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Jan
28
The iPad Cometh…
Filed Under Apple News, Fun, Tech News, Very Very Cool, iPad
“Our most advanced technology, in a magical and revolutionary device at an unbelievable price” – Steve Jobs
So, the big day has come and gone and the world now has the Apple iPad. Was it good for you? Did it meet our collective expectations? Was it even possible? Will you remember where you were when it was announced?
I was asked by quite a few people to comment on this new thing-a-ma-bob right after the announcement. I felt I really had to let it all sink in, let it wash over me, process what really was revealed.
I initially followed the keynote on a live blog feed, but that didn’t really do it justice and the blogger’s point of view left out a lot and interjected their initial impressions which coloured my first take. That take was that this technical manna seemed more like a big iPod Touch – just with more functionality. I guess that’s a way of looking at it on one level.
However, upon watching the actual presentation by Steve and company online the sense that something deeper was going on here took over. I’ve been following the rumours like many out there and although I don’t think there is a revolution a-foot I do think this product represents something significant. Steve Jobs has positioned the iPad as something between a smartphone/iPhone and a laptop. He asked aloud about what kind of product could fit in that space. It would have to do certain things better than either of these types of devices to make it even worthwhile introducing such an offering:
Jobs framed the new iPad as being in between its iPhone and MacBook products. But in order to succeed, he pointed out, it would need to do some things better than either. Today’s netbooks don’t do anything better; they’re just cheap and small notebooks, he said.
It was widely expected that Apple would release a 10″ iPod touch, and that’s essentially what the iPad is. However, that’s really only the case in hardware. The iPad’s larger screen, which melds the MacBook’s beautiful IPS LCD display with the iPhone’s multitouch sensitivity, provides so much extra room that it enables iPhone apps to grow up in sophistication from being mostly information browsers to being full blown desktop apps driven primarily by a multitouch interface.
I think this will be a wonderful device to carry around in place of a laptop most of the time for many people. I love my iPhone, but many times I wish it could do more or enlarge itself to deal with some of the applications I use everyday. I typically carry around my phone and laptop with a power supply etc…and my bag gets heavy. I used a MacBook Air for a while and loved it for it’s weight reduction to my load. The iPad is half that of a MacBook Air weighing in at 1.5lbs with much longer battery life (up to 10 hours).
The addition of iWork for iPad is a huge bonus for business users and users in general who want something that can actually do more than surf the web. It’s also going to be a killer presentation tool – for creating them using Keynote and for controlling the display of them via the iPad itself (adapters for connecting to projectors will be available). I also love the idea of having my tech manuals handy in case I need to refer to them for something as well as access to the net on demand without having to plug in a cellular dongle (3G iPad). Home users will love this thing for it basic communications feature set (web, email) and the fact that it’s a killer digital photo frame – a stand-alone device that people pay big bucks for and that only have one use – is an amazing bonus. I can see users buying 2 or three for the house just for that – and you can read your morning paper with it too!
The iBooks Store really excited me too. I was thinking during the presentation this could do a lot for the written word as it makes reading easy as well as book, periodical and newspaper purchasing fun and extremely accessible. It will be interesting to see how different generations approach the iPad. I think younger people will take to it easily. They’re used to these kinds of devices and this will be a great gaming platform. The potential for the education market and students is huge in terms of text books and I’ve seen some amazing proof of concept developments in this area such as this one which I think will come to the iPad:
Older people who are more comfortable with traditional forms of reading papers, magazines and books may be reluctant to migrate to the newer technology coming our way, but Apple’s iPad may just win them over. It’s intuitive ease of use and tactile interface may convince and make using a computing device fun – and fun is really important.
The iPad’s strength and advantage over it’s competitors will be similar to the iPhone’s – the massive infrastructure of Apple’s iTunes store and it’s relationship with it’s now built-in iPhone operating system developer community. I mean, there are already 140,000 applications that are compatible with it from day 1! Only Apple could have produced this device. They designed the unit, wrote the software, made the processor, developed the ideas – they have leapt ahead of everyone again:
Even with all their hardware partners, Google’s Android and Microsoft’s Windows Mobile haven’t been able to attract the same kind of attention from developers or software buying users. Apple’s new iPad is unique on many levels, and demonstrates a formidable new challenger in a the formerly lackluster tablet computer market. For competitors to match it, they’ll need to catch up not just in hardware but also in media distribution, in developer tools, in customer base, and in raw component technology, and all at a tremendously aggressive price.
It appears iPad launches Apple as far ahead of its peers as the iPhone did at its unveiling. It remains to be seen if the market will respond and buy up this $500 tablet revolution as quickly as it snapped up the similarly priced iPhone and iPod touch.
When you look at current eBook readers, even really cool ones (and this is so much more) they now look dull in comparison. Am I going to buy one? Absolutely! Which one to get, that’s the big question. There will be two models with different specs – a WiFi only and a WiFi/3G cellular model. Each sports a 16, 32 or 64GB solid state drive configuration. The sweet spot will probably be one of the 32GB variants (I like to subscribe to video Podcasts and I think a lot of the new iPad applications are going to take up more space due to the larger repertoire developers now have). No one knows what deal Apple will strike with the carriers here. AT & T in the States will be offering an unlimited data plan for $30/month – I hope the oligarchy of cell phone companies follow suit in Canada.
Will it be a success? I believe it will and I also believe it will subtly infiltrate our lives through other technologies and applications that spring forth from it and from other companies’ responses to it in ways that are not yet apparent.
Update: reviewers are weighing in – the NY Times has an article and I especially like David’s Pogue’s first impressions.
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One Response to “The iPad Cometh…”
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it’s beautiful , it’s insanely great , it’s almost everything i thought it was going to be and more but also less .
the more … you can run real apps on it , which i wasn’t expecting . but is there a file system so i can store documents i create or import in folders i create and choose ? and with the capability to create content on it there should be at least a USB port to get data off of the ipad
the less … no phone !!! if i get one of these it’s going to be exactly like having the ipod touch , i’ll have to carry it and a cell phone . i hate that , it’s the reason i paid extra for the iphone (to rogers to cancel my old phone)
sigh . so close to perfect