The Apple Product No One is Talking About (and Why Educators Should Care)

September 20, 2017

In the space between iOS11 and MacOS High Sierra, I wanted to offer a few words not he big product Apple announced that (with some exceptions) has gotten little to no air time.

I'm talking about the Apple Town Squares, formerly known as the Apple Stores.

It's worth listening to what Tim Cook and Angela Ahrendts talk about, in terms of the relationship of space and purpose, beginning four minutes and four seconds into the Apple Keynote of 12 September 2017. They spoke of the design philosophy behind Apple Park and the Apple Town Squares. Cook spoke about how Steve Jobs set out to "inspire talented people to do their best work" and that the retail spaces were designed to be "about learning, inspiring, and connecting with people" as much as it was about retail. Ahrendts spoke about the redesign of the flagship stores to serve as "gathering places for 500 million people" and that they are "Apple's largest product".

If you listen to the way they spoke about Apple's facilities, they can easily describe some of the central aspects of a University. In case that is less than immediately apparent, here are some of the parallels between Apple's facilities and a university's -- if the clearly intentional parallel was not driven home enough when Ahrendts linked the Creative Pros to the Liberal Arts and the Genius to Technology (STEM, for those attached to the current nomenclature of the university):

The Plaza = The Quad

The Forum = The Classroom

The Board Room = Library Study Spaces

The Genius Grove = Faculty Office Hours

The Avenues = The Student Union, with its opportunities for students

Her talk highlighted Apple's efforts to offer Lifelong Learning opportunities -- for free -- to its community. Those who are in the business of supplying such opportunities to potential students at local universities should both take note, as Apple appears to be doing this in a more compelling and targeted manner than universities are, and be alarmed, as Apple is beginning to eat the lifelong learning lunch.

There is more, however. Apple Park and Apple's Town Squares are described in a language that, as I suggested, parallel the university. Given that universities are trying to figure out how to bring students to their campuses in an age when, quite frankly, there aren't enough students to go around and online learning and similar innovations might keep potential students away, Apple's successful strategies should be examined closely by those teams trying to figure out how to differentiate their campus in a way that makes it a compelling destination.

Dr. Matthew M. DeForrest is a Professor of English and the Mott University Professor at Johnson C. Smith University. The observations and opinions he expresses here are his own. You are very welcome to follow him on Twitter and can find his academic profile at Academia.edu.

What is So Different about the Three Current Categories?

April 10, 2016

There are currently three broad categories, each of which can be subdivided, of devices that users can now choose from:

Mobile: This category includes both handhelds (mobile phones and devices like the iPod Touch) and tablets. While these each solve a specific use case within the category, they all have mobility and a touch-first interface as their two primary features. They also provide their users with a task-based focus through the use of apps instead of applications.

Strength: Portability of the device and the focus of the apps.

Needed Leverage: An always (or almost always) available internet connection for extensive file storage.

Weakness: Not as powerful, in terms of computing power and application flexibility.

Laptops: This category includes all devices that are portable but require a keyboard. Yes, they may have touchscreen capability, but the primary input is designed to be through a keyboard. They share with their desktop-bound counterparts an approach to tasks that uses application, rather than apps. This represents not only a difference in focus but also in the number of tasks that a user can pretend they are dong at the same time. While the latest iPads can run two apps at once, laptops and desktops can have multiple windows open at the same time.

Strength: Balances the power of the Desktop with the Portability of a Mobile Device

Needed Leverage: Consistent access to power to recharge its battery.

Weakness: Heavier than a Mobile Device.

Desktops: These devices are designed to stay in one place and provide significant computing power. Quite frankly, they provide far more computing power than most users need. More important for most users, these devices provide a significant amount of on-device storage for large libraries of files.

Strength: Raw computing power and the capacity for a lot of local file storage.

Needed Leverage: An Internet connection for off site remote access when you are away from your desk and a device to access things while out of the office.

Weakness: Immobile and, for some, too many windows.

Seen in this light, the laptop, which was once the way to get work done on the go, is now a compromise device -- a role usually given to mobile devices (It should be noted that this role is usually assigned by people who use laptops.).

It is also worth noting that there is no longer a primary/base-line device for people to use. All three categories are viable computing choices for users. The question, then, is what does the individual user need at the time (given the constraints of their purchasing power). This is something that strikes home every time I come to Asia. You do not see people using laptops as a primary computing device. You see them using a larger mobile phone. It is a trend, incidentally, that educators should keep in mind, as students everywhere appear to be shifting toward this model and it represents a shift as significant as the move from punch cards to keyboards and text-based to GUI-based operating systems.

The importance of use case here is a critical one in education, which has three primary user groups: students, faculty, and administration/staff. Of the three, the individuals most likely to be tied to a desktop are the administration and staff, who work at their desk (when they are not in a meeting). Professors are semi-mobile users, as they move from their offices to a classroom. Students, however, are clearly mobile users. They move from place to place throughout the day, as they go from class to class.

It is worth keeping this in mind when making decisions about the technology that students will be issued or be asked to purchase on their own. Mobility and portability, although they may not always recognize it, is an important factor in their interaction with technology.

The Experiment

January 07, 2016

I have been at Guandong Baiyun University for four days, giving talks and doing some set-up work for the Guandong Baiyun University Center on American Culture and Race -- which, with the support of the US Embassy in Beijing, Johnson C. Smith University is establishing here with our partner. My set-up included preparing three iMacs, ten iPad minis, and ten iPod Touches for use by those visiting the Center so that they can listen to the podcasts and view the vidcasts and other material we will be uploading to promote mutual understanding between the US and China.

During the time I have been here, I have been using an iPad Pro. That is why I am writing this blog.

Traveling here with the iPad Pro is part of a larger experiment. In brief, we wish to determine if it can replace a faculty member's desktop computer for a month (Dec. 15 to Jan. 15 -- a time frame that includes travel, a break, an advising period, and, of course, teaching) and to document the successes and the pain points associated with such an experiment.

Yes: desktop.

Quite frankly, much of what is written about whether or not an iPad is capable of replacing a laptop is reductive. The iPad has been able to replace a laptop for several iterations. Indeed, I ceased to use a laptop computer soon after the first iPad was released. Much like Serenity Caldwell did recently during her iPad Pro Experiment, I closed my laptop for a week and tried to see if I could successfully complete what I needed to do with just the iPad. I have written and edited full length articles on iPads for years (You have actually been able to write articles on an iPhone using only the Notes app for a long time. The screen size just makes it inconvenient. Inconvenient is not the same as impossible. After all, the screens on the typewriters that came out at the same time as the early PCs didn't have a screen that could show nearly as much as today's phone screens.)

There was, of course, a learning curve. I discovered, however, that the overwhelming majority of my tasks could be completed on an iPad and that half of those I could not complete on the iPad wear do to artificial constraints imposed elsewhere (IT staffs have since come around to supporting mobile-centric computing. Indeed, many have embraced it with a fervor that equals or exceeds my own.).

I also learned that many of the perceived constraints of the first generation iPad had less to do with the device and more to do with me. Typing on a glass screen was initially alien. After a week, however, it was normal and physical keyboards felt strange. Yes, the virtual and physical keyboards were different but my initial hesitations had to do with adjusting to what was new rather than what was better or normal.

Disclaimer: While I am not a slow typist, I do not move at the speeds of many professional writers. I never took a typing class so never learned to touch-type. For some, the changeover to a glass screen from a good keyboard involves a noticeable degradation in typing speed. For those whose livelihood depends on the number of words on the page/screen, it wouldn't be a good idea to threaten one's livelihood with retraining. For future generations, however, it is worth remembering the angst that accompanied the shift from Typing 101 to Keyboarding 101 in the 80s and the questions about speed and appropriateness of changing what is taught to students. Because, after all, there were going to be typewriters in offices for a long time and not everyone would have access to computers.

Whether an iPad can replace a laptop is a question based on a series of false assumptions and comparison, as was humorously demonstrated by Fraser Speirs' review, asking if the MacBook Pro can replace your iPad. Most comparisons are not as fair as this one, as they tend to compare a single product with three primary expressions (the iPad mini, iPad Air, and iPad Pro) to a class of products (the MacBook, MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, to use Apple's line of laptops as a point of comparison). There is a huge range of capabilities between these three laptops and, for some users, the iPad mini, the MacBook, or a Chromebook are equally unusable because they need the features available at the Pro level.

With iOS 9, the iPad Pro can, in most cases, easily replace a laptop -- as Speirs has outlined on his blog. The obvious next question is if the iPad can replace a Desktop. Of course, given that laptops can replace desktops, Speirs' experiment could be said to have already been completed. But technology usage, like all politics, is local. Can his experiment be completed here?

And, as with most things, the only way to discover is to do.