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The iPad, A Little Bit Later
Before going in to the Apple event, I kept wondering if there was some sort of elite country club for people who cover these. May I’d get some brushed aluminum hipster keycard that opens a door to a room made of white lexon plastic. I’ve been to more press conferences that I can possibly remember at this point. Being at an Apple one felt just like all of the others, except smaller. For as much hype and as much attention the company gets, the conferences from companies like Microsoft and Sony for gaming are significantly bigger. Actually, now that I think about it, I can’t really think of anyone else who goes bigger than the game companies for these things. But still, Apple’s ability to get something hyped with little to no effort is astounding.
So where am I going with this you may ask? Well the hype is my point. After I’ve had a few days to let it sink in and think about what I was holding, I feel like a have a good view. Is the iPad a game changer? The answer, at least in my view, is not possible with a yes or no. This thing is going to sell. With the aggressive price point and contract-free 3G plan, Apple has a fool-proof marketing plan. A lot of the press was pretty ‘meh’ on the overall product opinion but the reasons they point against the iPad are reasons I think a lot of consumers will either not care about or not know about when they buy it.
+ Nice Hardware: This is very true. It’s light, crisp and has the Apple touch.
+ The Apps: Apple was smart to make the iPad work with almost (we still don’t know what almost means, possibly the GPS apps) every one of the 140,000 App Store products.
+ No Contract 3G: This is awesome (even if it is AT&T, gross) because you can just buy what you need. You could just live off the WiFi until you travel and then just buy a month of data.
+/- Do I Need It: Well, do I? I really want it and can think of good situations where It would come in handy. But do I really need it?
+/- Games: While some games are awesome like Field Runners or Civ Rev, a lot of them just dont work without a controller.
+/- No USB Ports: The device uses Apple’s 30 pin connector so it’s stuck syncing with iTunes. There is an adaptor but it’s for videos and photos (and it’s easy to assume .jpg only).
+/- 10 Hour Battery: It would be awesome but Apple is notorious for over promising on the battery life.
- No Multitasking: This is the major buzzkill for me. I cannot think of a single reason to exclude this. None.
- Closed Platform: Basically if they don’t like an App, they can kill it. Apple fans have long yelled at companies like Microsoft or Dell as being evil empires but Cupertino’s on-going stonewall against open development is starting to show on their faces.
- iTunes Only: So we can expect slow syncing with no ‘kosher’ alternative. Great.
- No Flash Support: This is bad because while Flash may be an unstable platform that is CPU heavy, it’s a standard that cannot be ignored. So no Hulu for you. HTML5 aims to replace Flash/Silverlight but it won’t be anytime too soon.
When I first laid my hands on the iPad, I was in lust. But now that I think about it, I’m glad that I wasn’t at the store because had I taken home a device centered around the web that didn’t support of the most common browsing plugin out there, I’d be pretty displeased.
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