The Apple Ipad
Photo Credit: The guardian newspaper
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April 9, 2010 • Marco Bonvillian
Filed under News
Saturday, April 3rd was an exciting moment in the tech world. The iPad was released, and with it began a grand experiment about how we will interact with technology in coming years.
Before its release, the iPad reviews varied. To a large extent, the negative reviews came from tech magazines and blogs that emphasized the limits of the iPad as compared to Netbooks. The positive reviews came from mainstream media outlets that emphasized the advantages of a product, which allowed consumers to consume so many types of media (music, books, movies, magazines, blogs, video blogs, and newspapers) from one device. In some ways, the varied reviews were the result of a fundamental question about how we prefer to use technology – as a means for media consumption or media production.
Tech magazines and blogs emphasize the lack of both a camera and a real keyboard as the major drawbacks of the device because they would hinder the user in their production of media. By this, they meant that the lack of these features would prevent the device from being able to be used as a mechanism for writing or filming blog posts, for sending long emails, and for working for any extended period of time on word or power-point documents.
However, others praised the product for its ability to bring together many types of media onto a single device. While it still remains to be seen if the iPad will be a popular means for reading books and magazines, it nonetheless offers exciting potential. Presently, there are only a measly 60,000 books available on iBook and relatively few magazines have launched apps.
The iPad will also have to compete with E-readers and iPhones in addition to the media producing Netbooks. While the showdown between the iPad and E-Readers has been well covered, it is emblematic of another important question in the tech world: do users prefer specific, limited products or broad spectrum products that attempt to perform many functions at once? E-Readers are designed exclusively for reading; they feature glare free black and white screens, extraordinary battery life (a kindle gets around two weeks of use per charge), ultralight weight, and access to large bookstores. The iPad provides none of these things because that could compromise other aspects of the device. It remains to be seen whether the public will elect to buy an array of specific devices or one wide-reaching device to satisfy their consumption habits.
What has received less coverage is the competition that will likely arise between the iPad and the iPhone. A fact that some find liberating and others find limiting, the iPhone offers many of the same media consumption opportunities but with a smaller screen size. Many people actually like having a smaller device at a lower cost. Nevertheless, it remains to be seen if consumers will choose an iPhone purchase over the iPad.
Ultimately, whatever customers choose, the implications will be huge. It will signal to the tech industry how people respond to those basic questions about media production vs. media consumption and how people respond to specific vs. wide-reaching products. Let the experiment begin!
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