If you’ve not already seen them, take a few minutes out of your day to smile as you watch a 2-year-old, then a 99-year-old, use the iPad.
Finally, take a look as Chinese pianist Lang Lang plays Flight of the Bumblee on an iPad.
My mind = blown.
iPad, of course
The iPad Alone 
I just smile seeing the 99 year old working away! I just felt so happy! I laughed at the kid playing with the iPad. Hell, even a cat figured out how to navigate the home screen and play piano; the dog on the other hand was frightened.
It all proves my point; the future of interface is more intuitive. Real world interaction that users “just know how it works” will replace old concepts and most of us 30+ year computer techies will have to adapt. Just try to explain to a tecnophobe nested folder file management, right-clicking the mouse then left-clicking the option you want, and when to single-click or double-click. I have been a computer teacher for 12 years and some students cannot fathom those concepts. It takes a paradigm shift for them to get it.
Thanks for the thoughts Josh. Very interesting re: your experience teaching concepts we consider so fundamental (and simple). What never ceases to amaze me though is the way so many cling to the existing paradigms, refusing to see what’s before them. Is the iPad perfect as-is? Of course not. Is it where things are headed? Very much so!
I know. . .
I have had so many arguments with fellow techies about how techies want computers that are too complicated for normal people. That they equate complex with power. Being a teacher and a techie, I love power but prefer simplicity. It’s one of the reasons I switched to the mac platform in 2002, after 7 years working solely in Windows. (I was an Amiga user before that.)
I find the Mac OS X platform, simple, yet infinitely complex if you get into the Unix side.
The iPhone OS has a lot of power but it is limited in scope. However, that is exactly what average non-computer people need. Even the concept of saving a document is one of those things people don’t get at first. “It’s on my screen, why isn’t it already saved. Where do I save it? What is folder hierarchy? Metadata, huh?”
The best part is the Save icon in most Windows apps is still a picture of a floppy disk. Even though no one uses them anymore. I asked one of my advanced classes to come up with replacement icon, they couldn’t figure out one.
Even the icon for a hard disk on Mac OS X, no regular user knows what a hard disk looks like, especially on a mac when you very rarely open the case.
Sorry maybe slightly off topic . . . just my reasons why we need a paradigm shift and a complete redesign of the GUI in order to make computers easier for the non-computer user to get their work done.
Josh