My Detailed Report on the iPad & the Future Ahead
Apple’s iPad official launched yesterday to much fanfare. Hyped more than the iPhone, everyone’s really curious as to whether it lives up to the hype. Let’s find out.
The Facts:
It’s a giant multi-touch iPhone, just as everyone imagined. It’s the same size as the Kindle, weighs 1 and a half pounds. Fits on your lap, and feels at home on your coffee table next to your copy of the Da Vinci Code. It has 10 hours of battery life. It runs the iPhone OS , not the Mac OSX operating system, which means the onslaught of developers that currently make all the applications on your iPhone will be bringing the same sort of variety and fervor for innovation to the iPad. And last but not least, the price starts at $499.99!
Still does it live up to the hype? That’s the question. All in all the tech community was let down. People were expecting features that you might see in the movie, Minority Report, such as a touch surface on the back of the tablet. This would allow you to use the full viewing capacity of the screen, while utilizing the back of the device in order to type and make mouse gestures. Some people were even saying it might be solar powered–just one self-powered ecosystem of its own. However, none of these innovations were present.
Even without anything jaw-dropping other than size, weight, computing power, and professional applications that fit the screen size, my opinion is that Apple has drastically changed the world we live in today. We have a company that is ok with not being Revolutionary, but Evolutionary, which is mandatory to gradually segway baby-boomers and the facebook generation into a new way of interacting with technology. The fact of the matter is that up until now media and technology has been a stationary aspect of our lives. Even with laptops and iPhones. With the release of the iPad, we’ve officially crossed this threshold for the first time in history. Technology is officially with us all the time, wherever we go. It’s not a micro-chip in our brain, but it’s the biggest step towards that since the iPhone. And even if it didn’t live up to the hype, you can rest assured that Apple will iterate itself there over the next 2 years. They did a great a job of just getting something out there as quickly as they possibly could. They could have waited a year more to release the so called “perfect product,” but now they’re going to benefit from real feedback, which is a real benefit for a company this large.
So in my eyes, Apple delivered. However the question of whether it has lived up to the hype is just beginning to get answered. I think the answer lies within all the content publishers, application developers, and game makers that will bring us entertainment and tools to interact with. The answer specifically lies in their inability to face the fact that the price of content and anything that can be provided on the web or as software is asymptotically approaching free. What many of them won’t realize is that although content on Apple’s devices is cheaper than it used to be, Apple is on their side and has plans to help the nimble make a profit. It will be the companies that embrace the iPad, its book, music and application stores, and its ability to make their content and applications go viral as the iPad is dragged around town, that cut through their nightmares of being put out of business by technology. The iPad means broader reach. It means that you’re showing your friends various media, presentations, and tools on the go, virally marketing for the applications’ creators. With advanced multi-touch gestures combined with its size it means interaction, group study, and a sort of coalescing with digital content and other people at the same time. With support for all the applications that already work on your iPhone in an enlarged format, a groundbreaking price point of $499 and for the first time ever a device that makes the internet feel right in your hands, Apple is finally a company poised to bring us what the movies of James Cameron and Steven Spielberg have had us waiting so long for.
I’m extremely excited to see what industries are revolutionized and brought to your fingertips wherever you go. Apple has done their piece. Now the responsibility lies in big newspapers, media corporations, and book publishers to set their content free in the iPad. Whether that means making it actually “free” and finding another way to monetize it, or charging for it at a reduced price in the iBooks store, only time will tell. Most blogs like this one have already faced the music by releasing our content 100% free with either other motives for having a blog or being ad-supported. The big guys that have have charged for content for decades that can also realize that and make the necessary changes will survive and the ones that can’t face it will not. period. The year following the launch of the iPad will be the defining moment of the media industry. Expect the iPad to give birth to a million new small media businesses that are built to weather these waters, and expect the iPad to put out of business countless juggernauts that refuse to face reality. Either way, expect to see me there reporting how I see it.
mw replied:
It gets to me that so many commentators are blinded by the hyper-bright PR that Apple generate. By claiming that the iPad (someone needs to be fired for that name, btw) is opening up new territory, commentators are only showing that a) they are Apple fanbois or b) they don’t really follow much tech outside the mainstream media, in which case they don’t deserve to be commentators.
The iPad is a poorly implemented iteration of technology that has been around in various guises since the mid-90′s. When Windows 95 was released, Compaq (among others) released a tablet PC with a full (not hobbled) Windows 95 operating system.
Recently, Archos (who preceded Apple into the portable media player market by several years) released their Archos 9 pctablet, running a full version of Windows 7, with webcam, multi-tasking, soft keyboard, wi-fi, USB ports etc, which is far more capable than the iPad. Where was the commentary on that? In addition they have other Android powered devices, designed for the road or the home, or both. Talk about choice. But then choice has never really been Apple’s modus operandi, unless you are talking about colors.
These are just a couple of the devices out there. What about the Lenovo U1? It’s both a laptop AND an independent tablet PC.
Let’s start to see some commentary on the industry, not just Apple.
March 2, 2010 at 12:40 am. Permalink.
faceyspacey replied:
you’re right, but the fact of the matter is that it’s going to be Apple that finally brings such a tablet device mainstream. And that’s where the nerdy technologists can’t relate. I don’t care if the technology’s been around for 15 years. I don’t even care that the iPad is lacking so much we would have imagined it having. It’s still going to do it extremely right and bring the multi-touch screen casual computer mainstream, and they’ll probably dominate that market for at least a few years, even with Android and Chrome OS, jolicloud, etc.
However, Apple will not last unless for the long run they make their software work on hardware made by other manufacturers. They don’t need need to open source their software like Google has done with Chrome and Android, but they need to at least license it to the Dells of the world like Microsoft. Not doing that has been what defines them all along, and 5-10 years from now it will be what kills them. I actually predict that Apple is smart enough to eventually go that route before its too late. Otherwise, yes, companies like Lenovo or whoever will use whatever they have at their disposal like Android and Windows 7 to compete.
And with legions of hardware competitors out there, it’s only a matter of time before Apple is like the Greeks in the movie 300, in which case it is inevitable that somebody beats them. For the time-being, I predict Apple will rule all that concerns touch screen computers and phones–and probably for 2-3 more years at least, no matter how unoriginal the insides of their devices are.
PS. I’m not an Apple Fan Boy. I’m just making my predictions of what will be reality, and not stubbornly complaining about how tablets have been around for years and how Apple isn’t innovating. It doesn’t matter. They’re making the most important innovation: getting widespread adoption and penetrating a market to make a business out of it. That’s something none of these other guys have done, and it’s something Apple has beat Android to on mobile phones and will do so again with tablets. That’s already reality. Stop fighting it.
March 2, 2010 at 2:14 am. Permalink.
mw replied:
You have highlighted again exactly the point I made. The iPad hype is generated and perpetuated by commentators just like you. YOU have the ability to alter the landscape here, and it’s just unfortunate that, like many many commentators you’re buying the hype rather commentating than the tech on it’s TRUE merits.
As a stereotyped group, commentators are the ones who are shirking the responsibility they have taken on voluntarily. Unless you’re an Apple only commentator, you have the responsibility to bring to the attention of the rest of us the innovating, truly groundbreaking technology we haven’t heard of – not just regurgitating the loudest hype – Apple or not. It is what will keep us coming back to read your commentary.
March 2, 2010 at 6:29 pm. Permalink.