As we know, yesterday Apple revealed the much anticipated iPad. The media attention was incredible, as to be expected: but how to categorize it? I was thinking all night about this, and would like to ask your opinions.
Apple currently ship two kinds of portable devices: laptops and pocket devices. Media entertainment and web browsing is always with you, in your pocket, with the iPhone or iPod touch. For more serious productivity, slip a Macbook into your bag, and unleash your creative stroke. With two clearly defined device categories, you can easily be portable, and at the same time, fully productive. But what about the iPad?
It's not a netbook: as Steve Jobs said, "the netbook isn't better at anything"; they are just cheap laptops, with poor screen quality, small keyboards, and weak hardware. Apple have the laptop market covered, with devices ranging from the powerful workhorse 17" Macbook Pro, to the cheaper, but robust 13" Macbook, to the ultra portable, thin 13" Macbook Air. Apple cover every aspect of the laptop market, while rigidly maintaining their trademark meticulous attention to detail and quality.
However, it's also not a tablet, in it's common meaning: a clunky, heavy, resistive-touchscreen based device, running "clunky PC software". Quality suffers in the manufacturer's efforts to entice potential Netbook customers: with economy in mind, touch screens lack sensitivity, screens lack definition, build quality often lacks specific after touches. If you think about it, the tablet PC only appeals to a very narrow range of SPECIFIC consumers: people who need portable, rapid data entry, like in a restaurant or store, or in a hospital, in a emergency room. Even so, already waiters and shop assistants are starting to use iPod touches as a modern, light, manageable data entry systems.
Macbooks or iPod touches more than improve netbooks and tablets.
I think the iPad populates a new category. It doesn't come to replace the netbook or the tablet, it is a device focused on Down loadable Content (DLC). Not only that, but iPad is made for HOME LEISURE. Put the two together, and we get a Home DLC based device. But what on earth is that?
This is Apple's final stroke at dominating the entire range of computer needs. The iPad is thought out to be with you at home. According to Jobs, "if I want to buy some movie tickets and I am in the kitchen, I just grab my iPad (...)". An iPod touch or iPhone, while excelling in portability and being very usable, has a 3.5" screen. While great for quickly browsing while on the bus, or stopping for a quick coffee in Starbucks, for long browsing sessions at home, on the couch, the smaller screen does impact readability: constant scrolling, zooming, and focusing makes web browsing slightly less fluid than desirable. At the other extreme, a Macbook is too heavy, power hungry, and too big to use comfortably in a recreational situation.
Hence the iPad: a home based leisure focused device with a beautiful 4:3 screen. The squarer screen, as opposed to the wide screen format Apple has recently shipped in their products, lends itself much more comfortably to web sites, books, and magazines. Scrolling is reduced, and as said in the Keynote, "the web is right there in your lap". A web page loads, and without scrolling or zooming, you can read it right from the start. The same readability applies for eBooks: the large screen suits perfectly. For sitting on your couch, the iPad is the perfect solution.
In my opinion the iPad defines a home computer Edit: Home Computer maybe isn't the right name. It's not a home computer as in an iMac, which is truly a home workhorse. It's more a home pad, a personal media player, a handy device with which you can consume media in a comfortable fashion. The perfect solution is not Bill Gate's vision: a huge glass table with multitouch capabilities. Nor is it a small personal entertainment device like the iPod touch. It is the iPad.
I think Apple have perfectly defined the needs of the average person. At home, the iPad is a much more intimate device: light and usable, you read with it in bed, on the couch, in the kitchen. For more serious productivity, there is the iMac. The iPhone/iPod provides pocket entertainment and connectivity. Finally, the Macbook extends the iMac's productivity to your workplace.
To conclude, the iPad isn't marketed at Netbooks or conventional tablets (the Macbooks target them), but as a home entertainment device, which works literally like a bigger iPod touch.
Your opinions?
Apple currently ship two kinds of portable devices: laptops and pocket devices. Media entertainment and web browsing is always with you, in your pocket, with the iPhone or iPod touch. For more serious productivity, slip a Macbook into your bag, and unleash your creative stroke. With two clearly defined device categories, you can easily be portable, and at the same time, fully productive. But what about the iPad?
It's not a netbook: as Steve Jobs said, "the netbook isn't better at anything"; they are just cheap laptops, with poor screen quality, small keyboards, and weak hardware. Apple have the laptop market covered, with devices ranging from the powerful workhorse 17" Macbook Pro, to the cheaper, but robust 13" Macbook, to the ultra portable, thin 13" Macbook Air. Apple cover every aspect of the laptop market, while rigidly maintaining their trademark meticulous attention to detail and quality.
However, it's also not a tablet, in it's common meaning: a clunky, heavy, resistive-touchscreen based device, running "clunky PC software". Quality suffers in the manufacturer's efforts to entice potential Netbook customers: with economy in mind, touch screens lack sensitivity, screens lack definition, build quality often lacks specific after touches. If you think about it, the tablet PC only appeals to a very narrow range of SPECIFIC consumers: people who need portable, rapid data entry, like in a restaurant or store, or in a hospital, in a emergency room. Even so, already waiters and shop assistants are starting to use iPod touches as a modern, light, manageable data entry systems.
Macbooks or iPod touches more than improve netbooks and tablets.
I think the iPad populates a new category. It doesn't come to replace the netbook or the tablet, it is a device focused on Down loadable Content (DLC). Not only that, but iPad is made for HOME LEISURE. Put the two together, and we get a Home DLC based device. But what on earth is that?
This is Apple's final stroke at dominating the entire range of computer needs. The iPad is thought out to be with you at home. According to Jobs, "if I want to buy some movie tickets and I am in the kitchen, I just grab my iPad (...)". An iPod touch or iPhone, while excelling in portability and being very usable, has a 3.5" screen. While great for quickly browsing while on the bus, or stopping for a quick coffee in Starbucks, for long browsing sessions at home, on the couch, the smaller screen does impact readability: constant scrolling, zooming, and focusing makes web browsing slightly less fluid than desirable. At the other extreme, a Macbook is too heavy, power hungry, and too big to use comfortably in a recreational situation.
Hence the iPad: a home based leisure focused device with a beautiful 4:3 screen. The squarer screen, as opposed to the wide screen format Apple has recently shipped in their products, lends itself much more comfortably to web sites, books, and magazines. Scrolling is reduced, and as said in the Keynote, "the web is right there in your lap". A web page loads, and without scrolling or zooming, you can read it right from the start. The same readability applies for eBooks: the large screen suits perfectly. For sitting on your couch, the iPad is the perfect solution.
In my opinion the iPad defines a home computer Edit: Home Computer maybe isn't the right name. It's not a home computer as in an iMac, which is truly a home workhorse. It's more a home pad, a personal media player, a handy device with which you can consume media in a comfortable fashion. The perfect solution is not Bill Gate's vision: a huge glass table with multitouch capabilities. Nor is it a small personal entertainment device like the iPod touch. It is the iPad.
I think Apple have perfectly defined the needs of the average person. At home, the iPad is a much more intimate device: light and usable, you read with it in bed, on the couch, in the kitchen. For more serious productivity, there is the iMac. The iPhone/iPod provides pocket entertainment and connectivity. Finally, the Macbook extends the iMac's productivity to your workplace.
To conclude, the iPad isn't marketed at Netbooks or conventional tablets (the Macbooks target them), but as a home entertainment device, which works literally like a bigger iPod touch.
Your opinions?
