First up, let’s get something straight – I love Apple. I own an iPhone, I bought a MacMini when I began Uni and I love my old white MacBook, but I can’t figure out what Apple have done with their latest offering, the iPad.
I love my iPhone. It does all that you expect from a phone plus loads more. I am the type of person that has an app for everything. Some call me an Apple Tart, or Mac Tart; I can never remember. The reason that the iPhone is such an incredible device is because it does so much with for such a small payload. I can make calls, send and receive emails, check my Google-synchronised calendar, browse the web and of course, play games. I don’t care that I can’t view Flash movies, I don’t want a full OS and I’m not particularly worried about expandability because after all…it’s a mobile phone.
If I buy a ‘tablet’ with a 10-inch screen, I expect to get not what I pay for, but functionality for what I have to carry around. Let me put things into perspective.
Netbooks (which I must admit; I thought would never catch on!) are about the same size and similar in weight, but have a fully-fledged OS with plenty of expandability options. I don’t want what is essentially a large iPhone, restricted to apps that are approved by Apple. I want something that I can use Photoshop on. Yes, the iPhone is too small because it’s a phone, but I’d expect something with a 10-inch screen to be able to perform tasks a bit better than a glorified phone. I think the iPad is just an iPhone for poor-sighted people. I’d like to save Microsoft Word documents on it once in a while, run background apps, install Cyberduck or maybe even run an Apache webserver.
I know my MacMini isn’t built for expandability; I had to take the thing apart with wallpaper scrapers when I upgraded the hard drive, but that is because the MacMini is simple and cheap, but even so, if I really wanted to, I could upgrade the hard drive, the RAM and the processor, albeit a bit difficult. I know I shouldn’t expect the iPhone to be upgradeable, but a tablet ‘computer’? Come on – think of the future Apple!
It’s nearly impossible to scratch the glass on the iPhone and the iPad uses even better stuff, but still; do you want to be worrying constantly about the condition of your tablet? Laptops solved this problem 20-odd years ago with this clever folding screen/keyboard thing. Why reinvent the wheel? Tablets have never caught on before and based on the iPad, I hope they don’t now.
There has been a recent trend in many companies following in Apples footsteps like every mobile phone nowadays that wants to be the iPhone and every MP3 player that wants to be an iPod and I can only hope that other companies move away from Apples ideas and start coming up with their own unique ideas!
As far as I can see, there is nothing new and amazing that the iPad can do that the iPhone can’t already. Give me a iPad-sized device with a fully-fledged copy of Mac OS X and I’ll be laughing…