by Jason Snell
Viticci on the iPad as modular computer
On the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the iPad shipping, it’s worth reading Federico Viticci’s story about how he uses his iPad today:
The more I think about it, the more I come to this conclusion: the iPad, unlike other computers running a “traditional” desktop OS, possesses the unique quality of being multiple things at once. Hold an iPad in your hands, and you can use it as a classic tablet; pair it with a keyboard cover, and it takes on a laptop form; place it on a desk and connect it to a variety of external accessories, and you’ve got a desktop workstation revolving around a single slab of glass. This multiplicity of states isn’t an afterthought, nor is it the byproduct of happenstance: it was a deliberate design decision on Apple’s part based on the principle of modularity.
Federico pushes his iPad further than almost anyone else, but that’s okay. He is showing us what’s possible today and making us wonder about what might be possible tomorrow. (Like, true native external monitor support, maybe?) I charitably do about half of what he does, but I always learn something, or get an idea for a new way of working, when I read these pieces.