OK, I’ve already written a post about how ridiculous the name iPad is, but now it’s time to do a review on what it actually is, and how useful it could be.
I just watched the keynote. Personally, there wasn’t anything hugely surprising in it.
The built in apps are nice, and so is the availability of iWork. Personally, I am happy with the dimensions, 9.7 inches is pretty much perfect. I, and most people, had estimated around 10 inches, so this is not a huge surprise. It should fit nicely in your hand, and is perfect for games such as the car racing one demoed in the keynote, because you can use it much more like a steering wheel. However, it could be awkward to play my personal favourite game: Tap Tap Revenge.
The price of this is what I was expecting. It starts at $499, which I think is a tad too expensive. I remember watching the keynote, and I after I saw them announce the price, I thought, ‘yeah, that’s good, but they could have taken $100 off of that’.
It’s rather large to be a replacement for an iPod touch or iPhone (especially without the phone), but I think it does a good job of what it is meant to do: compete with netbooks. It’s got a larger screen than some netbooks, and it is significantly lighter than most netbooks are. It also has the touch screen which allows for a much more intimate interaction. Personally, I don’t like netbooks, and for that reason I can’t see myself liking this product either, but for people who do like netbooks, I can see them loving this product even more.
The best use case for this, I think, is people who travel. I can’t imagine this being used much at home, or at work, but I can imagine it being used when travelling. Imagine sitting on a plane for hours on your way to a holiday. On flights with on demand entertainment, you can always watch that, but what if you don’t like their selection, or what if they don’t even have that, as is the case with many domestic flights? You’ve got the great potential with this device to read a book that you enjoy, or to watch a movie. Then add in the app store, and you’ve got a good selection of games that you can play, although some of the ones that use the accelerometer might be awkward, such as bowling or tap tap.
It seems that I’m not the only one with this opinion. David Banther of Lockergnome.com says
Unless you are seated in First Class you can almost forget about comfortably using any normal size notebook. The person in front of you will surely recline their seat before the rear wheels have left the runway, and airlines seem to be “adding rows” whenever they can. This leaves you very limited space to use a notebook.
Thanks go to GoGoInflight, many airline carriers now have internet on board domestic flights. When seated in coach I have used a netbook with this service. I have the same feelings on netbooks that Steve Jobs expressed at the recent Apple event: they are generally underpowered and cramped machines. This is where I think the iPad would make a great inflight “computer”, especially when combined with inflight internet. The small size and on screen keyboard allows you to comfortably use it in the smallest of spaces. Media, internet browsing, ebooks, and the new iWork application gives you all the tools you need to be productive inflight without the sacrifices you have to make when using a netbook.
Now, while being outside the United States, the inflight internet that he talks about is nothing more than a dream for me, but I can still easily see the point he’s making. And I think that even without the internet you can still watch videos, play games, read eBooks, or do some work with the iWork applications.
The other point he made, which I also quite comically agree with, is that if you do take it with you inflight, you’ll have to put up with other passengers asking “is that the new iPad, can I see it?”
Another niche market it could have is students. As a student myself, I know how annoying it can be to carry 1000s of pages of textbooks to and from school everyday. While I don’t think it could really replace notebooks (the paper and pen sort), it would mean that students would not have to carry their textbooks, and that would take away most of the weight.
What about some of the hardware features? It’s glaringly missing a camera. A lot of people are annoyed that this doesn’t have an in-built camera, but to be honest, I can’t imagine it being used as a camera: it’s just too large to replace a camera. However, a front-facing video camera could be useful for video conferencing. That, for me, would make the price justifiable as it is. But without the camera, as I said before, I think they could have decreased it by $100 for each model.
Another hardware feature I think it could do with—although not nearly as essentially—would be an SD card. People have also been talking about a USB drive, but I think that that would be useless, not to mention overkill. How many USB devices could it really use? Because it uses the iPhone OS, rather than a desktop OS, USB devices would have to be specifically designed for it, which completely defeats the purpose of it. You may as well use the dock connector.
In conclusion, I don’t think this is going to be as much of a failure as Apple’s last tablet, the Newton, was, but I doubt it’s going to revolutionise technology. It’s main user base will be Apple fanboys, and people who travel. With the latter group, it will likely sit unused for long periods of time between trips. Who knows? I could be wrong, but I don’t think it’s lived up to the hype. However, especially if they can add a video camera on the front to the next version of it, I believe it could be a successful appliance.
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January 31st, 2010 at 9:54 pm
The iPad isn’t meant to compete with netbooks. It’s not even close to a netbook. In fact they’re better than netbooks. Netbooks are small and slow. As Jobs said they’re just cheap laptops. What iPad’s success is based on is the apps. If there’s nice apps for it it will be a spectacular device if not it may or may not succeed. I’m tired and gonna go to bed. Gonna make a blog post tomorrow.
February 1st, 2010 at 3:49 am
Yes, the point I was making by comparing it to netbooks was that it has the same general goal; to create a very small device that is mainly for using the internet. In that sense, it does compete with netbooks. Why else would Steve Jobs have even bothered to mention them in his keynote?
February 8th, 2010 at 9:10 pm
I heard about the new Apple Ipad. Is it ideal for video games?