I have to admit to being one of Quocirca’s more conservative adopters of new technology. I make no apology for that; it keeps me grounded in the everyday reality of many like-minded IT workers. It also provides a contrast to some of my colleagues who are keener to try out the new stuff. It is good to have analysts adopting both positions within the company—whilst one is saying, “have you seen the latest version of Android”, I can remind them some are happily getting by with Windows Mobile 6.1 and the majority use some version of Symbian.

So needless to say, I am yet to get myself an Apple iPad; my initial reaction being “a new tablet PC—we have been here before”. One of my colleagues has, though, and having used it for about a month has declared it “far more useful than I ever imagined it would be”. Is he just trying to justify spending company funds on a new toy, or is there really something about the iPad that is changing the way the way users are interfacing with IT applications? Two recent announcements lead me to think that the latter is case.

The first announcement was from TIBCO’s Spotfire product group. Spotfire is an analytics tool TIBCO acquired back in 2007. It has announced “Spotfire on the Apple iPad”, an extension of its Web Player technology to provide specific support for the iPad. This will allow iPad users to maximise the power of the device for viewing Spotfire output and modifying the way is it displayed. The point here is, that when I asked the Spotfire spokesperson if they would be targeting other tablets and smartphones, the response was that it would work on the iPhone, but the display is really too small be useful and that they had not tested other tablet platforms because the user demand was for iPad support. Spotfire’s users seem to be setting the pace here.

The second announcement was from Caplin Systems, a UK-based company that provides technology called Caplin Xaqua, a framework for investment banks to build single-dealer platforms, delivering rich internet applications direct to their clients' screens. A part of this is Caplin Trader that enables configurable trading on the web. Like TIBCO, Caplin has now announced specific iPhone/iPad support, citing the iPad as a device its customers see as ideal for accessing a single dealer system across the web.

It is fair to say that these use cases are for high end users, whose organisations are likely to invest in expensive devices to improve the productivity of such users and the experience they are able to provide customers when showing research results or providing investment quotations. But, what high end users have today tends to filter down to lower end users if a given device proves popular. When this is the case prices come down, the software portfolio available for popular devices grows, the technology is further improved to broaden appeal and, of course competition will increase.

There are shortfalls with the initial version of the iPad, surprisingly these including an inability to print (now addressed to an extent under iOS4.2 which allows wireless printing) and no USB port. V2, due out in April 2011, is expected to include a USB port and a camera. Competition includes various tablets and slates (an even sleeker form factor) running any one of a range of operating systems including Google Android, Windows 7 and HP Palm. It seems that the iPad may have created the tipping point for tablet adoption that failed to materialise in the past. The form factor now looks to be here for the long term. Maybe even I will end up with a tablet of some sort…