Not an iPod, it’s an iPad
// January 28th, 2010 // No Comments » // hardware
After much speculation online and off Apple today announced their new iPad device, but is it something that left you thinking ‘I must have one of those?’.
For me it doesn’t sit comfortably as a device that I need, but I can see 2 key markets for this. Firstly the Apple fans, Apple are always guaranteed early success as the strength of their brand, affluence of their average customer and quality of their products mean early sales will undoubtedly be good. Yes this will look lovely next to their MacBook or iMac, but it doesn’t mean you have to buy one!
The second market is the social web user, someone who loves Facebook, gets a few emails a day (mostly from Facebook), enjoys their photo collection on Flickr, etc. This market up until now has bought a netbook or cheap laptop, but these people doesn’t really want the hassle of Windows Updates or unreliable hardware, they just want something that works… this could be it and with the aggressive pricing I feel this will go head-to-head with a netbook.
Quite a few commentators have said that the educational market potential is huge, but I can’t see this replacing a pile of text books for a lot of people. A collection of e-books inevitably will be tied to the device, so there’s no sharing of books (unless you like your friend enough to lend them your Apple iPad!) and the cost of buying a book will probably be higher than the offline version.
The next few days will be interesting to see the different uses that people suggest and that may sway my opinion, but at the moment it’s a pass from me…