We’ve speculated about Apple’s mystery tablet for months, and now at long last it’s here, so what is it like and how has it been received?
The iPad as it is called, has no mouse and no keyboard, it can be used for everything from surfing the web to playing games, reading books and newspapers to watching videos and it even makes phone calls.
It’s half an inch thin, weighs one and a half pounds and has a 9.7 inch IPS display screen. You can choose from three hard drive sizes, 16GB, 32GB and 64GB and the battery runs for about 10 hours. All the iPads will have Wi-Fi but you can pay a bit more for 3G if you want.
Now we all know that tablets haven’t exactly taken off in the past. Bill Gates once said they were the future of computing but Microsoft tried it back in 2001 and failed miserably. So why should the iPad succeed?
Apple said that their intention was to create a product that filled the gap between a SmartPhone and a laptop which is basically what a tablet pc is. There has to be more.
Industry analysts have been giving their take on Apple’s “latest creation”. Mike Gartenberg, vice president of strategy and analysis at research firm Interpret had this to say.
“Everything they have done up until now is in this device – the iPod, iTunes, multi-touch, the applications. And then they added new features like the iBook store and productivity,” Gartenberg told BBC News.
“I think this is going to be a very successful product for them and exceed expectations.”
Not everyone agrees. The iPad has only just arrived on the scene and already it is facing masses of criticism, a possible lawsuit and even ridicule.
There’s no camera, it doesn’t support videos made with Adobe Flash software, you can’t open several applications at once so multitasking is out of the question, and it doesn’t even have a USB port. These are just some of the complaints.
Then there’s the huge issue of the name. Japanese Electronics Company Fujitsu is claiming that the name iPad is their trademark and are consulting their lawyers about it.
What was Apple thinking? You’d think they would have got that sorted right at the start.
The final blow for Apple must surely be the jokes that are whizzing around the web regarding iPad sounding like an intimate feminine hygiene product.
Of course there will be plenty of buyers but the bottom line is the iPad doesn’t look like it’s going to save us all just yet. Not this version anyway.
