Of course, due to my horrible insomnia, I didn't fall asleep last "night" until 6:15 AM today, and so, slept through the live announcement which was being carried live by Gizmodo. Oh well......
As soon as I arose from my crypt, I hopped online to see what was out there and immediately upon seeing the iPad, decided that I needed one in my life. Not want one, mind you, but need one, as in all of the mitochondria in my body would stop functioning simultaneously, causing me to drop immediately into a coma and pass away unless I have one in my hand. Not that that would be a bad thing, mind you.
Once I managed to shrug off the fuzziness brought on by several days of sleep deprivation, however, my fanboy reaction was tempered by the fact that I was just looking at a big iPhone. It does the same things that an iPhone does, it doesn't do anything that an iPhone cannot do, and costs at a minimum, $500.
To make sure that I wasn't just bagging on the iPad as a result of dementia, depression, or a case of bad gas (phfffffft........pardon me...) I surfed around to see what other people were saying. I found a well done article that had a pros/cons list which summarized my initial impressions succinctly. And so, I thought I would share it. The excerpt came from here.
*****
Pros:- Interface is extremely similar to the iPhone/iPod Touch. This means that most of the 50 million odd owners of one of these devices should be able to pick it up and go.
- The App Store is the iPad’s single biggest strength. No company has a finer base of programs (or nearly as many) available to its end users. Apparently 140,000 or so of those App Store programs will be able to be loaded up right away on the upcoming iPad.
- Large screen. In fact, its 10 inches makes it larger than most netbook screens, portable DVD players and mobile video game players
- 10 hour battery life is pretty decent.
- Big developer buy-in – It was good to see both Gameloft and EA demo their stuff during today’s presentation
- Ability to read books, newspapers and magazines in a simple format.
- Built in speaker and microphone
- No multitasking. In fact, its Safari browser seemingly doesn’t support multiple websites being pulled up
- No flash. Flash is a major part of the web. Without it being included, you will likely be missing a lot.
- No removable battery. When it dies completely, so does the iPad.
- It’s too big to easily carry in one hand. 1.5 pounds can weigh you down after an hour or so of reading.
- Questionable endurance. How long can a device that only weighs 1.5 pounds take abuse? One of its selling points is that kids could use this for their textbooks in school. I don’t think I am going to allow Little Bobby Butterfingers near this $500 piece of technology.
- No HDMI port, no camera, no built in phone
- Screen does not use 16:9 aspect ratio (as many videos now are) resulting in a black box on each side when they are played.
*****
So, what does all this say? Though I have been really looking forward to the iPad, the fact that it seems to be a bigger version of a piece of equipment that I already own means I don't need it. Well, and to be honest, after being out of a job since April '08, my available monies are practically exhausted. Food or an iPad....hmmmmm......
Exactly. iPad, here I come!
