The secret behind the Apple iPad 2’s success

[Commentary] I believe that hardware specs — speed, memory, screen size — do make a difference in hardware, but that difference can only take you so far. Although CPU speed and RAM might dictate what’s possible to do with a gadget, developers and designers now have to actually deliver on those promises.

Take, for example, the disparity between the iPad 2, which has a 1GHz CPU, and most new Android tablets, which run far faster than that. Would anyone who has used both devices argue that the experience of the Android tablet is superior to that of the iPad 2? Doubtful. The more I thought about this question of hardware versus software, the more intrigued I became with thinking about the future of our technology, and how it will develop over the next five or 10 years. As the importance and relevance of great applications grows for our devices, the divide between the great experiences and the ones that leave you wanting is becoming clearer with each passing day. In fact, you could almost argue there’s a kind of fundamental split between the platforms that have been tailored to provide a consistent, elegant experience and those that have been left more open. The more advanced our products get, the more subtle and sophisticated our software has to be. Today, we’re just starting out with touch screens and voice recognition. Tomorrow, everything we touch might be an experience waiting to happen.

Let’s hope the computer makers touting specs today learn this lesson for the future: It’s the software, stupid.