been a few weeks since the hype surrounding the announcement of the Apple iPad. But the product is still the center of great debate. Is it a Netbook with limited functionality or is it the future of computing? I think it’s the latter and in a moment I will explain why. First lets look at why the technical oriented crowd are so dismissive of the product, the specs just aren’t exciting on paper:

Processor 1GHZ. Nothing special

Storage 16-64GB Flash. Nothing special

TFT display. Nothing special

No Flash support

No Camera

No Multi tasking

iPhone OS not a “Full” operating system

Etc

“It’s just a big iPhone” I have heard again and again.

BUT thats the point. It IS a big iPhone. Bringing with it all the  key features of the iPhone to a larger more powerful and flexible display. Here are some the reasons I think the “big iPhone” is such a game changer in computing.

It’s VERY intuitive.

I have a two year old son, Joshua, I also have an iPhone. Last week he was sitting next to me while I was surfing the internet on my PC. I was scrolling through a web page and I noticed that he was reaching out and trying to scroll the content down the screen by brushing his fingers down the screen just as you would an iPhone. He was trying to select hyperlinks by pressing the screen just as he has seen me do on the iPhone. The user interface is so simple and so intuitive a two year old naturally understands how to use it. It is that instinctive. That is when I realised how powerful this computing paradigm is.

New way to interact with content.

The device is nothing without content and one of the key types of content will be books and magazines. Coupling the wealth of information published in the countless magazines and books with the powerful new ways to interact with that information provided by the iPad the possibilities are enormous. This is not just about books but developing a whole new interactive medium.  Here is an example of what the Penguin publishing house are looking at:

http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/04/penguins-ipad-formatted-books-shown-off-making-waves/

My kids are going to love a book that they can shake or move and interact with the content. A city guide that lets you book tables and find out what you can do right here, right now. Impressive and useful features.

Here is another example from Wired Magazine:

http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/02/the-wired-ipad-app-a-video-demonstration/

Again intuitive, beautiful design, interactive in new ways. It will take years for printed content to take advantage of these capabilities and to move to online distribution, but the capabilities of this medium are compelling and offer a life line for print media business’s.

New ways to CREATE content.

Consumption of internet content is the target usage for the iPad but it’s well worth taking a look at the work Apple has done in re-designing the iWork productivity suite for the iPad. You get a good feeling for the software on the guided tour on Apple’s website Here:

http://www.apple.com/ipad/guided-tours/

The Keynote guided tour is a good example of what’s possible. Again the ease of use is the outstanding feature, the ease of which you can produce professional looking content is a major step ahead of a keyboard and mouse driven interface. Does this point the way ahead for more mainstream productivity applications and business usage in general? Well Marc Benioff CEO of Salesforce.com thinks so:

http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/29/ipad-cloud-2/

Hassle Free.

Finally I am sure you all perform the virtual IT manager function for the rest of the family. In my case mother, mother in law and brother. So you won’t need reminding of the downside to an open computing platform. Rogue software applications downloaded off the internet, Malware, spyware, adware. File systems that need constant maintenance. Software applications that are incompatible with each other. The need to have anti-virus software running all the time. The regular re-build required for no known reason. At Intel we spend a lot of time working on technologies to counter these problems. The iPad has designed these issues out al together. Rogue software? Not a problem apple can switch it off centrally. File system maintenance? No problem the user can’t touch the iPad file system. Limiting? Yes. Easier? Absolutely. This is crucial in making a truly consumer friendly computing experience.

Closing thoughts.

From what I can see the press has written off the iPad as being no big deal. They have fallen for the immature techy comparison of specifications and decided it’s no big deal. Most will buy a Netbook or a cheap PC. As you can see I disagree. I think the iPad is a new paradigm in using computers and interacting with information. The internet at your finger tips. Magical? Maybe not. Game changing definitely. I’ll be buying one.....well several. I’ll keep a powerful PC but most of my home computing time will be spent on the iPad. In the industry we need to take a long hard look at how we can bring these key values to the mainstream. Before iPad becomes the mainstream.

Now that’s what I think. What do you think?

It's hard to catch your breath when following Intel. Barely a day goes by without a new technology or product coming to market.

There is a huge amount of coverage this week for Intel's new flagship processor for the desktop market - the  Core i7 980x Extreme.

The incredible thing about this particular piece of silicon is that it has 6 cores and hyperthreading technology to virtualise twelve cores. Twelve cores! It seems like yesterday that we were talking about dual core processors! The chip takes advantage of Intel's 32-nanometre process - packing in 1.17 billion transistors, with a clock speed of 3.3 Ghz.

The challenge now is for software developers to catch up with the pace of hardware change. It's no exaggeration to say that Intel's hardware is forcing a complete re-write of how developers approach programming.

Right now, there is some inevitable lag between hardware advancement and software able to take advantage of these changes - you can't simply boot up Windows 7 and Firefox on a machine running a Core i7 980x Extreme and expect it to run faster.

But if you work in the fields of video and photo editing then this new processor will make your life easier as tools like Adobe Photoshop can take advantage of the increase in threads. And what you will see is a 50% improvement in performance, according to benchmarks.

So what can be done to reduce that lag, especially when software typically lags hardware development by three to five years?

Well, Intel has a software developer program with tens of thousands developers already signed up.

To my mind, if you are serious about software development you need to work with Intel. As the industry leader in chip development, partnering with Intel informally or formally is the best route to maximising your software's potential.

And if you want to get started with Intel's multi-core processors, how about these free one-day courses on parallelism and threading from Intel?

You can read more coverage on the launch of Intel's six core processor here.