iPad…

6th Feb 2010

James Ferretti asks how beneficial the iPad will be to everybody

AFTER years of speculation, hoaxes and anticipation on the 28th of January 2010 Apple announced their latest product aiming to revolutionise and take the mobile electronics world by storm, just as the iPod has done for nearly a decade.

Their 10 inch touch screen device is just half an inch thick and looks like a huge iPhone and the similarities don’t end with the way the device looks. The menu system is heavily based on the iPhone’s intuitive interface and the iPad can also use all 140,000 Apps in Apple’s App Store, so you can run all your favourite iPhone apps on it from day 1, albeit warped to fit the larger screen. It also has direct access to iTunes over WiFi for downloading music on the go and a new feature, iBooks, for downloading novels to read on the iPad or iPhone, which Apple hopes will shake up the ebook market, currently dominated by Amazon’s Kindle and Sony’s Reader.

All these of course are just auxiliary features to what Apple sees as the tablet’s main uses; an enjoyable mobile web browsing, e-mail experience and HD video playback. The iPad’s browser again resembles the iPhone’s and the boss of Apple, Steve Jobs, says it is ‘better than a laptop, way better than a phone. You can turn it any way you want. To see the whole page is phenomenal.’ With access to youtube and movies from the iTunes store, it is also a very capable video playback device with up to 10 hours battery of constant video watching.

However despite all these features is the iPad really going to work as a useful device? To begin with, why put an operating system (menus etc.) designed for a phone and therefore limited in capability on a device this size. It would have made more sense to run a light version of Mac OSX rather than an enhanced version of the iPhone’s system, which will not allow you to have multiple programs running at once (e.g. a text document and the internet), or support Adobe flash for online games and videos (on any site other than youtube).

Starting at $499 (£310 – although it will likely cost more than this when it arrives) with only 16GB of memory the device isn’t cheap either and if you want the additional mobile 3G internet it will cost you an extra $130.00 (£80) plus a monthly subscription. For this much you could afford a netbook (small laptop) that was more powerful with windows 7 installed.

Tablet PCs have been in existence for many years, running fully fledged versions of Windows XP and yet have never really taken off in the way Apple hopes that the iPad will, however with their stylish advertising and bespoken, sexy design they will no doubt be able to capture an economically viable audience for this device.

Written by James Ferretti