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Nice try, but try again…
Apparently, other stuff was happening in the world last week but everywhere I looked people seemed to be talking about the new Apple iPad. Will you be rushing out to buy one? No, nor me.
The iPad ushers in a ‘new category of device’ for ‘the largest mobile device company in the world’. At least, that’s according to Steve Jobs. Having watched the launch event on the Apple website over the weekend I think what Apple have actually produced is a very pretty looking device that completely fails to deliver anything new, and which over-charges for the ability to do the same old stuff on a different size screen.
Don’t get me wrong – I don’t entirely hate it. It does look nice (one thing about Apple is that their current range of products is very nice to look at) and the multi-touch interface that was debuted on the iPhone and iPod Touch is getting better and better. From a using it point of view, I can see the attraction.
But from a useability point of view, it doesn’t appeal at all. Starting at $499, Apple is asking potential customers to shell out the same sort of money that, anywhere else, would get them a netbook or a low-end laptop with all the features and abilities of Windows or Linux to choose from. But from Apple, what your $499 gets you is a large iPod Touch. It can’t even be compared to the iPhone because of the lack of featues; there’s no camera (and I would expect an iSight at the very least) and while you can pay $130 more to have the 3G version – and shell out extra for a data plan – you can’t use it for making calls.
I love my iPod Touch, I use it every day. But it was over-priced. I love my iMac, I use it every day. But it was over-priced. Both of these together cover all my computing needs. There isn’t room for a third device, no matter how much Steve Jobs may say there is. To me, to be successful this device needs to be able to perform all the functions of the two devices it sits between. It can do the iPod Touch stuff fine, but it can’t do the desktop stuff because it doesn’t have a fully-fledged operating system. You can do what Apple want you to do, and that’s it. On a device like the iPod Touch that’s not so bad. On a device like this, it’s a killer.
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