As with most Apple products, the iPad is built from some of the best hardware widely available (depending on your criteria) and has been advertised exceptionally well. In spite of the deluge of predictions that it would change “everything,” there seems to be comparatively little deep effect on the tech industry. It feels more like a novelty—something to carry around in addition to ones usual load but not replacing anything. It could theoretically do so much, so why do people seem to select the “lesser” tools, even when an iPad is available?

I recently discovered the central flaw for my experiences with the iPad, which I believe also shapes many other users’ “enjoyable indifference” (for lack of a better description) to the iPad as a general tool.

Last week a co-worker was telling me about how compelling he found a recent commercial for the iPad. He was especially struck by the operation of the featured apps using essentially two inputs, the home button and the screen’s touch sensor, and one output (the screen itself). I was thinking about the ways this simple input/output channel is made intuitive and marketable for such a diverse set of applications and I realized that the common thread was to use artifacts from the user’s daily life and simulate physical interactions therewith. Pages in e-books are turned by sliding a finger across the screen, volume can be adjusted by “turning” a knob styled like the one found on many stereos, objects are repositioned sliding them around with a finger, and even abstract ideas like configuration options are represented by depictions of physical switches.

All of this makes for a relatively easy system to learn or explain, and it certainly lends itself to some exceptionally compelling demonstration on video. However, if an interface is conveyed by portraying something else, it inherits the constraints of the metaphor. Worse, the original often has physical properties that enhance its utility which cannot be captured by images on a screen or fingers sliding against glass.

This is remarkably clear when working with text or images. Imagine trying to write with a bare fingertip. It is slow, ineffective, and requires too much focused effort. Drawing is worse, even rough sketches to help explain an idea are unpleasant work, not to mention those engaged in serious art. Compounding the problem an iPad is far heavier and less durable than pads of paper, so it is only useful when a stable, flat surface is available to set it down. Holding it securely in one hand without letting a finger slide onto the screen itself while simultaneously touching the screen with only the intended fingertips of the opposite hand is an embarrassingly difficult task. Several after-market stylus-type products to use with the iPad exist, but as long as they are not considered part of the core device, software and hardware on the iPad is unlikely to leverage a stylus’ strengths in meaningful, global ways (For example, the palm of the hand holding the stylus cannot ever contact the screen without creating competing “touch” events that disrupt the stylus operation.)

In stark contrast to the iPad philosophy, “traditional” computing has embraced the abstract nature of its uses and created a new set of specialized physical tools that are able to shed the limitations of older technology. Most computer users can type faster than the average person can write legibly by hand and the mechanisms for editing the text only widen the performance gap. Digital image manipulation is vastly easier and faster than working in traditional media in part because of the precision of a mouse and the ability to switch tools with a single keystroke. The Internet is not represented by images of books with animations of a person walking between them when navigating websites; instead, simply the press of a button can be used to move to a different information source and back. Granted, these tools took time to adopt, but they offer capabilities far beyond what was possible for many people before.

By excluding the “complexity” of specialized hardware interfaces and not embracing the abstract nature of most computing tasks, the iPad must too often rely on an experience that falls short of the very objects it must simulate to ply the user with intellectual familiarity.

The iPad seems to have brought the adage “jack of all trades, master of none” into the 21st century.