Apple's iPad is a nice PC tablet that outperforms current high-end eReaders at a lower price
Despite all the buzz prior to its unveiling earlier today during Steve Jobs’ keynote (you can watch it here), the iPad is anything but magical or revolutionary as Apple CEO wants us to believe.
Consider the iPad as a big iPod touch or an iPod touch XL or DX (in honour to the large sized Kindle).
Super thin, unbelievably light, reasonably priced
First, the good news. The iPad is really thin (half an inch), super light (1.5 lb) and has a 10-hours battery life and 1-month standby; a great achievement for a device that thin.
At CES, a couple weeks ago, Nvidia showed a Tegra-powered tablet with 16-hours HD video playback time or 140 hours of audio playback, surpassing the iPad. Note that these numbers were for tablet prototypes and might be better or worse on the final product.
Starting at $499, the iPad looks cheap compared to the similarly sized Amazon Kindle DX, which sells for $10 more: the iPad has a full colour screen, can browse the Web, read ebooks (with the iBooks app and the ePub format) and run applications (games, maps, social networking…).
All these things that the Kindle just can’t do. But to be fair, we’d have to compare the Amazon device with the 3G data-only connection (and Wi-Fi) iPad version, which then costs a whopping $630, without the optional data plan – but included with the Kindle.
The optional Bluetooth keyboard dock transforms the iPad into an "interesting" netbook
No Flash, camera, USB port and extended storage
Now the bad news.
As its smaller siblings, the iPad still doesn’t support Flash, which makes it a poor device to browse the Web, even compared to other ARM-based tablets – running Linux or Google Chrome OS for example – which offer support for Adobe’s Web video technology.
More surprising is the lack of an integrated camera. Not sure why this design choice, especially as the iPhone has one; making me think that the iPad is really just a souped-up iPod touch.
The lack of a USB port and an extended storage (e.g. an SD card slot) are two additional unpleasant surprises. However, Apple does sell a dongle to copy photos from a camera through a USB connector or an SD card slot.
The iPad is a killer eReader
All in all, the iPad is anything but magical or revolutionary. But I can see it be a cheap Mac (although it can’t run MacOS apps), an Apple version of a netbook, with its optional keyboard.
“Netbooks aren’t better at anything! They’re slow, they have low quality displays and run clunky old PC software. They’re not better than a laptop in anything. They’re just cheaper. They’re just cheap laptops,” Jobs joked.
Moreover, the iPad relatively lower price could very well disrupt the whole eReader market, that is currently inundated with over-priced devices like the Kindle or the $400 Sony Daily Edition. And I’m not sure the sleek Skiff e-reader stands a chance now.
I agree that the iPad will disrupt the e-reader market, but will likely not dethrone Amazon for reasons I outlined in an article titled “http://www.disruptiveleadership.com/2010/02/04/will-the-ipad-disrupt-the-kindle/”
It will be a fascinating place to watch.
I don’t think the Ipad will be as successfull as the iphone, as it is not as knew and revolutionary.
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The price of ipad is always higher than competitors so that many people can’t affor it. i hope some days it can become common