Apple And A New Slice Of The Pie

Apples next great thing

Earth Date 2010.02.02

Posted by Rich Wheadon | Permalink




January 27th Apple introduced it’s new creation, the iPad. I met the announcement with low expectations since the tablet market isn’t one I’ve had a lot of interest in, but by the end of the presentation I was totally on board. A big, powerful iPod is what I keep seeing people describe the new Apple baby as… and that is a half-right assessment.



I picked up an iPod Touch last year after seeing how many productivity apps are available for the iPhone’s little brother. I immediately moved 6 email accounts into my Touch and purchased GasCubby to begin capturing my mileage and service logs electronically (I had been capturing them in a steno pad for many years). I installed a couple bible readers and I was well on my way with the iPod replacing the iPaq and Motorola Q I had been using previously.



It took nearly two months before I began using my Touch as a music device… that simply was not the reason I had purchased it and there was no strong reason to do so until my family departed on a 2 week roadtrip vacation and I realized my little Apple would make a great music stream for us.



The iPod Touch has been a loyal companion for nearly a year now and about the only reason I need to open one of our laptops is to work with images, type a document, write a little code, and get a bigger slice of real estate for email or web browsing. Well guess what… Apple has glued 9 iPod Touches together! Screen real estate just became more than tolerable for a touch device.



The power being released to us in the new iPad just simply might be unprecedented for years to come. Watch the keynote a couple times and you should be able to see the absolutely natural and fluid nature of the “new category” we’re going to see hit the market in a month or so. I think the iPad is going to be extremely viral in nature… Once a couple people in a group get one of those babies the lightbulbs are going to come on like crazy.



The OS on iPhones, iPod Touches, and the new iPad completely removes the boundary of hardware and emmerses you into a software experience that is unrivaled by anything I’ve seen before. I’ve been fighting a netbook for several months with its tiny keyboard, painfully slow ssd, and a Windows XP operating system that is not at all suited for the 9.1 inch screen. This won’t be a problem with the iPad since everything about the iPhone OS it runs is designed around small form factor and a minimalist approach that just makes the whole experience a joy. The iPhone OS and apps written in the environment just seem to draw interaction like a siren song in ancient greek folklore.



I have never resolved so quickly to purchase any product like I have the iPad, despite a single greatest letdown… no camera. Just like I really want a camera on my iPod Touch… I also really want a camera on my iPad, but that is a feature being reserved for another day. For now I see the iPad becoming a much more useable version of my Touch. The mail, calendar, and office productivity apps alone make it the most versatile gadget I will have ever owned. E-books and day planners are a perfect fit for the iPad (along with hundreds of other things I’m sure). I just hope I can keep my wife and daughter from hijacking the thing from me.



I suspect that we all are about to see a whole new world of computing through the iPad, perhaps it will generate a wave that will begin to move us from clunky old desktops and laptops into a whole new form of casual browsing and common productivity computing.



I think this is a good place to note that I have absolutely no ties into Apple, nor have I extensively researched what has gone into the iPad. I’m just an average Joe geek. I use Windows, Linux, and OSX and actually have my preference in the unbridled freedom of Linux, but spend most of my days in OSX on an iMac or MacBook… why? To just drive that old cliche in a little deeper… the Macs just simply work well. Hands down the Apple software and hardware deliver a more enjoyable experience than either Linux or Windows.