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iPad – call us cynical but….

So the iPad is upon on us (or it will be soon – quick get the SDK and scale up your iPhone apps) but i) who is it for?, ii) what function or problem does it solve?,  and how on earth does the form factor work?

The iPhone took an existing problem (smart phones were a pain to use and had ultra-limited functionality) and turned them into the computer in your pocket. This is exactly what they did for MP3 players: took an existing product, slightly changed the form factor and created an amazing UI called the iPod + iTunes. The iPhone is such a success that most iPhone users, given a choice of which key function they could live without, would probably remove the phone.

So has the iPad taken an existing product and turbo charged it? IMHO: no. Net tops are a flash in the pan as their low cost point has been targeted by cheap laptops which means the current device that the iPad tackles is the laptop (Google Chrome OS not looking so clever is it?). Laptops have a great form factor: keyboard with a tilting screen which means no neck ache and two hands free. Lots of available peripheral devices and an unlimited raft of software. The iPad seems to fail on both accounts as it seems to need to be hand controlled and you need to bend your head to face it while, despite what Apple say about a stuffed app store, the software volume is limited.

So can the iPad fit some other kind of use case? Perhaps it can be used while travelling instead of a lap top? There is no way I will carry this in tandem with a smart phone. The smart phone is small and fits in my pocket. The iPad is bigger, heavier and doesn’t fit in my pocket. I’d rather just take a lap top.

Time will tell but I think that a slightly larger (i.e. longer and wider but not thicker) iPhone with multi-tasking would have been a better call. The Technorati say that the iPhone derived from the original iPad (tablet) project. Perhaps that was the logical conclusion? and the iPad is actually a step backwards?

Tags: apple, ipad, ipod, itunes

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 28th, 2010 at 11:10 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.