On the Apple iPad

Just in case anyone of you has still been living under a rock: the Apple tablet has just been released, and it will be called iPad (not iSlate). Those of you needing a bit of technical information can find it below – the rest of this piece will look at the reasoning behind the box.

Hands-on with the iPad
Price information

First of all: the folks at Palm’s will likely jump over their house door backwards three times. The iPad is no danger whatsoever to their new devices – no multitasking and no keyboard mean that the device is almost unusable for business. Other manufacturers don’t have to worry either…

Apple’s iPad also doesn’t target the existing tablet PC crowd: these devices also cater to a completely different audience. Business folks and note takers are not the target here…

When it comes to mobile usage, the box also can’t achieve much: it is too big to be truly portable, and offers too little to replace a notebook. So no cheese here, either.

Instead, the iPad is a passive media consumption box. It is a large personal media player more than anything else – users are expected to take the critter to bed or to the couch and look at TV, do some casual web surfing or listen to music. Active input will take place someplace else.

The device thus ties in perfectly into Apple’s existing ecosystem, and will likely sell like the AppleTV did. But it IMHO won’t have much of a lasting impact on the mobile world as whole…

What do you think?

Related posts:

1. HP: webOS tablets will be iPad-like
2. Apple Newton – the tear-down
3. Media tablets: drivers and drags
4. Tablets wont save print – ipad magazines sales fall
5. iPad: 300k units sold on first day, 1 million apps / 250k ebooks downloaded