Breathless Apple name rumor: It’s the iPad

Some weeks ago, in San Francisco and with much fanfare, Apple launched their latest product, the iPad. Not since the iBook of genesis has there been such a reaction to an Apple story. What is all the fuss about??Well, the price for one thing. It costs $499 for the basic and $829 for the top one (with 64GB and 3G). This may sound a lot but personally, I was expecting it be around $1000.

Now, what do you get for money?? Well, Its half an inch thick, weighs 1.5 lbs and has a 10 inch screen. It looks like an iPhone fed with steroids but technically, it’s called a tablet and it’s supposed to fill the gap in the market between the smart phones and the laptops. This area has proved something of a Bermuda Triangle for the computing industry. In the early nineties Apple launched the “Newton”. It was also a tablet and it flopped massively… though Microsoft also tried a couple of things but master blaster Bill gates could not get hold of it.

Now, If we look at iPad with the end-user’s point of view, What is the point of a phone which is too big to put in you pocket or a lap top without a keyboard?? What does an iPad actually do?? The answer is both “Surprisingly little” and “Pretty much everything”. It lacks, what Tech-geek call, a “killer-application”, meaning it can’t make you a cup of tea (although how long before Apple launches iTeasmaid?). It does more or less the same stuff as the iPhone, only it’s bigger, that’s all. But in that key detail lies a host of killing applications. Size, in the instance matters. Lots of things are better on bigger screen, “The bigger the better”. Things like reading, coding or gaming. A bigger screen is also better for videos, but iPad lacks on movies, but it’s a matter of time, I guess. In the meantime you can amuse yourself by playing Computer games. iPad has something for every age group, be it gaming, coding or viewing pictures, but alternatively if you are too grown-up for such things you could also use it for work as it has eReader for ePapers and eBooks.

But the iPad is far from perfect. It’s many flaws have not escaped the reviewers.

Firstly, and by far the most serious, the iPad can do lots of things, but it can’t do them all at a time. You can’t, in other words listen to Spotify whilst browsing.

Second, and most surprising, there is no camera, not on the front for iChat, nor on the back for taking pictures. Can you believe this? These days, even things that come in cereal packets are supposed to have a camera on them.

Third, the iPad can’t deal with flash content on websites. This isn’t a big deal on something as small as the iPhone but it will leave big holes in the tablet’s browsing experience.

Then there are the smaller gripes; it can’t handle widescreen or HD; it needs too many adapters; it has a silly name (faintly suggestive of feminine hygiene).

But the Apple detractors are missing the point. It isn’t finished product. It’s a new platform for programming developers. Imagine what all those clever app creators could come up with a bigger screen. One of the developers on Facebook, Joe Hewitt spelt out the implications: “If you are a developer and you are not thinking about how your app could work better on the iPad and its descendants, you could deserve to get left behind,” that’s what is different about the iPad- it has potential.