If you’re reading this I’m assuming you already know that Apple Inc. has announced a new product today called the iPad. If you don’t, there’s tons of publications on the web from T-0:00 during today’s keynote address by Steve Jobs about all the specs that your heart could desire. Check it out.
Firstly, I want to begin by saying that I do want to get this. This is the device I wanted my iPod Touch to be when i bought it three years ago. For me, the iPod Touch is my only mp3 player, so it does need to be as small as it is, for that purpose, but for everything else, I really, really,wish it had a larger screen. How I want to use it is to catch up on email around the house, or check a website, or read something, watch something, view something… but the screen is just a little too small to do well for me.
Everyone’s argument against the iPad is that it’s basically just an really big iPod Touch. But this is what makes it so great. When you don’t need something that can fit in your pocket, this adds a HUGE amount of usefulness to some of the applications you’d use on the iPod Touch or iPhone. One great example of this I saw was music creation applications, like the one that puts a keyboard on your iPhone. It’s neat, and cool that you can do it, but it would actually be useable on an iPad to do some real creation. The same is true with the drawing/painting applications. Yes, on the iPod or iPhone you can draw with your finger, and it’s cool, but you’re not really going to use it to draw, because it’s just too small. But on the iPad you could really use that type of an application.
I hear complaints that it’s running the iPhone OS, rather than the full OS X. If it was running the full version of a desktop operating system like OS X, it would instantly be less useable. The iPhone OS, even at this larger size, is made for touch. Tablet PCs running windows or linux are basically a touch screen on a desktop operating system… one that was designed for a mouse. Sure, you could make the buttons larger, but that still doesn’t mean it makes sense for a touch interface. For the first time, I think the technology stops getting in the way, and instead you can just do what you want, intuitively.
Besides just providing a better user experience by not running the full desktop version of OS X, Apple is a business. They have a line of products, at a wide range of prices, that they want to sell well. They are positioning this as a new type of product, that goes between the ipod/iphone and the macbook lines, and it is priced accordingly ($499 to $829, macbook’s starting at $999). If they were to come out with a device that could do everything the macbook could, for a few hundred less, who would buy the macbook anymore? They can’t cannibalize their other lines, so they can’t really use a desktop operating system in this type of a product, for that reason as well.
There’s one thing I really do wish was in the iPad though, and this is one area I agree with the critics. I wish it had a camera. I have heard the tech pundits talk about how putting a camera that could stream video, would really upset AT&T, who they’ve partnered with to provide wireless service. I kind of buy that. But maybe they just couldn’t fit the camera in, in time. There’s no camera on the iPod touch yet, and we all thought that would have one almost six months ago. I think the development cycles are long enough, especially with the iPad (rumored to have been in production for the last eight years or so) that it might just be something that we have to wait for the second generation for. I just really wish I could sit on the couch, and skype/ichat. I bet by next year, this time, apple will have cameras in the iPod Touch and the iPad.
I have so much more to say about how big of a deal this product really is, but I think that will have to wait till the world knows a little more about it.
