A look at Apple's iPad with David Carr of 'The New York Times' and Walt Mossberg of 'The Wall St. Journal.'
CHARLIE ROSE: The iPad goes on sale tomorrow. Finally. It is hard
to remember when the announcement of a commercial product got so much
attention, almost as much as the president did this week. The iPad was on
the front page of "The New York Times" on Thursday. It is on the cover of
two national magazines this week. This is "Time," "Inside Steve’s Pad"
this is "Newsweek," "What’s So Great About the iPad? Everything."
Following the announcement of the product in January this was the cover of
"The Economist," "The Book of Jobs."
The level of attention some say is unusual even for Apple. A "Wall
Street Journal" columnist quipped earlier, the last time there was this
much excitement about a tablet, it had some commandments written on it. At
last month’s unveiling Apple CEO Steve Jobs described the iPad as a magical
and revolutionary product.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
STEVE JOBS, APPLE: And what this device does is extraordinary. You
can browse the Web with it. It is the best browsing experience you have
ever had. It’s phenomenal to see a whole Web page right in front of you,
and you can manipulate with your fingers. It’s unbelievably great. Way
better than a laptop. Way better than a smartphone. And you can turn iPad
anyway you want, up, down, sideways, it automatically adjusts however you
want to use it. And again, to see the whole Web page is phenomenal. Right
there, holding the Internet in your hands. It’s an incredible experience.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CHARLIE ROSE: So what is all this saturation coverage about? It is
about this device. The iPad is half an inch thick, has a 9.7 inch screen,
and weighs 1.5 pounds, only 1.5 pounds. Today’s models cost between $499,
all the way up to $829 depending on whether you get 3G and the amount of
storage. The device offers a new platform to consume music, photos,
movies, games, books, and more. Apple expects more than 1,000 new apps for
the iPad by the release on Saturday. "Time" magazine, NPR, Netflix, game
from "Electronic Arts" and scrabble will be among them. The iPhone’s
150,000 apps will also work on the device. Let’s take a closer look at
what you can do.
The first thing you notice is that it’s about touch. You can go from
page to page to page, on and on as you look at applications, as you look at
a whole range of things. It’s touch, it’s the ability to move from page to
page. The second thing you notice is that there is Safari here, which is
the way to join the Internet. Go to Safari, and it will take you to your
home page. In this case it is "The Wall Street Journal" of which there is
a special application. Also you will notice that you can go to "The New
York Times" and a whole lot of other things. But when you go back here,
you will find that, for example, you can go to a series of apps, that if
you wanted news there is Reuters news probe. If you wanted to go to
Scrabble, there is Scrabble. If you want to go to Marvel there you go.
This is an extraordinary thing. Look at this "Marvel" comics. There
it is, it has all kinds of capacity to look at the different comics that
are available there. And you see the ease of the experience. And the
experience is what makes this in a really interesting way.
Now, also as you go from page to page to page, here’s "Time" magazine
from a particular time. What health care means for you? There it is. The
look of "Time" magazine in its extraordinary colors. There are also photos
you can go to, for example. If you go back here there is, let’s see,
photos right here.
Now, what’s interesting about the photos, again, the experience of
this, it is the ease of the touch. Take, for example, here, there’s a
whole series of pictures that have been put together for this sample called
"Weekend at the Coast." You can squeeze it in with touch. You can bring
it out so you see it later. And you get specific ones you can go to, it’s
all the ease of use that makes it fascinating.
The whole range of applications of which I have shown you some of them
include YouTube, it includes iTunes and then there is an app store what you
can go to. And the app store as I said earlier will tell you not only new
iPad applications but also you will be able to access all the applications
from your iPhone that are available from your iPhone.
Let’s take a look at one of the applications that is here. I will
mention again "Marvel" comics. There is an application, that is how you go
to that. Going back to the page, there is a whole series of things that
have to do with the ability to go way beyond what you have been able to do
in the past. There is also iPod comes up here, the ability to access your
music that you have and your music and your audio books and a whole range
of selections. Movies, videos, suppose you want to watch a movie on a
flight. Go to video, here it is. In this case you see three movies.
Let’s go to up. First thing you see is a whole series of descriptions
of the movie and what it is about. And then when you hit play, take a
look. The sound and the quality of the picture. Then if you want to turn
it around and look at it, there you go.
So we’ve been watching movies and now we decide we’re going to go to
Safari and see magazines or newspapers that we might want to read. So I go
to Safari. There my home page at "Wall Street Journal," I can take a look
here, and see some of the other magazines and newspapers. There is "The
New York Times." I can go to see "The New York Times." Notice that it
loads pretty fast. Then go to here is "The Wall Street Journal." I mean
"The National Geographic." And look at the level of the color which I find
amazing to me. And up here, is eBay. So when you’re operating this just
go back to this one place here that takes you to your menu.
For example, maps. You want to see maps. This is a map of obviously
New York City. And it’s pretty much close to where we are on 58th and
Lexington. So then you can open it up. There is Bloomingdales which is
very close, there is 59th street, you can take it up pretty high. And this
is, in fact, the building that we’re in right here as we take this segment,
this particular building here, right exactly where the blue dot is, is
where we are located. So it is a remarkable ability to take you around the
world.
One of the most talked about, written about aspects of the new iPad is
books. Part of that is because of the comparison with the Kindle. Let’s
take a look. Here you go.
There is your book library. And there are your books. Let’s pick
one. "Winnie the Pooh." Chapter Four, we are going to into Chapter Four,
having read chapter one through three. We turn the pages like this, look
at the graphics and the color that is present. Turn the page. Notice the
clarity of the light as well. The other thing that you find in an iPad
that many people want in any new device is games.
We’re going to take a look now at one of the interesting and popular
games that you see. It’s called "Real Racing HD" Here it is. Turn it
this way so you can get a wide view. There you go. It’s loading up now.
So this is fun even at my age. Take a look at this. Oops. And there
it is, one of the popular games. You get a sense of why so many young
people are increasingly wanting to have more and more games. Not done very
well but a lot of fun. No matter how good the maps and the movies and the
music and all the other things that you can access, the one thing that most
people want from their connection to the Internet is e-mail.
And here’s how you do it with the iPad. There you go right to your e-
mail, scroll up or down to see what you want. Then you want to read a
particular e-mail, and let’s assume either you want to reply or you want to
create a new e-mail. All you do is turn it there. And come over here and
you see a keyboard that is easy to use, it’s spread out and you can then
write without needing anything else, right here on this keyboard, the
response or the new e-mail. What’s interesting there is no mouse here, it
is all contained in this one, 1.5 pound tablet.
So what do the reviewers think? Some of them have described the iPad
as sleek, beautiful and a game changer. "Time" magazine’s Lev Grossman
says that the iPad will be the first true home computer. "The Wall Street
Journal’s Walt Mossberg we’ll see him later says it has the potential to
change portable computing profoundly and to challenge the primacy of the
laptop, but this iPad is not perfect for everyone’s expectations. The
device now does not have a camera, allow multitasking or view videos
through Flash.
Some have questioned whether users want to carry another device. "The
New York Times" David Poke summarized, "the iPad is so fast and light, the
multi-touch-screen so bright and responsive, the software so easy to
navigate that it really does qualify as a new category of gadget." Some
have suggested, he says, that it might make a good goof-proof computer for
technophobes, the aged and the young. They are absolutely right.
And the techies are right about another thing, he said. The iPad is
not a laptop. It’s not nearly as good for creating stuff. On the other
hand, it’s infinitely more convenient for consuming it, books, music,
video, photos, Web, e-mail and so on. For most people manipulating these
digital materials directly by touching them is a completely new experience,
and a deeply satisfying one.
The bottom line is that the iPad has been designed and built by a
bunch of perfectionists. If you like the concept, you’ll love the
machine." That from David Poke.
It is obviously much too early to say whether the iPad will be a huge
commercial success like the iPhone. Creating a market for tablets could be
a big challenge, an area where Microsoft and others have tried and faulted.
Media and publishing companies have high hopes for the iPad. Many are
betting it will offer a new way to showcase their content and charge for
it. Joining me now to talk about the iPad and its future are two
journalists who were present at the unveiling of the iPad in San Francisco
in January. Over the past week, they have put it through the paces. Walt
Mossberg of "The Wall Street Journal" and David Carr of "The New York
Times." I am pleased to have both of them back at this table in the cosmic
sense.
What does it represent in your judgment?
WALT MOSSBERG: Charlie, in my judgment it represents a potential
fundamental new kind of portable computing. Not just e-reading or the
things that the media publishers want, as important as that it is, but it
is really an overall computer that can do a zillion things. And so I think
it represents a potentially huge challenge to the laptop. And a potential
challenge to the user interface, we have all become used to on computers
since the first Mac was unveiled in 1984. And that user interface, by the
way was invented in the late ‘60s and the early ‘70s by Xerox’s lab in
Silicon Valley. The mouse, the icons, the menus.
CHARLIE ROSE: Right. Right.
WALT MOSSBERG: This is, of course, multi-touch and gesture, which we
all know about from the iPod and the Android phones and the other things,
but now it’s on this big screen, and it really competes with the laptop.
So in a cosmic sense, that could be, if it succeeds, that is the impact of
it.
CHARLIE ROSE: Here is what you wrote in the paper this morning.
Laptop killer, pretty close. iPad is a game-changer that makes browsing
and video a pleasure, challenge to the mouse. And then you go on and say,
I believe this beautiful new touch-screen device from Apple has the
potential to change portable computing profoundly and to challenge the
primacy of the laptop. It could even help eventually to propel the finger-
driven multi-touch user interface ahead of the mouse driven interface that
has prevailed for decades. So that’s what Mr. Mossberg starts off with.
What do you say?
DAVID CARR: Well, I think his trumpets are pretty well warranted. I
think for sure, it is a mouse killer. The idea that we are now going to be
noodging around with something on a cord already seems almost quaint,
because you -- I’m a PC user. And I don’t have an iPhone. But there I am
typing at work after a night of navigating, you know, maps that I can pull
open, I can practically see you sitting right there, Charlie. And then
scale down to see how busy traffic is. When I’m typing away and I see
something I’m interested in, I start grabbing it and trying to spread it.
This is an instinct, a gesture that sets in fairly quickly, and I think
renews the romance of not only reading -- it’s a great device to read on --
but I’m with Walt in that, you finally earn the term surfing where you are
going wheeee across .
CHARLIE ROSE: That’s exactly right. That’s exactly .
DAVID CARR: And you are not drilling down, down, click, click, click
where you are zooming across a lot of content in a friction-free manner.
You are not being punished for backing into this corner or that corner.
You can just keep going. And I think it’s going to be enormously
seductive, partly because it’s not an application where -- it’s not like
the iPhone ,people are always menacing you with their phone and seem, look
at this. This you sit next to, you want it. And it’s going to market.
You can’t be on the airplane next to the guy and not go, I want that thing.
WALT MOSSBERG: But I have to say two things. One positive for -- for
Apple’s efforts here and one that might not be so positive. The positive
part is David may not have an iPhone, and obviously people have all kinds
of phones. But there are 75 million, roughly -- and that may be a
conservative number because Apple doesn’t announce these numbers very
frequently -- iPhone and iPod touch owners who have used this interface.
CHARLIE ROSE: ITouch is an iPhone without the phone.
WALT MOSSBERG: Itouch is an iPhone without the phone and a couple of
other things. So they have a big base of people who already know this user
interface. It is obviously not nearly as big as the number that know the
mouse interface, but you know, a lot.
The downside thing, I would say is this really, people are still going
to carry their phones. And what I also said in that article and what I
believe is people are unlikely to carry a third thing. This is not very
big and it’s not very heavy and it is beautiful, I think at least. But
they are still not going to want to carry this and their laptop, and of
course they will still keep carrying their phone. So the game has got to
be to persuade people to carry this, at least let’s say 60 percent of the
time or some number you want to make up, instead of their laptop.
And I have to tell you, I have had this for about a week, and I’ve
been using it almost full-time night and day. And I basically -- I wrote
this this morning -- opened my Thinkpad and my MacBook about maybe 20
percent as much as I would have normally. So I was able to work, you know,
do e-mail, read all my Web sites that I read, run the apps that I read, do
social networking on this. And if you so, if you are someone like me, you
might answer yes, I can -- I can use this instead of my laptop a lot of the
time.
DAVID CARR: This .
WALT MOSSBERG: If you answer no, then you are not going to buy it.
CHARLIE ROSE: Right.
DAVID CARR: This would, I think, Walt and I might disagree a little
bit. I think it is a productivity device for the average user, it’s got
its limits. I think the onscreen keyboard is -- this is something for
consumer media, not making media. When I think of it as a portable device
.
CHARLIE ROSE: Explain that, consuming media, not making media. You
mean people .
DAVID CARR: It’s great to watch .
CHARLIE ROSE: .people that want to use graphic design are not going
to use this.
DAVID CARR: Almost -- almost anything. You want to answer a short e-
mail, great. If it is going to get much longer than that, probably not.
Your kid’s not writing a term paper on this keyboard. I think it’s
portable in the sense that it lives in rooms all over the house. For
people like me, for people like Walt, for people like my kids who are on
the computer way too much, you close the lid on the laptop, right.
CHARLIE ROSE: Right.
DAVID CARR: And you go to the other room and you got this thing that
will only do one thing at a time, which is entertain you and suck time away
at so -- at such a breathtaking rate, it is that third place in terms of .
CHARLIE ROSE: Right. That is very interesting. You agree with that
too, don’t you?
WALT MOSSBERG: I do agree with that. And we -- we do disagree a
little bit. I say now and I wrote this morning that I wouldn’t do this --
I wouldn’t do heavy long complex documents on this. But I’m somewhere in
between. I’m somewhere beyond where David is. I wrote part of that column
on this. But I think, I honestly think there’s -- we should explain that
they are not including on here but selling for $10 each a totally rewritten
Touch, not mouse driven, word processor, spreadsheet and presentation
program.
DAVID CARR: Did they spend a lot of time in the presentation, they’re
very serious about it.
WM: In the presentation. And I’ve spent a fair amount of time
testing them. They are certainly not as powerful as a Microsoft Office or
something on your computer whether it’s a Windows or a Mac. And that’s why
I say if you are doing a thousand column spread sheet I don’t think this is
what you want. But I think you are going to find students taking notes on
this. I think you are going to find students writing papers on this. It
really all depends on whether you are comfortable typing on glass. And
unfortunately, whether it is an Apple product or a Google product or lots
of other products, I think even a lot of BlackBerries eventually are going
to be typing on glass. And I say unfortunately, it’s unfortunate for
people who have trouble with that.
CHARLIE ROSE: Yeah. What trouble might they have?
WALT MOSSBERG: Well, I mean, you know, obviously there are people
that strongly, strongly prefer physical keyboards .
CHARLIE ROSE: Yes.
WALT MOSSBERG: . that are touch typists.
DAVID CARR: He’s talking about me, I type like Fred Flintstone, and
it’s not -- it’s not pretty to watch.
(CROSSTALK)
WALT MOSSBERG: Did you have trouble with it, Charlie?
CHARLIE ROSE: None, none, I don’t -- that is why I don’t understand
why there is an issue. I in fact found it just easy.
WALT MOSSBERG: You know, compared to a Netbook, that’s not that
different from the size of a keyboard.
DAVID CARR: It’s a great thing -- I agree.
(CROSSTALK)
WALT MOSSBERG: Some of these Netbooks.
CHARLIE ROSE: Yeah.
WALT MOSSBERG: And I’m not a fast touch typist, but I have watched
two during that period I have had this, sit down and fly on this thing
after adjusting. It takes, you know, maybe five or ten minutes of
adjusting, and then they just moved.
DAVID CARR: When I -- when I .
WALT MOSSBERG: And they were -- and they were accurate. The thing
has auto-correction too. But it’s very personal, David. I think we’re not
going to -- you know, it’s just either you are going to like typing on it
or you are not.
DAVID CARR: They have a keyboard that they give you .
WALT MOSSBERG: Right. They don’t give -- but sell it. Yeah, right.
DAVID CARR: That they will sell you that works beautifully.
WALT MOSSBERG: A physical .
CHARLIE ROSE: It’s a regular physical keyboard.
WALT MOSSBERG: You plug it in here.
CHARLIE ROSE: Yeah, I’ve tried that. I found that more difficult
because it sits into the thing.
WALT MOSSBERG: And it also -- also if you have the case on it like
David does.
CHARLIE ROSE: Yeah.
DAVID CARR: Right.
WALT MOSSBERG: A little better.
DAVID CARR: Here’s the thing.
CHARLIE ROSE: You’re on the plane. There it is.
DAVID CARR: It goes that way, but then there is also the very happy
thing .
WALT MOSSBERG: Video watching, yes.
DAVID CARR: . of watching on the airplane, there it is.
CHARLIE ROSE: Yeah. Exactly. You see the movie now.
DAVID CARR: They are sly devils at Apple, aren’t they?
CHARLIE ROSE: Those boys and girls.
WALT MOSSBERG: There are sly devils -- there is going to be leather
ones and whatever.
CHARLIE ROSE: OK.
DAVID CARR: Yeah, and we haven’t even talked about the apps, which
are really going to make this.
CHARLIE ROSE: Let’s talk about apps now. Then we will come to some
of the reservations people have. There are iPad apps, which they are
making specifically for this, and then you have access to all of the iPhone
apps.
WALT MOSSBERG: Almost all.
CHARLIE ROSE: Almost all.
WALT MOSSBERG: Almost all.
CHARLIE ROSE: OK. And so what is the difference in the iPad apps and
those that are available now?
WALT MOSSBERG: Well, to me there are two differences. One, most
people I think would guess and the other they might not guess. The easy
difference is they were written for a smaller screen. So if you launch
them on here, and I’ve tested dozens of them already, they launch in the
middle of this screen.
CHARLIE ROSE: Right, right. Right.
WALT MOSSBERG: In the exact size of the iPhone, and it looks a little
weird.
CHARLIE ROSE: But they have a 2x .
WALT MOSSBERG: They have a 2x button that you hit and suddenly it
fills the screen. But there is a much more important difference. Their
developer tools for the, you know, for the software developers and the
media companies or whoever else wants to develop for this, include new
features that only work on this that don’t work on the iPhone or the small
Touch. Like if you are doing your e-mail and you turn it this way, all of
a sudden you’ve got a panel that lists all your messages .
CHARLIE ROSE: Right.
WALT MOSSBERG: . and a preview over on the right, so it looks more
like the way e-mail looks on your PC or your Mac, and less like the way it
looks on your BlackBerry or your iPhone. And that theme .
CHARLIE ROSE: That’s better, isn’t it?
WALT MOSSBERG: It is better, and that theme carries through I think
in many categories -- games, much more elaborate on here, not just bigger
because the screen is bigger, but new kinds of controls and menus, and
things you can do on here. And those are going to be characteristic of the
better iPad apps.
DAVID CARR: Well, I don’t think either of us are big gamers, but I
happened to drop this between two 13-year-olds. One of them mine. They
reminded me of feral wolves as they just made their way through app after
app.
CHARLIE ROSE: Yes.
DAVID CARR: But there are grown-up apps. This happens to be Zillow,
which is a real estate app.
CHARLIE ROSE: Oh, it’s a great thing. Tell me about that.
DAVID CARR: OK. OK. Everything .
CHARLIE ROSE: You want to know the price of everything in your
neighborhood.
DAVID CARR: For sale around here. And here is the thing, you pull up
in front of the house, and you go, honey, that looks -- that looks nice.
And then you go in there. And you look, you see that their decorating
taste.
CHARLIE ROSE: Here you go. Go ahead, David.
DAVID CARR: Imagine being able to pull up in front of a house while
you are house hunting. You are on a 3G connection, and you see that it
looks nice outside-- in fact, the Addams family has been living inside that
house and you don’t want to go in there.
WALT MOSSBERG: You know that you can do that on an iPhone.
(CROSSTALK)
DAVID CARR: Yes, but it isn’t this kind of presentation.
WALT MOSSBERG: Here’s something completely more frivolous. This is
called Touch Hockey.
CHARLIE ROSE: Yeah.
WALT MOSSBERG: And you can, you know, kids can play, or grown-ups can
play for hours. I’m terrible at it. But, you know.
DAVID CARR: You promised we were going to play afterwards.
CHARLIE ROSE: All right, here is one of the questions. Is this, this
iPad a Kindle killer? Will it eat deeply into the Kindle market?
DAVID CARR: Well, my Kindle bricked the day I got it. It was not a
device that I was .
CHARLIE ROSE: Excited about?
DAVID CARR: No, it just didn’t really do it -- do it for me. The
idea of pushing and waiting for a page. And I want to -- I want a device
with the more (inaudible) range of capabilities. I don’t want to carry
something that is only good at one thing. The book reader on this is
probably, I think, the sexiest app on here.
CHARLIE ROSE: Yes.
DAVID CARR: To watch -- to turn pages on here .
CHARLIE ROSE: Right. Right.
DAVID CARR: . and you could tell it when Steve Jobs was showing it
around, where you grab the corner of a page.
CHARLIE ROSE: Look at that.
DAVID CARR: And roll it.
WALT MOSSBERG: Let me point out that that takes, as the tech guy,
that takes a lot of processing sophistication.
CHARLIE ROSE: To be able to do that.
WALT MOSSBERG: On a low power chip that they made themselves, that’s
pretty cool, I think.
DAVID CARR: It’s really cool. And I want a device that’s going to,
yeah, I can do some light work when I’m in the car. And then when the kids
act up, I want to be able to throw it over my shoulder and say, have at it,
you guys, and have it be -- do different things for different .
CHARLIE ROSE: OK. But let me come back to Kindle.
WALT MOSSBERG: This is the bookshelf.
CHARLIE ROSE: There is the bookshelf where all the books are.
WALT MOSSBERG: Where any -- the books you bought are stored.
CHARLIE ROSE: Yes.
WALT MOSSBERG: So is this a Kindle killer?
CHARLIE ROSE: Yes.
WALT MOSSBERG: I think this is going to sound strange, but it depends
how you define Kindle. If you mean Kindle the device.
CHARLIE ROSE: I mean -- first of all.
WALT MOSSBERG: If you mean the Kindle device .
CHARLIE ROSE: I know.
WALT MOSSBERG: I think this is -- and I have been, I have written
favorable reviews of it. I use it almost every day or I used it almost
every day until the last few days. And I think this is a better reading
experience than that.
CHARLIE ROSE: And people say two things about that. One they say it
is a better reading experience in a room. You are in bed, you want to
read. But they also say that if you are in light, it’s easier to see the
Kindle than it is to see this.
WALT MOSSBERG: If you are in bright sunlight .
CHARLIE ROSE: Right.
WALT MOSSBERG: . you might want a dull black and white screen. But
there is another Kindle. There is two Kindles. One is the device and one
is the service.
CHARLIE ROSE: Right.
WALT MOSSBERG: And Amazon, which owns Kindle, has put software, book
reading software on the PC, on the Mac, on the iPhone, on I don’t know,
some other devices, maybe the BlackBerry. And they -- their app for the
iPhone runs on here.
So, you can get access to their books and their catalogs. And it would not
surprise me if Amazon put a full-blown iPad app with some of the features
like Apple has on here. So there is going to be not just Apple’s book
store, but I predict you, you will see multiple book stores on here. And
you’ll have your choice of slightly different reading experiences and
different catalogs of different sizes and types.
CHARLIE ROSE: Here is the other thing. The one that the three of us
have are only wi-fi capable.
WALT MOSSBERG: Right.
CHARLIE ROSE: They have no 3-G.
DAVID CARR: Right.
CHARLIE ROSE: So it does not operate like your iPhone does.
WALT MOSSBERG: Charlie, I know lots of people who live their lives 80
percent in wi-fi now, you know. At their work, their home, Starbucks,
wherever they happen to hang out. Lots of these people are in wi-fi most
of the day. So they probably won’t mind it.
If I were going it to buy one of these, I would buy one with 3g, just
because I would want to be able to use it for e-mail and social networking
which are important to me, or web surfing when I’m not in wi-fi. And
they’ve made the 3g part much less onerous than it typically is. First of
all, it’s about half the price for unlimited 3g data than it is if you buy
one of those 3g cards for your laptop. And secondly, there is no contract.
You can cancel it at any time without a termination fee. It is a month-to-
month thing.
CHARLIE ROSE: Here’s a couple of interesting things from Steve Jobs.
This is Steve Jobs cover of "Time" magazine, Steven Fry (ph) did an
interview with Steve Jobs. And Jobs reminded him, I guess, that at the
product launch, he had liberal arts and technology, two street signs. And
he said, this is where I have always seen Apple, at the intersection of
liberal arts and technology.
WALT MOSSBERG: Yes, I was struck by that too. I had never heard him
put it quite that way. I always think of them as being at the intersection
of software and hardware. But yes, in a way, if he thinks that, and he is
essentially the soul of Apple, then that, that was pretty interesting to
me.
DAVID CARR: Of course there’s repositioning, in corporate terms,
going on right now because he’s asking to create a gated community and the
service custodian of much of popular culture high and low. And so he
doesn’t want to be seen as a technologist. He spent a lot of time going
around your company, my company, other companies to demonstrate that he had
a great deal of interest in the future of media and that he felt he was an
enabler, and that what he was offering them was a bridge to the future and
not a gallows. In terms of, you know, him having the relationship with the
customer instead of us, I know it makes a lot of people nervous.
CHARLIE ROSE: OK. You want to speak to that, Walter, or not?
WALT MOSSBERG: No, I mean, I think David’s right. Everything, every
CEO, especially a marketing savvy one like Steve Jobs says, you have to
look at, at its business perspective, but I honestly think he does think a
little bit that way. I never heard it expressed exactly that way by him.
But it made perfect sense from the many...
(CROSSTALK)
CHARLIE ROSE: Let me take this to the reality. Your newspaper, the
Wall Street Journal, your newspaper the New York Times, have been in what
they call, I guess, development projects or something like that, in which
Apple got together with them and helped them develop so that they could use
the iPad. What’s that about?
WALT MOSSBERG: There are all these media companies which are in their
own horrible crisis and transition and all these things going on, which
you’ve discussed in other shows. And they look at these tablets, not just
the iPad but the tablets in general, as a possible help to them.
CHARLIE ROSE: Right.
WALT MOSSBERG: And so they are working on it. And Apple, of course,
wants big names on here, so they’re helping. That’s pretty-- pretty
unsurprising to me.
CHARLIE ROSE: This could save the newspaper business, David?
DAVID CARR: Well, it goes beyond rhetoric, because let’s look at the
example when the iPad got unveiled and digital books, 9.99, Amazon, said
that’s it. The week this got announced, all of a sudden 14.99 is just
fine. Did our content gain twice as much value? Our-- I think there is a
couple of things going on here. One is it gets you out of the rhetoric of
subscriptions and into the rhetoric of applications, right? Which is a
better word, digital subscriptions we haven’t had too much luck with them.
Applications.
WALT MOSSBERG: We have had pretty good luck with them over at the
"Wall Street Journal."
DAVID CARR: Touche, nicely done.
CHARLIE ROSE: Yes. That’s true.
DAVID CARR: And you have done well, but it puts us in the application
world. The other thing that it does is you have an incoming cohort of
consumers. And if you look at, oh, it’s the New York Times, what a
coincidence, it is even.
CHARLIE ROSE: All right. But look.
DAVID CARR: You know, the amount of sort of ease of navigation, the--
it is great. In an app world, it gives us a lot more opportunities to play
around in sort of design terms. It also offers, you know, advertises more
opportunity. One of the things that concerns me, though, Time is doing
something, Conde Nast is doing something, News Corp is doing something.
We’re all doing something different. There is no common standard. So when
Mercedes goes to buy an ad, if they go to like the Bonie Air Corporation
(ph) that owns a lot of Enthusiast magazines, they are not going to play
video. They go to Sports Illustrated, they are going to have a lot of
video, right in their ad. There is going to be no common standard. You
know how you can take one page ad, go to marketplace and put it in a lot of
newspapers, put it in a lot of magazines. We’re in a very customized world
now, where each company is going to have to be building out ads for each.
WALT MOSSBERG: Do you mind if I ask you a question, because this is
obviously much more your area than mine and I’m genuinely curious about it.
On the web, there have become standardized ad formats.
DAVID CARR: Right.
WALT MOSSBERG: And so somebody can put an ad in the Wall Street
Journal web site or the New York Times web site, and know that both web
sites offer the same size thing and some of the same capabilities and all
of that. Why would you assume that if this took off in a big way, that
those same kinds of standards wouldn’t emerge? And that your company and
my company, which may be rivals, wouldn’t both want to have that standard
unit so the ad agencies would want to buy it?
DAVID CARR: I think that’s not what is happening. Everybody -- Conde
Nast used Doby Air (ph) to build theirs, Time, Inc. built their own.
WALT MOSSBERG: So the ad guys are just going have to adjust, I guess,
if they want to be on these platforms. Maybe they won’t want to be.
DAVID CARR: See, here is the thing. Is right about the time sort of
platform stuff gets worked out, there is going to be different devices.
Your company is building a new one, News Corp is building a device, a bunch
of other people are getting -- you know, when Google comes flying out the
sidelines with the device, I don’t think it will be.
WALT MOSSBERG: Can I just suggest, based on what I know from covering
this tech stuff for 18, 19 years, there may be -- I’ve seen myself at least
eight or nine different devices. In the end, when the dust settles, there
are going to be two or three. That’s the way it is going to be.
DAVID CARR: With the common standard.
WALT MOSSBERG: I didn’t say a common ad standard. I don’t know about
the ad industry particularly. But there are going to be two or three.
CHARLIE ROSE: All right. In ten years of reviewing tech products for
"The New York Times," I’ve never seen a product as polarizing as Apple’s
iPad, which arrives in U.S. stores on Saturday and the European Union by
the end of April.
The device is laughingly absurd, goes a typical remark on a tech blog’s
comments board. How can they expect anyone to get serious computer work
done without a mouse? This truly is a magical revolution, goes another. I
can’t imagine why anyone would want to go back to using a mouse and
keyboard once they have experienced Apple’s visionary user interface.
There are some pretty confident critiques of the iPad, considering that the
authors have never even tried it.
In any case, there is a pattern to these assessments. The haters tend to
be techies. The fans tend to be regular people. Does that make sense to
you? This is what David said this morning.
WALT MOSSBERG: No. I would.
CHARLIE ROSE: Or do you agree with it.
WALT MOSSBERG: I wouldn’t entirely agree with it. For one thing, all
of those comments he’s quoting came out before anyone -- any of these
people commenting could actually used it. I don’t think you are going to
know who is going to like it and who is not going to like it for some time.
And furthermore, I think it’s-- I don’t think the world divides so neatly
between tech -- the group of techies that blog that are self-selected, that
tweet and blog and make their views known before they’ve seen the product
when they just, you know, watched the intro is a self-selected group, and
they are worthy of respect -- and I do respect them -- but they’re not
necessarily representative of the population.
As for quote regular people, they’re going to have a lot of issues. I
know a lot of regular people who make it a rule, for instance, to wait
until the second version of something. I know a lot -- they don’t have the
money right now to buy something extra even if they might like it. So or
they just bought a new laptop so they are not going to buy another new
device. It’s a little hard. I think it is hard to generalize with as
basic a separation as that.
CHARLIE ROSE: Show me the picture of Bill and Steve.
WALT MOSSBERG: Sure.
DAVID CARR: Here’s one thing I want to say about this. The ability
to share, to hand back and forth, what you and I love in the newspaper --
Sunday morning, we can sit with this and say, hone.
CHARLIE ROSE: You couldn’t do it with the.
DAVID CARR: Did you see, look at these people. They look like a
science project, they don’t belong together. And you can share it.
CHARLIE ROSE: Look at this. Boys and girls. This is at his-- Walt
has a famous conference in which --what is it called?
WALT MOSSBERG: D. The D conference.
CHARLIE ROSE: The D conference, in which all these famous people come
and they talk about technology and are interviewed by Walt and his partner.
Here is what is interesting about it. Two things. Bill Gates tried,
understood that tablet was going to be a big idea. And tried to introduce
it at Microsoft. For some reason, too early, didn’t succeed, correct, so
far?
WALT MOSSBERG: That’s right.
CHARLIE ROSE: So the idea of a tablet has been in the back of the
heads of these smart people in technology for a time.
WALT MOSSBERG: Sure.
CHARLIE ROSE: Everybody has always understood this could be a game
changer if somebody got it right. Correct?
WALT MOSSBERG: That’s right. That’s exactly right. And my view on
what was called the tablet PC, which was the Microsoft-driven initiative,
was that they didn’t go far enough. So in other words, they took Windows,
which was-- which obviously was and still is the dominant operating system
for the mouse-driven world of traditional computing, and they enabled it so
that with a stylus you could operate it, you could-- it could do
handwriting and save your handwriting and even recognize your handwriting
and do a whole bunch of things.
And by the way, those tablets are still made. They are typically used
by companies in vertical application. My view on it, what I remember
writing back then is that it didn’t go far enough. It tried to take the
basic mouse-driven thing in Windows and kind of paste on a tablety kind of
architecture. And that is my guess about why.
(CROSSTALK)
CHARLIE ROSE: Here is my view of it. Here is my view of it right
here. The difference is Steve Jobs. And when you say Steve Jobs, you’re
talking about a team that he knows how to bring together.
WALT MOSSBERG: They have a brilliant designer there.
CHARLIE ROSE: Exactly. Who he came early to early on and understood
-- who was not exactly in a great place at that time, when he recognized
his talent. Steve Jobs understands not just the intersection of technology
and liberal arts, as he would like to say, but he also understands, it’s
often said, design. But he understands product. He is a guy that
understands a product and what it ought to feel like and what it ought to
do. And how it ought to take the next step into a new dimension.
DAVID CARR: Part of his gift, I think, is recognizing an inflection
point in time. When Microsoft came out with the panel, with the tablet
computer, we were not bathed in wireless everywhere we went. There was not
this deep, rich content around every corner. It was sort of hard to figure
out why would you end up using that. I think Steve Jobs has, you know, a
very good sense of when the right moment occurs when there is going to be
enough content, enough access, so that something that displays web content
in an easy to surf way is going to be extreme value to a huge whole cohort
of people, not just nerds.
WALT MOSSBERG: Well, I think that those are both good comments. I
would say one of the other things that has to be said is he’s been willing
to take big risks. Sometimes when he does things, it’s a little early, you
know. Put the CD-rom drive in every Mac, and built in sound. I mean, this
sounds ridiculous, but if you are an older person, you remember that when
PCs were sold, they didn’t have sound cards in them. But Macs did. And
they had CDs.
But he also took out the floppy drive about a year and a half before anyone
else did. And so sometimes he can be a little early, and for all of his
talent and risk-taking that we’ve discussed, I think we need to be careful
that we don’t know if this is going to be a big hit yet, the iPad that
we’ve been discussing.
CHARLIE ROSE: OK. We don’t know, of course not. But if you had, if
you were a betting man, would you bet on this or not?
WALT MOSSBERG: I would bet there is going to be a big initial surge
of sales. And yes, I would bet it would be a success. How big a success,
I don’t know. I don’t know that the...
CHARLIE ROSE: And what is big success?
WALT MOSSBERG: Well, I mean, you know, how many millions is millions
and millions? Apple is extremely, today -- it is a company that 13 years
ago was pretty close to bankruptcy. Today it is a hugely successful
company. But it’s not because it owns, you know, most of the market share
of computers. It doesn’t. It is because it innovates things that other
people follow. And it has this huge mindshare. And in the case of the
iPhone and the iPod, it has been much more successful in terms of revenue
and profits and that kind of stuff than it was for many years with the Mac.
DAVID CARR: I think the execution is not just the technological one.
And there are some bugs to this. I don’t know if you noticed during the
week, but you end up in a.
WALT MOSSBERG: I listed them, yes.
CHARLIE ROSE: What are the bugs?
DAVID CARR: You can -- the navigation on the web is somewhat limited.
Your ability to-- you can get backed into a corner, fairly quickly. The
only way to -- you have to back completely out of some things and shut them
down sometimes.
I think the big part of the execution was on price. What did the
Microsoft tablet cost, a bunch?
WALT MOSSBERG: When it came out, it certainly cost more than 499.
DAVID CARR: Okay so, I am-- I run a family, and at a certain point
Apple sadly will come and take this back. And I have to decide whether
this fits. If I amortize it over each family member that’s going to use it
and I go on the low end, the $500, $600 one, I think we’re probably going
to do it. And I’m not just responding to the device. I’m responding to
its price as well.
And, you know, at the announcement they did a lot of bragging about
the price performance. They hit their targets on this. Remember we were
all talking about this thing costing $1,000. And it cost $500-- you know,
maybe you don’t want the 500...
(CROSSTALK)
DAVID CARR: So his ability to lean on his guys to work with the
designers and bring things in, you know, just stick the number, I mean
really hit it.
CHARLIE ROSE: So for all those reasons, David Carr thinks the iPad is
a big success. He likes most of it. And believes that Steve Jobs will
find a market.
DAVID CARR: Yes. And will it be as large-- I don’t buy certain of
his assumptions. He says Netbooks aren’t good at anything. I think
Netbooks, I was just at the South by Southwest Conference, there were a ton
of people there.
CHARLIE ROSE: Yeah, I don’t -- I agree with him totally on that. I
thought Netbooks were never.
DAVID CARR: That they’re junk.
WALT MOSSBERG: Netbooks are small, cheap Windows laptops.
DAVID CARR: Which have a (inaudible).
WALT MOSSBERG: And that’s fine. And they came along during a
recession, when people were looking for really low prices.
CHARLIE ROSE: It was cheap and understandably.
(CROSSTALK)
WALT MOSSBERG: In fairness, people like small size, who are travelers
and things like that. But if you notice, you walked into BestBuy today,
would you see half as many Netbooks as a year ago. Computer companies are
very anxious to push people out of Netbooks.
DAVID CARR: Because the margin isn’t there. Let’s talk about what a
win would be on this.
CHARLIE ROSE: OK.
DAVID CARR: You know, there have been various estimates that they
maybe do-- move anywhere from 5 to 10 million units, right, first year. To
me, I think it’s going to be large because it isn’t so much what Apple is
going to do in terms of marketing. I think the evangelist who leaves the
store early with this, as soon as they walk out, I could not walk through
my office without people gathering like bees.
WALT MOSSBERG: I had the same experience today at the Journal.
DAVID CARR: And they don’t want to just look at it. They want to get
their hands on it.
WALT MOSSBERG: I completely agree with what you just said. Here is
the pattern I think you will see, Charlie. I think within about a week, or
ten days, maybe even less, could be less, they will put out one of their
famous press releases that says we’ve sold a million of these. And you got
to understand, there is a lot of new products.
Take the Motorola Droid, which has been a pretty successful phone which
Verizon put a ton of marketing behind. And I think it sold over a million,
I’m almost certain of that. But it didn’t do it in three, five, seven
days. It took a while, it took as much as the first iPhone or the first
iPad. But since then, Apple has been able to generate --like, the last
iPod they introduced, I think it was three days and they sold a million. I
don’t know if it is going to be three days here, but you are going to see a
release, ten days out, a week out, whatever it is, a million. Those
million people become saleswomen and salesmen and evangelists. And they
show it off.
Dc: Speaking of which, the elevator pitch is never going to be the
same. You get on an elevator, you are able to show the guy your whole
movie, your whole book. Everything.
WALT MOSSBERG: Or the "Wall Street Journal," just to even things it
up, the Wall Street Journal.
CHARLIE ROSE: Show photographs on it too.
WALT MOSSBERG: This illustrates a point that I was making before.
This is a much more sophisticated photo program, more like a Mac program or
a PC program than a photo program, even on a nice, a really nice phone like
the iPhone. This is much more sophisticated. I can tap one of these
collections of photos and boom, there it just -- and you saw how fast that
was, by the way. This is a very fast device. The screens move very fast.
You’re not sitting here thinking when is this going to respond.
DAVID CARR: It’s sick how fast it is.
CHARLIE ROSE: It’s sick how fast it is.
(CROSSTALK)
WALT MOSSBERG: I will tell you, this processor is made by Apple.
Apple bought a chip company -- you don’t think of them as a chip maker, but
they bought a chip company a few years ago. And this processor is made by
them. It is a much less powerful processor by any standard measure than
what you could get in even say a $600 dollar PC or $700 PC. But it has
been tuned to the software of this device in such a way that it is just
wicked fast. This thing runs wicked fast.
But I mean, there will be these evangelists, you will have a million
sales, whenever it is. And then you are going to have a ramp. And my
guess is that because it’s a new category, because people are going to
wonder if they want to carry another thing and have to be convinced about
using this instead of their laptop, I think the ramp may be slower than we
saw for the iPhone and some other things, that’s all. I don’t know how
slow.
CHARLIE ROSE: Fair enough. What don’t you like about it?
WALT MOSSBERG: I wish it had a web cam. I think the webcam -- it is
just, you look at it and you say, why can’t I use this to make video Skype
calls? And when people are making the list of things they do on their
laptop that they would like to do on this, for a certain percentage of
people, that’s important. So I wish it had a webcam.
I wish it did multi-tasking, which means that I could do more than one
thing at once. Now it actually does multitasking, but only with Apple’s
own apps. So for instance, 11 and a half hours of videos I was watching,
wi-fi was on and e-mail was running in the background and collecting. I
would check it every once in a while, so that is multitasking. But third
party apps, those 150,000 third party apps and the thousand iPad apps that
they hope to have available Saturday, those won’t multitask, so they need -
- I wish it did that. And I wish it played Flash. Even though I think
that there are ways around Flash and there are some of these media
companies.
CHARLIE ROSE: Did he not include Flash because of some long-ago
battle with Adobe?
WALT MOSSBERG: There’s bad blood between Adobe and Apple, there
absolutely is, Charlie. And I can’t imagine that that doesn’t play a role
in it. If you listen to -- his argument.
DAVID CARR: I think there is a little bit of a holy war there.
WALT MOSSBERG: His argument.
CHARLIE ROSE: Holy war.
WALT MOSSBERG: His argument is, it would reduce battery life, it
crashes the Mac browser more than any other factor. I can tell you there
are other companies like Mozilla, which makes Firefox and Microsoft which
not very happy about Flash either, it is not just Apple. But so if you ask
me what is missing, what do I wish? I wish it played Flash because on the
iPhone, if I go to a web site and there is a Flash video, and it doesn’t --
it won’t play, well, OK, it’s a little screen, I’m not as upset. Here,
it’s going to be a bigger hole in the middle of the screen.
DAVID CARR: It takes a little bit of the zing when you are zipping
across, you go, look what I can do, and there is a big black hole in the
middle of it. And you go, hmm, that isn’t-- I mean, it is great that it
got me there fast. I wish there was a video in that hole.
WALT MOSSBERG: But David, I will say this, on the other hand, some
sites including, I know this is true at the Journal, for all I know it may
be true at the Times and other places.
DAVID CARR: We’re almost done.
WALT MOSSBERG: Will put out simultaneously a Flash version of a video
and a version that will run on these devices.
DAVID CARR: I think that there are is so much of -- when I made my
arguments against this being a productivity tool on Twitter, people came
back and said, wait until the apps come. You don’t really know what this
device is and what it capable of. And so there is a whole infill of
America’s most creative minds that will come in behind this and make it do
all sorts of things that I never imagined it would. But for the time
being, I’m going to lean back and use it. I’m not going lean forward and
use it.
CHARLIE ROSE: Well said, I think that is probably true. Last word
for you, Walt.
WALT MOSSBERG: I just would repeat what we said at the beginning. I
think if this takes off, it really -- you’re going to have to take a
20,000-foot view of what it means to do portable computing, and you will at
the very least see a mix of laptops and tablets.
CHARLIE ROSE: How does it fit in your life is the basic question
people are going to have to ask. The most interesting thing about it, I
think, in the end and why I think it has a really great chance of success
is the way it feels and how portable it is and how you can see it in
different ways. And because you -- it is the rise of applications. The
rise of apps have given us an access to a world that we could never have
imagined.
And you can do it with one simple little thing. You can see all over the
world. You can see inside information about everything. You can know who
is in your neighborhood. You can know what’s playing at the theater, what
restaurants are within several blocks. And it’s all right here, and this
thing weighs 1.5 pounds. Now you could say it’s also in an iPhone, but
it’s.
WALT MOSSBERG: Or a laptop.
CHARLIE ROSE: Or a laptop. But you’re not going to take a laptop
with you. You are going to take this with you.
Thank you, Walt. Great to see you.
WALT MOSSBERG: Great to see you, Charlie.
CHARLIE ROSE: A pleasure to have you here.
WALT MOSSBERG: It’s an honor to be with Mr. Carr.
CHARLIE ROSE: Mr. Carr has a facile use of language, does he not?
WALT MOSSBERG: He does.
CHARLIE ROSE: So there it is, the informed views of Walt Mossberg and
David Carr.
What is remarkable for me is this -- 1.5 pounds, a remarkably clear
and beautiful picture. And what you can see and what you can do. You can
go to museums around the world. You can read books. You can play games.
You can see newspapers and magazines. And all those applications which do
things that we would not ever have imagined possible in a device that’s 1.5
pounds.
The thing you should do is investigate for yourself and see. If it
adds to your life, it’s something that you might not have known you needed,
but makes your own life more interesting, more satisfying, and gives you an
exploration of the world that you could never imagine before.
Thank you for joining us. See you next time.
END
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