reviews::gadget | Thursday, Jan 28th 2010, 01:02:18 PM

As most people probably know by now... Apple announced their newest "game changer". And it's the Apple iPad. If you don't know it's a tablet computer, but running the iPhoneOS. Now the Apple fan boys are going to buy these in droves, as well as a fair amount of casual consumers. What do I think? Thanks for asking!

Continued below...

• Hardware design is beautiful. Thin and pretty


• Battery life is very respectable.


• The way you'd probably use it will allow you to have "instant on". Meaning you wouldn't shut it down; you'd put it in stand by mode. So you can pick it up and not wait for any boot up time. Laptops and desktops require you to boot it up, unless you leave them on all the time.


• It'll be awesome for showing people photos or artwork. Save it on the iPad, then you can just launch the photos app and pass the iPad around. The 9" screen is much nicer for displaying photos than a cellphone and the size and weight is much nicer to pass around.


• It's light weight and a nice size so it's easy to carry around in bed or on the couch.


• It can use iPhone/iPod Touch apps.


• Theoretically, in the future you can get a capacitive stylus and if a good app comes you have an awesome drawing pad.


• You can theoretically use it anywhere you get AT&T 3G signal... if you pay extra for a better iPad AND pay a monthly fee.


• You can be an elitist bastard and people will be jealous of you.

• No multi-tasking. Are you serious?! Why is this a big deal? Well, check out your computer now. How many things are you running on it? More than 1? Probably.
  
  Put in another way. What if you want to chat on your iPad? Oh, your friend mentioned a website. You want to check it out. You have to QUIT the instant messaging program, then open the web, look at the link, quit the web, open up the IM program again, relogin and then chat again. No way this can replace a laptop or netbook because of that. It's a supplement, not a replacement.


• No Flash support. You can't view any pages with Flash on it. Which these days is like 25% of the pages out there. HTML5 will make Flash useless but HTML5 has a long way from being the standard.


• No removable battery as far as I can tell.


• While it's been touted as an eBook reader (and it can be!), it's not nearly as good as actual eBook readers in 2 ways. One is battery life. eBook readers last a WEEK of reading. The iPad lasts 10 hours (very respectable though). Also eInk (found on most eBook reader) is much much much easier on the eyes than staring at a computer screen (which the iPad is pretty much).


• You can be an elitist bastard and so smug that everyone hates you.