IPad Why? A Response

http://blog.sinjakli.co.uk/2010/01/28/ipad-why/

This was started as a comment to the above blog post, but ended up being so large that I decided to turn it into my own blog post. It's also mostly written as a direct response, so it may feel a little odd to read if you're not SInjo himself.

I don't entirely agree with you.

I don't think the iPad is just a big iPhone, it's meant to the bit inbetween a smartphone and a laptop. When using a smartphone to browse the internet you're hampered by the small screen and the relative largeness of your fingers. On the iPhone in particular when you add the keyboard onto the screen you have even less of a view of the site you're browsing which an lead to a clostrophobic feeling of looking at a site through a cereal box from the other site of a room. So to have something with a bigger screen and more precise controls seems like a good thing.

The onscreen keyboard is definately a point of contension, but from
my experience of the iPhone's keyboard I can say that for new adopters of the technology, it'll take a bit of getting used to, but will become something quite natural. (I'm typing all this on my iPhone now, and while slightly more work than a keyboard, it's not much different). I agonised over getting an iPhone, mostly because of the lack of keyboard, but i don't regret my decision one bit, onscreen keyboards can work well. I you compare the ipad to a device with a built in keyboard, you'll notice that the device has to either be much larger to accomodate it, or have a smaller screen. With the iPad you get a nice large screen when browsing or doing other such tasks and when typing you get an unobtrusive keyboard which you can use with your fingertips rather than havingto full press a key. You also don't have the problem of damaging the keys during transport or wear and tear and nothing to get food stuck under. So for me, I'm not so worried by the lack of a keyboard. Though it's totally understandable to be concerned.

The focus does seek to be more on people who need to work with laptops and wander about, iWork has been iPadded so that it's designed for the device, so the thought is on presentations and documents. I can image it being sed to drie a PowerPoint in a trend office allowing the presenter a nice view of the slides and any notes and stops the whole bending down for a laptop or having to rely on a clicker which gives you no hints of your next slide or what you were mean to say if you forget. I can also
see it being helpful in a warehouse to keep tabs on stock and then write up a report back at your desk. Personal use, I can see less applications, however. As I already own an a laptop, I don't particularly need another device to do stuff, though I can see it being useful as a eBook reader (do you remember the eMacs? What ever happened to them?) I read on my commute and recently have started reading eBooks on my iPhone as a cheaper way to have a varied reading list and a good way to reduce the amount of stuff I have to carry. So a larger screen than my iPhone would be great, as string at small text can be a pain and larger stuff means "turning" a page every 10th word. Other than that though, I can't see any particularly useful applications in my own life, not to say that I'll never own one, they do look awesome and I definately like shiney things.

The camera point, I kinda agree, kinda disagree. Cameras add bulk to a device, they need physical space to contain the lenses and sensors so this could be a size thing, or they're planningto bring out a iPad eye at a later date. The concept of having a webcam for video chat is definately interesting, though the question is why? Phones tries video chat a number of years ago and it never took off, possibly more to do with connection speed/consistency than desire to use it, but whatever the reason, it didn't work. As aovile device using 3G there is no need for a webcam. As a computer on wifi there is more
need, but then they're not expecting youto not have a laptop/computer, so you'd just use that. They also sell an iSight camera, which will probably work with the iPad and we all know how companies like to sell their overpriced peripherals to us. So not so fussed by a camera.

I don't know anything about the lack of multitasking, no doubt it wasn't specifically said in their keynote, is this something you've heard about or assumed from the iPhones lack of multitasking? I agree it's not great, but on the iPhone it's rarely a major problem and it essentially simplifies user interaction by not having it. I used to have an smartphone running windows mobile, which I sometimes had to shut stuff down in the task manager as they'd not closed properly and where sat silently in the background taking up memory. I'm not sure how the iPad functions with apps (iPhone and otherwise) but it may be able to run more than one at a time, though I've no idea so I'll shut up.

I think Apple have already ridden the wave of success, so to speak, with the iPhone 3GS, if anything was a lame attempt at getting people to get a new model without thinking that was it. There isn't a great deal of improvements over the 3G and as it came out a year (i think) after the 3G, it seemed a little weak.

I have a couple of concerns myself. Firstly that It only has 64GB of flash memory. This doesn't seem much for a device to have which suggests it's more focussed at small stuff and not at full programs which produce large files. Thus full gaming probably wont be possible with this device, but when is it with Apple products, and you'll probably be added content from your laptop/computer to you iPad and then using it during the day. I think that they are probably relying of people already having a laptop or a time capsule (or other wireless hard drive) to store the majority of their content and then streaming or copying stuff to your iPad.

The second concern is that it falls into the same hole the iPhone does, with regard to internet connectivity. In London at least, there is a major internet blackspot, the underground system. When you're here, you may as well go back to the dark ages where technology is concerned, my iPhone turns into an iPod Touch which isn't exactly what I wanted. It's also not a great story outside of the underground where trains are concerned. You constantly drop in and out of coverage and go from full 3G to nothing at all in no time at all. Add to that tunnels and that the iPhone gets confused when it loses signal sometimes and doesn't know what to do and you have a very annoying device for serfing the neticles. I can't imagine that anything major will have changed with the iPads connectivity, but then it's not really their fault. The pathetic nature of our network coverage in England has a lot to do with it. Until they bring out a faster, more consistent connection browsing the internet wirelessly (not over wifi) it'll just be a pain to use when travelling, which is when people use wireless devices the most. So in essence, the mobile infrastructure in the UK (and possibly in US, who knows) isn't good enough yet (in my experience) to make this kind of device really useful for internets, but it could still be useful for other applications.

I image that they will release more versions of this device in a year which will expand on it's features, assuming it's successful, so anything that seems like it's missing, will no doubt be added in then. I trust Apple, they seem to do things properly and rarely do anything just for the hell of it. The iPhone 3G started out without copy and paste (the iPhone itself started out without 3G despite it being a relatively common phone feature), but they added it in later on, not because they forgot about it, but because they wanted to do it properly, well that's my view at least. They could have postponed the release f the iPhone 3G to work on copy and paste, but that would've hurt them, or they could have released it with a buggy, horrible copy and paste method, which would also have hurt them. If you constantly release buggy products, people associate you with that and not with quality. So they released it without and then added it in when it was ready, free of charge and it works. I don't remember not having copy and paste on my iPhone, it just doesn't matter any more. And I think that this is something that Apple do, release a product which may be missing a couple of things and then release an update later, this may be hardware or software, but it means that they can continue to release products regularly without having to rush things, which personally, I like. Vista was a nightmare, 7 was what Vista should've been. It doesn't seemed to have hurt Microsoft too much, but if they keep making mistakes, the Xbox 360 RROD fault also comes to mind, then they'll be seen as a company who rushes things and then makes a mess of it.

Final thing. This.