By the time this post goes out, I'd have seen the full Apple Keynote in video (Download link:
http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=275834665&subMediaType=Video).
By the time this post goes out, I'd also have read some of the opinions the man on the street or in the Media circle.
So, I thought I'd post a round-up of the flaws, the commendable, and the questions for debating on Facebook or my tagboard.
But first,
The Flaws.
It's an Apple First-Gen product. Which means they're bound to create an imperfect product - that's how they make money from the army of fanboys and early-adopters. And here's my top few...
1. No Multi-tasking.
One of my friends (Ren Yuan) pointed out that, yes, the iPad has Keynote and Pages, so in theory, you can start tapping reports away on this thing. But what if you need to do some research in Safari? What if you're preparing a Bibliography - you're going to go back and forth between Pages and Safari, copying and pasting, waiting for one app to open for every single bit you copy. That's going to be tedious. And what if you want to listen to Pandora/Streaming Radio/Last.fm while making a Keynote presentation? The problem is that Apple hates to make an App-killer - it shows that their OS can be unstable, like Windows or OS X.
2. No (Adobe) Flash.
If you watched the announcements, you'd see that the audience chuckled when Steve loaded
NYT.com - you see the little blue lego block with a white '?' on it. You saw Steve try to swipe the icon away as that happened. Come ON! Get Adobe to port Flash over, already! [p.s.: If you watched Steve Jobs' intro before Schiller went on stage to talk about iWork, he said something about the iWork requiring lots of horsepower. Maybe it's just me, but I saw that as a prompt from Jobs to Adobe, asking them to get their act together and make Flash stable on OS X Snow Leopard first if they want to come on board.]
3. Lack of Content. Worldwide.
Perhaps this was because Apple kind-of rushed some last-minute content deals to avoid leaks (*stares sternly at McGraw-Hill*). But seriously? US-only iBooks Store? No newspapers/magazine subscription? No textbooks?
4. The Screen resolution.
1024x768 = 4:3 = stupid resolution. That's supposed to be extinct when the CRT died. Maybe it's to keep costs low, but I really wished they got a widescreen aspect ratio instead. Your "Star Trek" or "Up!" will look really letter-boxed. And what's with the stupid bezel? It's so thick! Couldn't they trim that a bit more to recude the footprint?
5. MicroSIM?!
Apple is brilliant at locking things down, it seems. iPhone 1 was locked to AT&T/O2, their OS X is locked to the Mac and the Mac was locked to OS X, iTunes had DRM, etc. Now that they're selling iPad (the 3G model) unlocked, you'd think that equates to them raising the flag and giving up over the lockdown game. But then, they come up with a right-hook - MicroSIM means you can't slot in your current data SIM in it - you must BUY from SPECIFIC carriers who sell them. URGH! SO FRUSTRATING!
6. The Name.
iSlate was so much better - original, unique, and most importantly, trademark-able. iPad, apparently, is Fujitsu's trademark in the US. Expect negotiations and possibly lawsuits.
[annoyingly, I thought of why Apple called the iPad the iPad. Think about it - from the iMac and iPod, take all the letters of 'iPod' except the 'o', and put in its place, the 'a' from 'iMac'. It's a portable device (like iPod), but it has horsepower and major computing capabilities (like iMac). It's meant to be the device that's between your iPhone and your Mac. The average of the two extremes = iPad. Get it?]
The Commendable.
On the bright side, the iPad has some strengths worth mentioning.
1. The Pricetag.
$499 to $829?! Enough said. Say goodbye to those cheap and not cheerful, underpowered, plasticky Netbooks. Move over, overly-posh Vaio/Thinkpad X-series or MacBook Air. Say hello to iPad.
2. Money-making machine.
They really thought about the accessories you'll need for this thing, didn't they? Stand, Keyboard Stand, case-cum-stand, Dock-connector-to-camera adaptor, Dock-connector-to-VGA adaptor, etc. Oh, and Apps. $9.99 x 3 for iWork, and game devs are going to get another chance to make money. Oh, and let's not forget the latest addition to the iTunes family - iBooks. They've created a mall around the iPad!
3. iWork on a tablet.
That'll make the device more attractive to students, doctors, insurance agents, news presenters, etc. Oh, and thanks to Brushes, artists might start striking Wacoms off their wishlist and get this instead.
4. ePub.
For the technologically-challenged, ePub is not an electronic pub where you can order electronic drinks and get electronically drunk, before you get eHangovered the next day as you realised how much you spent on eDrinks. It's not like Farmville. No, ePub is a new open standard for eBooks. So you can take all the eBooks you bought from iBooks, and bring it onto your other eBook readers, like the Sony ones. Think of ePub as DRM-free eBooks.
[Correction: apparently, (according to a quote from a disgruntled Adobe blogger via
daringfireball.net, at least) Apple is applying DRM on their ePubs. aww...]
5. The Jack-of-all-trades gadget.
The iPad does a lot of things - eBooks reader, gaming device, music/video player, netbook, photo frame, telephone book, diary, notebook, TV, portable storage drive (albeit a clunky one), Wacom-tablet replacement. They're really blurring the lines with this device - what category do you fit this into, other than a tablet?
6. Unlocked!
Not only is there a 3G-less version, but the 3G version is unlocked and not tied to any contracts! (though, yes, it has a hardware lock in the form of a smaller SIM slot, but since it's a new standard, I'd expect more phones and telcos to switch to MicroSIM in the near future.)
The Questions.
I still don't know how to call on these points, so I thought you should write your opinions on these points. What do you think about these aspects of the iPad?
1. The screen?
I'm not talking about the resolution - it's so 20th century, no questions asked. I'm interested in hearing what you think about the 9.7" size and the IPS technology. Is 9.7" too big, because it doesn't fit in your jeans? Or maybe it's too small (and underpowered) for you to want one in the house? Is IPS a good thing, because of increased viewing angles and colour saturation, or is it bad, because it uses more transistors than other LCD tech, thus increasing power consumption? Which brings me on to my next point.
2. The battery life?
10 hours seems a lot compared to a notebook, but the iPhone lasts longer. Will this thing still have juice if I were listening to music from it all day long via a Bluetooth headset? Or is it not so important since it'll probably never leave the house?
3. Where does it belong?
If the iPad were an appliance, where does it belong? In the toilet? Kitchen? Living room? Study room? Or maybe it sleeps in a bagpack? Or is it not a consumer product? Does it belong in the corporate environment? Or the Education sector? Arts, perhaps? What about healthcare? Or for Science, via the SDK and some specialised instruments? So many possibilities, one device. But where will it succeed?
4. 3G? What for?
Why would anyone buy the 3G version if it's not going to be used anywhere else other than the home, the school, the workplace, or the café - places which probably have some form of Wifi? Heck, what will it do to the battery life? (That's a bit of a rhetorical question, isn't it?)
Well, what do you think, overall? Good product? Or is it a misfit? Comment away...
