Maze Talks About: The iPad

By
maze
– 28. Januar 2010Posted in: Gadgets, Geekiges

When Apple showed the iPad to public their stock price dropped by 4% (from $206 to $199). Not to my surprise to be honest. The last weeks were full of rumors, mockups, everyone seemed to know what Apple will release on January 27th, 2010.

What other companies spend on marketing campaign, Apple seems to spend on non-disclosure agreements .

I could give you a list of advantages and disadvantages of the iPad – and I will, but first I’d like to talk about the tablet that I use at work.

It’s a Fujitsu Siemens Lifebook T-Series. It has a 12″ screen, and wheighs over a ton or so. The battery life is inversely proportional to the weight, 2 hours tops – with dimmed screen and wireless turned off. And to be fair: the first battery died a few months ago, this battery is an original replacement part from Fujitsu. It runs Windows 7, which I have to say works really smooth compared to XP. And I use it as a normal notebook 99 percent of the time. And that is because using it as a tablet just doesn’t feel right. The only application that can be used at maximum efficiency is Journal, which acts like a normal paper notepad. Surfing the web in tablet mode fails when it comes to entering the desired address, you need the stylus, there is no keyboard you could put your fingers on when in tablet mode. And tapping the stylus on every single letter takes time, especially when you’re surfing to a website which address you’ve never entered before. Let alone Word, Excel or any other office software product.

If we would take my tablet and improve it I’d say we should fix the following things:

  • Longer battery life
  • Less weight
  • Better input methods
  • Applications that work in “tablet mode”

And then Apple comes along and releases the iPad. And if we compare my improvement wishes to the iPad’s features we get the following list:

  • Long battery life
  • Less weight (.73kg with 3G module)
  • Use your fingers
  • ALL iPhone apps from day one (3rd party iPad-only apps coming soon)

Where there’s light there is always shadow. I could list the disadvantages, deal- and neckbreakers of the iPad as advantages of my tablet, but I won’t. Instead I provide a list of things that are annoying and why they annoy me:

  • No multitasking
    I would love to run my Twitter client, my Facebook app and a browser at the same time. This will hopefully get fixed with iPhone OS 4.0.
  • No camera
    Sitting on the couch, feet put up, iPad in hand, Skype running, and: no video calls. How about plugging in an USB cam, oh wait, move on.
  • No built-in USB
    Do we really need to use adaptors for everything?
  • MicroSIM
    Don’t know for the US, but I don’t think that Austrian carriers will sell such SIM cards anytime soon.

Everything else can be seen as an advantage, at least in my opinion:

  • No full blown OS
    Because it doesn’t suck. And the apps DO work.
  • No Flash
    Because flash ads do suck. And HTML, JavaScript and Web-Standards are your friend. Youtube (and soon every clone) will switch to HTML5, and Flash will die, slowly, but it will die.
  • Unlocked 3G
    If you guys had only done that with the iPhone before, that 15.6 billion bucks revenue would have at least doubled. Say hello to world domination ;-) Nevertheless it’s a step in the right direction.
  • No stylus
    Because you do not need one. Ever.
  • Gorgeous Apple apps
    love the new calendar and photo app.
  • Leather case and keyboard dock
    Do rock.
  • eBook reader
    The iPad will kill the Kindle. Or at least hurt it very badly.

We all know that Steve Jobs hates netbooks. So do I. They suck big time. I know, I had two. Too small, too slow, but cheap. And that’s pretty much that there is to it. Will the iPad kill the Netbook market? Maybe. What definitely will happen is that Apple will bite off a huge piece of the netbook market pie.

But will I buy one? Chances are good. I’d go for the 64GB model with 3G for 850 bucks, and sell my MacBook Air on eBay. Sandra recently discoverd eBooks and fell in love with the Kindle, but after yesterday’s keynote and her comments on the iPad, I’m very certain that she’ll buy the iPad, not a Kindle.

And after Apple announced the price for the iPad starting at $499 stock price increased by 1% (to $207). So shareholders like it. And so do most people.

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