So last Wednesday the Apple iPad was announced by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple. For a product that had so much hype behind it with rumours from fans wanting to get their every dream fulfilled by the Apple iPad, its difficult for any such device to live up to the hype, and I think no matter how hard Apple worked to get as many functions into the device as possible, people would still find something to bitch about. For me there are three main complains. 1, No built in iSight camera 2, Lack of Handwriting recognition meaning that even though its touch screen you can’t scribble down a note with a stylus and 3, lack of USB ports. The only ports Headphones and the Standard Apple 30 Pin Dock Connector.
The Apple iPad only runs on the current iPhones operating system, modified for a larger screen, it brings a few new features with it such as iBooks, building off the popular App Store that hit it big with the iPhone and iPod Touch. iBooks is an App for reading and buying eBooks from Apple. All current Applications for the iPhone OS will work on the iPad, but until they are adapted for a larger screen will run in a small iphone size window, unless you run it 2x in which case the applications pixels are doubled for bigger size but lower quality.
With a Wifi only version the device comes in cheap and is a great contender for the Amazon Kindle and other various eBook devices. But with the Apple iPad you can do more than just read books, you can write emails, produce Word, Spreadsheets and Presentation Documents with Apples iPad versions of iWork. As well as listen to iPod Music, watch movies, surf the web with your fingers and write emails.
The Wifi + 3G version means you can use the iPad anywhere with full connectivity, but that comes at a price dependant on your service provider. The iPad looks like it could be real competition for the Netbook market which Apple seems to be trying to target at the moment, but instead of making a 10” Screen Macbook with cheap crappy with an Operating System designed for higher specifications, they created a different device, with a more specialised OS. After all on a $300 Netbook whats the point of running Windows XP considering you cant run Photoshop, Games. The iPad aims to take the basics of what an Netbook is used for and expands on that.
When it is released I will most likely buy one, and when I do, I will write a Hands-On Review!