Category — iPhone

I’ve been trying to get an angle on this from which to write this post and organise my thoughts on the iPad. Finally after a day full of chatting with other techies I think I finally have a few good leads on why I think the iPad is going to be a hit, at least with me, and why some of the negative reactions might not be completely justified.

Comparisons

Technical comparisons are the obvious place to start on trying to categorise or classify a new product and while this is a completely valid thing to do it doesn’t or can’t finally define or discount it’s potential usefulness. Does my iPhone 3GS have the fastest CPU with the highest resolution screen and run multiple apps at the same time (excluding the iPod). No. Is it still by far the best mobile phone/computing experience that I can have right now. Yes. I don’t expect anything different from the experience with the iPad.

Aims / Reach

The whole “my parents could use on of those” argument is a little cheap, but in thise case it does serve a purpose. I reckon the iPad is going to open up the possibilities of communication and Internet use just that little bit more to a vast number of people who just weren’t being served well. Those people who just don’t get what a multitasking OS is (”where’s my Skype window gone? Oh there it is, behind my Safari window”) and who don’t want to ditch their tried and trusted Nokias. They understand those things, with the clunky buttons. They might not want an iPhone to replace their phone that they already have. Here’s where I think the iPad will have a good chance to win in a badly served market. For those folks in the middle, an iPad might bring them that step closer to being internet connected. And yes of course you can argue that these devices are for the young go getters. I don’t totally agree with this viewpoint. I think that Apple’s strategy is world domination now. Not in 10 years.

Touchey feeley

In the end such a small number of the supporters and critics have actually had an iPad in their hands. So just like anything else, it’s only then when you finally get that thing in your hands and see what it can do for you and how it does it that you can make that final judgement. I lost count quickly of how many people I knew that spat so much bile about the 1G iPhone,  Apple fanbois, overpriced junk etc. etc. that were turned into purring kittens when they finally had one in their hands. They’re all of course 3GS owners now.

Fit

In the end, I’ll be buying one as I can completely see how it will fit into my daily life. Yeah I can surf and write email on my iPhone. But the page size for surfing will make the experience that much better, no more (or a lot less) zooming in and out to read paragraphs or hunting for what you want in the case of badly formatted html. The software keyboard on the iPhone always worked so well for me, I can reach a totally respectable speed on that with just thumbs, so I’m expecting that the full keyboard is going to be phenominal. And since I do a lot of travelling, it will make it redundant to always schlep the relatively heavy macbook pro around just to be able to do to general communications stuff.

Evolution

Lets face it, Apple will evolve this thing with just as much effectiveness the iPhone if not more so, if only because it will create massive profits just as the iPhone has to date. It’s going to be really exciting to see the iPad app ecosystem grow and watch as people put out more and more amazing uses for the iPad. I don’t think I could say that with any confidence about any other “net” oriented device on the market.

I finally got around to tweaking this when it was the last straw. Here’s the link