Announced January 27, 2010, Apple hopes the iPad will revolutionize mobile computing.
Like thousand of nerds and tech aficionados, I sat enraptured in front of my computer screen while Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveiled the latest must-have Apple gadget, the iPad.
The hype surrounding the oft-rumored mystery device over the last several days built a crescendo that was hard-pressed to live up to.
So what did we get and what do we know?
Ultimately, the iPad is another consumptive device from Apple. Their comeback in the marketplace can be tied, in part, to devices like the iPod and iPhone. These devices take something people use everyday, music, phone, and add marketplace features that provide content to the user and a revenue stream for Apple. This business model has worked well. Steve Jobs announced at the iPad event that the company had sold it’s 250 millionth iPod. Apple’s app store for the iPhone has over 140,000 free and paid apps that users have downloaded 3 billion times in the 18 months since the store launched. The music store available through iTunes and an app on the iPhone has sold more than 8.5 billion songs since 2003.
So successful are these two products that they make up 40% of Apple’s revenue in 2009.
With that in mind let’s breakdown the iPad.
“Using this thing is remarkable,” chief executive Steve Jobs said. “It’s so much more intimate and capable than the laptop.”
THE NAME: Terrible. When my wife heard the moniker she wondered whether any women were on the iPad team. She then asked me to pick up some toilet paper and iPads on the way home from work. I refuse to believe Jobs and company overlooked the potential ridicule, I just think they didn’t care. Whether this is the right move remains to be seen. So get ready for iPad parodies, jokes and skits for the next 6 months.
THE DEVICE: The form factor of the iPad is in line with what technology pundits were speculating. The iPad is a blown up first generation iPhone; A tablet with a 9.6″ screen running the iPhone operating system.
It looks beautiful. By all accounts it is blazing fast. But it lacks a camera, OLED screen, multitasking and the 4:3 form factor is not optimal for watching movies. Existing iPhone apps work but to take full advantage of the iPad apps will need to be reworked. Does this splinter the app store? Will developers take on the task of retrofitting their iPhone apps for the iPad? Apple spent a lot of time showing the features of the iPad but like the iPhone the devices’ capabilities and future will be determined by developers. Apple success or failure for this device will largely rest in their hands.
The virtual bookshelf holds the digital books you purchase on the iPad.
iBOOKS: I can’t write that word without thinking of the discontinued line of laptops that Apple re-branded under the Macbook moniker. When I heard the name it became clear to me why Apple made the switch. You can’t have iBooks and an iBook.
To me iBooks is the most compelling reason to buy an iPad. The idea of a color eBook reader with the power of an iTunes-like virtual storefront that can also get e-mail and surf the web is very tempting.
The iPad supports the ePub format also supported by the Sony Reader, Plastic Logic Que and the Barnes & Noble Nook. This is good news since ePub is an open standard and fairly easy to publish. There will probably be some form of DRM on the books you buy and it’s unknown if Apple will let you put books from open collections like Project Gutenberg on the device.
The New York Times iPad app gave us a glimpse of what could be possible for this device; a content-rich multimedia experience that includes words, picture, video, audio and design.
iBooks could be a godsend for cellulose peddlers. Want to save the publishing industry? There’s an app for that but you have to write it. That might work for the New York Times but will it work for smaller publications? Will already financially strapped newspapers and magazines divert resources in a gamble hoping to stabilize their futures?
APP STORE: Writing iPad applications wouldn’t be so bad if it wasn’t for the fact that Apple is holding all the cards when it comes to app store approval. A developer who puts months into an app only to have it rejected is a giant waste. It is the app store that made the iPhone what it is and this is where the iPad will succeed or fail. Apple just has to get developers to buy into this device. This problem is not new to the iPad. A backlash against Apple’s app store approval process has been brewing for some time.
CONCLUSION: The question posed by Jobs at the beginning of his keynote was ‘Is there room for a third device between the iPhone and a laptop?’ As Jobs fiddled with the device showing us everything it could do; pretty much everything an iPhone does, I wondered is there really?
In a market where devices tend to meld into other devices, the iPad is a device that doesn’t replace anything you already own. iPods, GPS units and digital planners have been incorporated into the iPhone. So the question really should be: ‘Is the iPad compelling enough for consumers to add a device to their satchels?’
For a device of this quality $499 is a great price. Yet, it doesn’t really do anything that your laptop or cell phone doesn’t already do. It might do things better or faster but is that enough to sway consumers?
In the technology world, fortunes turn on a dime. From XP to Vista from the Playstation 2 to Playstation 3 the fickle winds of fate are cruel and punishing. If a company gets complacent or makes a misstep the fall can be precipitous.
Jobs started off the presentation proclaiming Apple the biggest mobile computing company in the world. Let’s hope this hubris doesn’t lead to failure.
I agree with John Gruber in many ways the iPad is Apple taking a victory lap around the tech world. Time will tell if that is premature or not.
