This next line is where I’m supposed to say something like, “but I want one anyway.” But I don’t. I mean, I’d take it if someone gave it to me (and my birthday is coming soon); I’m just not sure when I’d use it.
Surely an Apple device would be ideal for home use, right? Before it was announced I pictured using an Apple tablet kicked back in my recliner, websurfing aimlessly. However, a notebook or laptop would blow it out of the water for that purpose. For one, the tablet doesn’t appear to support Flash (in the demos today it put up the same missing plugin icon the iPhone does for Flash elements), so Hulu is out right away. How am I supposed to catch up on 24? YouTube is also out, kind of: the YouTube app on Apple’s other devices does not include every video on YouTube, though it usually has most videos I want to watch. A proper computer will have much broader support for formats and web content, in any event.
Also, you better stock up on bookmarks, because you won’t want to enter a bunch of addresses onscreen: the comfortable angles for web reading and typing don’t look like they’d be close to the same. I really don’t know how anyone would write anything of length on this without the keyboard dock, which just turns your iPad into what looks like a laptop, but with added inconvenience.
What else? Ah, the iPhone OS’s famed lack of multitasking. Usually when I sit down on a computer, I fire up Pidgin, the totally awesome multi-service instant messaging app that lets me talk to my Gmail and AOL friends. I probably won’t be doing that on the iPad, which seems to run just one app at a time. (There is the workaround of background notifications on the iPhone; you can stay signed in to an IM app, for example, and you’ll get pop-ups when someone writes you. Then you can jump home, go to the IM app, write them back, and get back to your Web browsing. That works in some cases, I suppose, but my friends don’t usually have just one thing to say every fifteen minutes. I also don’t know if the iPad even supports these notifications.) Of course, on a normal Mac or Windows laptop you could just put an IM window next to your browser of choice and go from there.
Let’s see, what else…how about media consumption, a huge strength of Apple’s? Well, you can listen to music on the iPad, but in a world of mp3 players I think you’d be mad to do so for more than a few minutes if that’s all you’re doing. As on a computer, though, I would play music in the background while I perused the Internet. The picture viewing looks awesome on this thing, and it’s an area where multitouch really shines. And for video? Yeah. This thing looks like the greatest device ever invented for watching a movie on a plane, even with its 4:3 aspect ratio. But then, iPods and computers handle these tasks pretty well, too, though with a little less razzle-dazzle.
Oh, and what about books? Well…yeah. Consumers: electronic books do almost nothing for you. You can’t loan ’em, you can’t borrow ’em, and is their relatively small digital file size, i.e. the ability to carry a ton at once, really all that helpful? Do you often find yourself wanting to carry even three books at once? It would be a pretty sweet deal for students if they could put all their textbooks on it, but that probably won’t happen for a while. Instead you can buy restricted-rights versions of some books and read them off a bright LCD screen on one specific device. But hey, at least Apple won’t delete stuff you bought the way Amazon did. (I really wish Apple had demoed their iBooks store today with a copy of 1984.) I’ll stick with paperbacks, thanks.
Speaking of students, this would be great for them, right? Well…not really. I’ve taken notes several times on an iPhone, and it’s not a bad experience for text. I feel like typing on an iPhone is a bit easier than typing on an iPad will be, though perhaps I should reserve judgment. Sometimes you do want to copy a picture or diagram; Apple’s Notes program makes no allowance for on-screen drawing, though other apps do. So if you don’t mind quitting out and drawing the picture, I guess you’re good. Of course, on an iPhone you can just take a photo of the diagram or whatever, but the iPad has no camera, so good luck finger-scrawling quickly. A convertible tablet with pen input seems like a much more useful device for digital note-taking, and paper notebooks still handle the job with ease.
But Apple surely brings a sense of class and taste to the table, don’t they, which normal PC manufacturers just can’t match? Indeed they do. The calendar and e-mail apps just look outstanding. Maps is pretty sweet, too. If I was a hotshot trying to look important I would only check my e-mail around the office on an iPad.
Many of the other minor annoyances with this device stem from Apple’s decision to build the software on the iPhone OS, rather than Mac OS X. The iPhone OS devices have been hugely successful, and the software offers an ease-of-use that even the Mac can’t match. Plus, it’ll run all those apps from the commercials. On the downside, the application icons look like they’re spread comically far apart on the home screens, the unlock slider just looks weird, and the lock screen is still just your wallpaper and a clock. Wouldn’t it be cooler if it was like a touch iGoogle, and you could see your e-mail and the weather and some headlines or whatever just by tapping the button to wake it up? Personally, I’m more excited for the possibilities of slates based on the multitouch-capable Windows 7, because they’ll be full-blown computers. HP already announced one that is kind of lame (no webcam), but I hope it’s only a matter of time. Since the iPad runs iPhone OS anyway, I think for the most part you’d be happier with an iPhone or cheaper iPod touch that does the same stuff in a pocketable size.
The final problem with this device, to me, is the price. Apple bragged that they got it down to $499 today, which indeed surprised me. But that’s for a 16-gig model with no 3G (hallelujah, I say: 3G is awesome but shouldn’t be required on a product like this). That’s 16 gigs of flash memory, meaning it’ll survive a fall a lot better than a netbook hard drive would…but I wonder if that screen would last if you dropped it very far anyway. And a netbook with an HDD is going to hold at least, what, ten times that much stuff? I can’t decide if sixteen gigs is enough or not, but with the device’s stellar photo and video capabilities, you have to be tempted to bump up to the 32-gig model at least, right?
Of course, at the $499-$829 range, you’re not just looking at netbooks, but a huge variety of laptops from many manufacturers. Many of those are also wicked stupid: 15-inch screens with crappy resolutions, etc., but there are some real gems out there. I haven’t seen anything that would convince me I’d want an iPad more than, say, an 11.6-inch Acer Timeline. The iPad looks futuristic and fun, but I plan to pass easily. Am I missing something?
