Finally, Apple Inc CEO Steve Jobs unveiled the highly anticipated ‘iPad’ tablet, a device the world was waiting for!
It is a perfect slick device bridging the gap between a smart-phone and a laptop and what’s more is low priced as well. The iPad will sell from late March for as low as $499 for 16 gigabytes of storage. An extra $130 is needed to equip it with third-generation wireless capability.
Let’s understand what it BRINGS and what it COULD HAVE brought to the consumers.
The Hits
- The first thing that blows you away is the awesome 9.7 inch crisp screen. When you hold the iPad with the wider side down, in landscape mode, it gives an even more brilliant view.
- The iPad has a near life-sized touch keyboard and supports Web browsing. It comes with a built-in calendar and address book. it’s nearly big enough for touch typing – an improvement over the way that the iPhone’s cramped keyboard sometimes causes errors
- The iPad can run movies, games and a gamut of applications. And taking on e-readers like Amazon’s Kindle, Apple announced a digital bookstore called iBooks that will let users buy from publishers including Pearson Plc’s Penguin, News Corp’s HarperCollins, and Hachette Book Group. Other analysts had speculated that the tablet may cost as much as $1,000.
- Click on a book cover, and the book will open. You can read one page at a time in portrait mode, or, turn the iPad to either side and it will show you two pages of text. The screen is sharp and the pages turn crisply, more like a real book than on electronic ink screens.
The Misses
- There is no multitasking in the OS at all, and not even multiple active web pages in Safari. You can’t listen to music while you surf the Web, or switch back and forth between Facebook at Twitter, or write a document in pages. So it’s one thing a time!
- Camera/iChat – You can’t expect people to hold up a big slate to take pictures with a back-facing camera, though some augmented reality apps might be neat on the larger screen. What the iPad is really lacking is a front-facing camera and video chat. A device like this would be perfect for such an application. With a front-facing camera, the iPad could be
the perfect device for filming and editing personal YouTube videos (you could even see yourself in-frame as you record).
- Video and HDMI – Video support is pretty much like the iPhone and iPod Touch – limited to 720p H.264 Main Profile. There should be support for Advanced Profile video, and while we’re at it, a mini HDMI port to push video to our HDTVs.
- Handwriting Recognition – On a tablet sized device, we would want to jot down a note or two. Sometimes, writing by hand is simply more convenient. A soft keyboard is one thing, but it’s still not good enough to touch-type on.
All said and done…I-pad, just like the other devices from Apple is sure to be a game-changer in the smart-phone as well as the laptop market and has given birth to a new segment between the two!
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