Wednesday I had a chance to play with the hype machine that is the Apple iPad. I haven't really been following the surge in sales and in hype because frankly I'm not really into the product. I found my way into Best Buy (I find Best Buy much less of a hassle than the Apple Store mainly because I'm not attacked by hungry sales reps *right away) with all of my preconceived opinions and to make things short and sweet they all ended up being true.
I like the iPad, I really do! Beautiful screen, great design, and all around simple to use but honestly it's just off. For starters the price is outlandish, $499 is the cheapest model and you aren't getting much storage at all (16 gigs). For $499 you could set yourself up with a fantastic netbook running a full version of Windows 7 or even Mac OSX if you are savvy enough! Chances are it will have a hard drive with close to if not more than 200gb. Things like this really set me back. Beyond that it lacks so many features! No USB, no card reader, no camera, no file system. Like so many people have said, this is really like an iPod Touch on steroids. I really can't justify spending a minimum of $500 to buy this thing, not to mention if you want wireless 3g you bump up to $629! Outlandish! To be honest we all know why this thing will sell, it's the App Store. We all love our iPhones and iPod Touchs' because of the amazing third party applications and games that have been created by an amazing community of developers. This, the iPad is just another way to deliver that content. Bravo to Apple for seeing a market and exploiting it however those with common sense will see right through that and wait for the price to match the ability of the product. I love my iPhone, love it! However I don't own it because of the love for the hardware, I love what is available on it and for it. That's a fact. Apple has once again done what it does best, take ideas that have been around for years and years and it makes them better, maybe even more refined and simple. Small laptops and netbooks are quite popular now so Apple gave birth to the iPad. A locked down version of a netbook at twice the cost and half the features. Imagine a world with no App Store similar to the early days of the iPhone… would you own an iPad under those conditions? No you wouldn't. I look forward to version two but more importantly I look forward to the new iPhone G4 coming this summer. The iPhone can do everything an iPad can… and more.
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