iPad - why does everyone seem so iMad?
When the iPad splashed onto the rumor scene, the date was November 18th 2002. In that month there was an article in eWeek by Matthew Rothenberg that speculated on an Apple tablet. Of course his leaked info wound up being WAY off compared to what we see today as the iPad. After that, it seems there wasn't much mention of it but once a year until April 2009. From then on the rumor was white hot and the rumor mill was working overtime with many claims ... many that wound up being right.
At first, my excitement was hard to contain. I was glued to the coverage of Apple's latest event, because the rumors had promised some serious excitement. We were talking about a front facing camera, some multitasking goodness, and other tech geek goodies. Then the announcement. Everyone was waiting with baited breath for a Verzon partnership, iPhoneOS 4.0, and a real game changing device. None of that ever came.
What Jobs announces was essentially an iPod Touch that took steroids with Barry Bonds. For this reason, people are incredibly skeptical of the device's usefulness and this is the part I can agree with.
Right now, if you owned an iPad, and you were sitting in Starbucks listening to Pandora on your gleaming new Apple iEnvy with their slick, custom app and you wanted to get on the web and surf around - you can't. Well, you can, but you will need to stop listening to Pandora in order to do so. Multitasking is a HUGE part of our lives, and for Apple to leave it out is an incredible mistake. Even if we could only do 2 things at once, that would be a great help over just one.
Just as annoying is the lack of the front facing camera. This device has video conferencing written all over it. The ability to Skype on this device would greatly extend its usefullness. Skype is incredibly popular and the ability to capture that segment of the market would have been a great idea.
For those who know me, you know that I own few, if any, Apple products. At the same time I am not one to put them down. I think I have a good 30,000ft view of Apple's devices seeing as how I am neither a fanboy nor a hater. I've loved the iPhone since inception, I just can't deal with AT&T, otherwise I think I would have bought one 3 years ago.
Despite the device's lame points, something about it is most definitely drool-worthy. Apple put a lot of time into OS updates for the iPad with context menus, and VERY cool animations in places like the new iBooks app. Additionally, it's important to note that this device is the first to try being JUST a tablet with a mobile OS and no physical keybaord. Many other so-called tablets have been an extension of a laptop and usually had a keyboard hiding under the screen. Some started calling them "netvertibles" because they had the ability to be used as a laptop, but could convert into a tablet by spinning the screen around. Novel, sure ... but REALLY useless. Anyone I knew with a tablet like this rarely, if ever, used the tablet feature.
Apple, in my opinion, has truly reinvented a 3rd category that was formerly only "netbooks". I think this category most certainly move toward thin, light, powerful devices that can game, produce word processing documents, allow you to surf the web, all the while NOT having a full OS.
What do I mean by a "full OS"? Well, Mac OSX, Windows 7, Windows XP, Ubuntu Linux - these are all full operating systems. They are what we are used to seeing, and while they CAN cram things like Windows XP onto a phone, that doesn't mean it belongs there. Instead, these tablets are going to work with Android, Chrome OS, and other variants that are all more or less a little "stripped" for use in the mobile space. They boot faster, use less battery and are generally faster on the less powerful hardware that make up the slim, lightweight category.
Competition will be quick to follow. Many tablets will focus on Android which I for one welcome. But someone is going to have to seriously tune the Android OS to act more like iPhoneOS. Palm hit the nail on the head with a refined OS in their latest Pre/Pixi phone release while Android lags behind since it is an open source platform. Sense UI, MotoBlur and others are doing their best, but no one is there just yet.
Being an honest to goodness geek, I empathize with the geeks of the world and while I hear their cries, every non-geek I talk to is GUNG HO about this device and can't wait to get their hands on one. This shows me that this device will likely be WILDLY popular, whether we buy one or not.
The future looks bright for the iPad. Surely, version 2 of the device will have, at the minimum, a front facing camera. I believe version 1 will also get the update to iPhoneOS 4.0 soon enough to enable all our multitasking dreams. Steve Jobs made some bold claims and in order for the iPad to live up to those claims, it HAS to multitask at a bare minimum.
I think we're going to see the multitasking improvement in short order. Until then, someone had a great point. ( I wish I could remember who so I could give them credit, but Ive read so many iPad reviews my eyes hurt.) Anyway, that someone said something to the effect of - if Apple had put the same device out and called it an e-Reader, we'd all be falling over ourselves about how AWESOME it is that it does other stuff too! We'd be singing the praises of this versatile device and would be happy to plunk our change down for a chance to have one. It hits the right price point for a color e-reader and does WAY more.
Really the second Jobs came out and declared war on the netbook category, he brought with it a hurricane of doubt, questions and truth-seekers. I will continue to seek the truth too ... on my 16GB WiFi iPad.