The Announcement
During an Apple Event on Wednesday, Apple didn’t surprise anybody and announced an Apple Tablet — the iPad. The iPad runs iPhone OS 3.2, which includes some updates especially for the iPad. The iPad runs off a 1Ghz processor made in-house by Apple called the A4. As usual for Apple no more specs were really announced, but it seems the A4 processor is based off the ARM Cortex A9.
The main features Apple are touting for the iPad is watching movies, browsing the web and as an eReader with their new iBooks app. The iBooks apps is a major feature for the iPad as it includes a new iBooks store, where you’ll be able to purchase books from major publishers. The iPad will retail from $499 for a version with 16GBs and wifi, to $829 wiht 64GBs, 3G and wifi.
Though there were a few disappoints during the announcement, the iPad doesn’t include a front facing camera for Skype or iChat, multitasking or support for flash. How this affects the success of the device we’ll have to see. Read on for my opinons.
Opinions
After the announcement, I wasn’t entirely sure what to think of the iPad. Firstly, I think the name is awful, it sounds very similar to iPod, and just doesn’t really sound good – at all. I felt the announcement was very underwhelming. Of course, following the kind of hype the iPad received, it’s near impossible to ever follow, however I think Apple missed the mark on several key points.
Firstly, I don’t think they managed to justify this device of having any killer app, or any real use. Firstly, if I want to browse the web at home, then I’d want to browser the web, but I’d also want to be on my messenger. The iPad can’t multi-task, so I can either talk to my friends, or browse the web. For a device of this size, and as capable as this device I think the lack of multitasking is really an Achilles’ heel. If I’m on the go, I can just use my iPhone — why lug this around when it doesn’t offer any additional functionality?
While the web browsing experience does look slick, it’s also lacking flash so you can’t access the full web. The iPad can run all iPhone applications, which is pretty slick, but it can only a single app at a time, and either at normal, or double resolution. If you’re running it in single resolution it’s just in the middle of the screen. If you could open multiple apps, drag them around your screen like amazing widgets, you’d be able to so so much simultaneous. You could have your twitter client open, with IM and maybe a web browser on half the screen you’d have a fantastic experience. However, in my opinion, the iPad is lacking the WOW factor to really give it the gadget lust factor.
There is one small fact that leaves me a little puzzled however. The iPad is running iPhone OS 3.2, not 4.0 Apple will almost certainly announce iPhone OS 4.0 this March at WWDC, and hopefully it’ll include a wealth of new features. Though how this will affect the iPad? I’d like to think that iPhone 4.0 will include multitasking and the iPad has all this hidden functionality that they didn’t announce. Though I find it a little hard to believe that they’d announce a project of this scale but hold back most of the features to announce in March. If this is the case does it mean iPhone 4.0 is going to be as underwhelming? It’s definitely going to be interesting to see where this goes, I’m hoping for good things. If not – I’m very tempted to jump ship to the HTC SuperSonic anyway!
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