thoughts on the ipad

Despite it’s nicknames such as the itampon – it poses an interesting idea.

So we all know by now it is basically an iphone on roids.. – so what’s the deal. The deal is apple. They are a marketing power not to be taken lightly. They do a damn good job of convincing you that you need to buy a shiny version of relatively normal hardware. So…

Software: Basically if you have used an iphone you will know how to use the ipad. Why they didn’t choose a lighter version of OS X – who knows. My gripes – single program usage. In today’s world, people are use to multi-tasking. They have multiple programs at once. Like the iphone the ipad only lets you have a single piece of software running at once. There is no minimise, its open or close. This is a smart idea as it minimise the need for large amounts of RAM (of which apple doesn’t say how much in the Tech Specs.  It’s also annoying as all software must be loaded via itunes – no plug and play. At least until you hack it and therefore void your warranty. Of course this forces you to use apple software, have an apple account – list your credit card details in the apple store and yeah – be one with apple. I am surprised that the US government hasn’t deemed this some sort of anti-trust, c’est la vie. The 3g model is the only one I would consider – this also gives you a choice of GPS software – if you feel so inclined. Several features such as ibooks aren’t available in australia (and won’t be for at least a year, if ever). This is due to licensing agreements with the authors publishers.

Hardware: Now this is nothing new. It’s all been around before. Apple claims they have this special A4 processor that is all theres. It’s based upon the typical ARM-based processors found in your GPS or smartphone and made typically by centrality or samsung etc. They are good processors and power windows CE, windows mobile, android, win 95 (on a nokia) or even linux (tomtom etc). APple has modified – and supposedly produce it themselves (which is a first in a while). This version runs a 1ghz chip – which is pretty damn fast for a little device that only runs one program at a time. I have a more powerful than average GPS unit running a dual-core 600mhz ARM chip and it is damn impressive what it can run (my GPS plays divx’s, has a DVB-T tuner in it, opens word files, opens pdfs, has corel draw, reads out ebooks using text-to-speech etc). These ipads come with various size flash disks (!6, 32 or 64gb) which is nice. Of course they are tablet-only (multi-touchscreen) which is getting more and more common – and the way of the future. All will be that way soon enough. It is a 9.7” screen (diagonally, non-widescreen). Why the hell aren’t they widescreen apple – they would be perfect for playing movies. They also only run 1024x768, so despite having a good quality, shiny, pretty screen, isn’t even true High-Definition.

I guess apple is the first to put it all together with a 10” version – but the 13” netbooks are getting damn common nowadays (and make a lot more sense for travelling than a laptop). a 10” tablet will be available by other manufacturers soon enough (one would imagine). The other features like 3g, N(108mbps) Wifi, A-GPS, acceleromator, light sensor, etc are all found in current ARM-based GPS devices with touchscreen (though not many on the Australian market – I can get all of those features on a 5”/7” iphone clone GPS device for about $200/$280AU incl. duties). The apple software does multi-touch better than most though and they are the first to do it in 10”. It is interesting to see how well it goes. It looks damn hot and the apple marketing will tell you need it (especially to go with your iphone or apple mac laptop). For me the ability to only run one piece of software at a time and forced to use itunes is a deal-breaker. It’s a big NO from me…. though it looks sexy and I don’t have one.