Thursday, January 28, 2010

Apple finally shows us the iPad...

We've been hearing rumours and seeing mock-ups of the the Apple 'iPad' (or iSlate, iTablet..whatever) for about a year or so now... so to finally get to see the real thing was quite a moment...especially for Mac-Heads.



So what did we get? Well, basically...a big iPod Touch. 10 inch (diagonal measurement) OLED touchscreen... 10 hour built-in battery.

The Good:
  • 10 Hour Battery
  • Amazing Screen
  • Revolutionary Form Factor
  • Some great new apps...the calender/diary is lovely...as is the photo album and iBooks eBook reader
The Bad
  • Battery is fixed
  • No Multi-Tasking (Come on Apple!!)
  • No OSX...it runs an iphone type OS.
  • No USB, Firewire or any connections apart from the Multi-Pin. (sigh..)
  • You have to hold it....
  • It's 4x3 and not 16x9...why??
  • Still no Flash support... 
It uses a new Apple manufactured processor...no intel in sight... so it's unlikely to be able to ever run OSX...and it seems Apple don't see it needing to.
Personally, i wanted a small, ergonomic Mac that ran OSX. I wanted to do all the things i do on my Macbook but in a smaller form factor...like a netbook. I want to run Word, Photoshop as well as iTunes and all the usual Apple stuff... but that's not going to happen.
As for the name....iPad?  Hmmmm... i'm sure it'll catch on eventually...i mean, if the Nintendo Wii can get away with it...

I'm sure it will take off... Apple rarely gets it wrong. But it's not for me just yet... but i won't rule it out. I'm sure some 3rd party people will bring out some better connectivity options via docks or something similar...and we'll probably see Word compatible apps pretty soon. It's just not the 'amazing game changer' i was hoping for.

S

2 comments:

  1. Apple get it wrong all the time. How about:
    Apple Cyberdog
    Taligent
    Apple EWorld
    Apple Pippin
    Motorola ROKR
    Macintosh Portable
    Apple Newton
    Apple TV

    You only remember the good ones...

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  2. True... lots of cock ups in Apple's past. What about the G4 Cube? Rubbish... not to mention some very flakey ibooks a few years ago. (the motherboard used to get so hot the solder melted...i had one!)

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