Could the iPad be the tipping point?

Update: To get where I’m coming from here I highly recommend that you read the following articles from Joel on Software: Strategy Letter II: Chicken and Egg Problems and Strategy Letter III: Let Me Go Back!.

The tipping point, Joel on Software:

One thing you see a lot when there is a transition from an old monopoly to a new monopoly is that there is a magic “tipping point”: one morning, you wake up and your product has 80% market share instead of 20% market share. This flip tends to happen very quickly (VisiCalc to 123 to Excel, WordStar to WordPerfect to Word, Mosaic to Netscape to Internet Explorer, dBase to Access, and so on). It usually happens because the very last barrier to entry has fallen and suddenly it’s logical for everyone to switch.

Whilst reading this, a crazy thought popped into my head: could the release of the new iPad be the tipping point for Apple?

What are the most commonly cited barriers to users adopting Apple products?

• Macs are too expensive. The iPad is probably the cheapest Apple computer to date.
• Macs are too hard to use (you can’t right-click, everything’s in the wrong place, ad infinitum). Apple has been wearing away at this for a while: you can right-click. And ironically Windows has become more Mac-like with every iteration. And then there’s the iPod and iPhone…
• Macs don’t run the software I need. There is a version of MS Office for Windows. Apple’s software opens MS Office formats. You can run Windows on a Mac.
• Macs are just for graphos. iPad + iWork.

I could probably think of some other reasons, if it weren’t so late at night.

But I think the final piece of the puzzle, wonderfully accounted by Fraser Speirs (in his article “Future Shock”) and many others, is the great pent-up frustration with the fact that computers still don’t quite seem to just work. And if you’ve only used Windows, they never have.

This is a “chicken and egg” scenario (see linked article), and Apple have managed to remove almost all of the barriers to adoption. The dissolving of the usability barrier could mark their transition from 20% of the market to 80%.

It usually happens because the very last barrier to entry has fallen and suddenly it’s logical for everyone to switch.

Just maybe.