Well, it’s been just over a week since Steve Jobs announced the first details of Apples tablet pc, now known to be called the iPad’ at this years Apple expo so I thought I would put my ‘app of the week’ blog on hold and give you my thoughts on it.
For starters I think it looks beautiful, watching the videos I just want to hold it, caress it, love it! Ahem…anyway I think it looks good, I know that that should be irrelevant, but it just isn’t these days, why can’t something look pretty as well as perform brilliantly?
They claim 18 hours of web browsing and a whole month on standby; now 18 hours is way more than I can get out of my laptop unplugged and probably more than my iPhone, so that sounds excellent, hopefully they deliver on that promise, a month of standby sounds a little like overkill but its a cool nonetheless. Time will of course tell as to whether Apple have gone and kicked ass when it comes to the hardware, but if i we’re a betting man I’d rekon they have done.
Screen size = awesome, HD size options are to be expected with Apple, no chance to upgrade either, but with so much being done in the ‘cloud’ these days I would be tempted to say that the smallest option will suit me fine *immediately regrets decision and buys largest possible*
Now, I must sound like some Apple fanboy right now and that may be the case (a new fanboy mind), but there is definitely one area that I can see some shortcomings with the iPad and this is software. Essentially looking similar to the OS on the iPhone you will only be able to use apps downloaded from the app store and additionally you will not be able to multi task on the iPad. Personally I can’t see a problem with this, I have got used to it on the iPhone and I manage to work well enough on that…I mean I managed to write this blog on an iPhone. But of course many people will disagree and probably rightly so, why doesn’t it just have OSX and make it a proper netbook style device is the argument i’ve heard and read the most over the past week, and I agree, if it were to have a fully fledged operating system then it would be an amazingly powerful tool. However I don’t think Apple are that stupid, if they did that then the sales of Macbooks surely would plummet, and they aren’t about to do that now are they. From what I can surmise this seems to be a whole new tool, not to replace another device but to complement existing technology and hopefully appeal to a different area of the market.
It will also be interesting to see if iWorks will allow people to do “real” work or whether or not they just become a fun little tool with no real depth. I know I am looking forward to trying some of my favourite iPhone apps out on a huuge screen, that should be rather fun.
So, it remains to be seen who will love it and who will hate it, I am pretty sure i’ll try to get my hands on one as soon as possible but I too could hate it, I do try to love everything though, and to see their uses and potential.
