iPad - A Quick Review

With the fervent will of a reformed smoker, I watched in awe the live blogging of Apple's iPad launch today in San Francisco. As a preamble, I have been waiting for this day with a great anticipation of waiting for my favorite rock band's new album. It was worth the wait, as its a good album :)

The Internet has been burning with rumors, heard-on-the-street gossip and smack talk about the iPad (iSlate, iTablet, iWhatever) since more than a few weeks, with the madness reaching a crescendo today. There are reviews and 'expert' opinions for you to read just by typing A into Google (well not exactly but try App..).

Here is a quick review from an avid iPhone, iPod user and a serious Apple fan. Cutting to the chase:

1. The iPad is the most important product from Apple not after 1984 as reported but after 2007, i.e., after the iPhone. Its hype definitely should not take anything away from this cool device. Its a perfect piece for the net-savvy, Facebook generation looking for one gadget to aggregate Internet, Mail and Media. I dont believe the argument that there is no market or there is a small market for the iPad. People actually thought there was no market for music players back in 2000 and then we got hit with iPods. Well, thats an other story. Tablets are going to be big with every major tech company trying to do something concrete in this area. Even a retailer like Amazon has Kindle, which kind of competes with tablets. Intel has Moorestown and Moblin OS just for Tablets and so on.

2. I do have a few nitpicks. My three major complaints about the iPad are a) It doesn't have a camera and that hurts. Its an easy thing to do Steve, you have it in the iPhone (and even iPods though its for video), so why miss it on this? I would have loved to webcam with the iPad in my lap but I will have to wait for that. b) Its storage demands more. I mean, I understand this is not a storage device but a streaming device. But come on, media files (HD videos and all those books and songs), eat up space like a hungry wolf. 16GB can just store a few HD movies along with pix and songs, that just does not cut it. The iPad should have started at 128GB and upwards. c) Flash stupid! I mean, whats the whole deal with not playing Flash? We are not asking for Silverlight, just good old Flash from good old Adobe.

3. The pricing is not surprising. I never for a second believed the 'expert' analysts predicting that iPad was gonna be about $1000. Are you kidding me? Why the hell would Apple price iPad at $1000 and have a Mac Book at $1200? I thought it was going to have a simple pricing structure of around $700 and I was about right. I did this by taking the simple average of iPhone (about $200 with contract) and basic Mac Book (about $1200). But Apple came up with the somewhat complex matrix of two basic models -- one with WiFi 802.11n connectivity only, the other with both WiFi and 3G. The 3G models are $130 more than non-3G models, prices vary depending on memory.

Tablets have been around for a while and the last time there was so much hype on a tablet, they were commandments written on it. But seriously, remember iPaq? Even the name is eerily strange with the i in front but whatever happened to it when Compaq was gobbled by HP. There are many more tablets in the last few years but none that can offer the functionality of iPad. At least for now.

Here are some of the cool things to be done on the iPad:

- iBooks: What iTunes did to music, hopefully this will do to publishing. Read and buy books on the go. Kindle is cool, I checked it out but who wants so many devices? I cant watch videos or email on Kindle and I am not going to buy 100 devices for 100 things. Like in 2000, when you had laptops, Blackberries for email (berries could not talk then), mobiles, pagers, PDA like Palm and Trio. Hell, Dockers even made pants with 8 pockets for all these devices. Nobody bought these devices after the tech crash and last I heard, Dockers discontinued these pants.

- iWorks: Adds cool business functionality to the iPad. iWork is a neat way to create documents, spreadsheets, and presentations and its friends with MS Office.

- We have the good old iTunes, and App Store of course.

Well, 2 months to go for delivery and I am still saving up for my iPad. Lets see how many iPads will be sold in 2010. But today sir, was a good day to be alive.