As a company full of designers and thinkers, we have an opinion on just about everything. The new iPad is no exception. Like everyone else, we were all excited to see how innovative this new gem was going to be. Here in New York and in San Francisco, many of us were glued to our screens and refreshing multiple browser windows so we wouldn’t miss a single word of Steve Jobs’ presentation. And anyone who knows me knows I love anything Apple. I stood in line on day one for all three generations of the iPhone, but I don’t see a reason why I would do the same for the iPad. Sure – it’s beautiful, will work wonderfully – but do I need it? If I’m at home or the office, I’ll use my laptop. If I’m wandering around, I’ll use my iPhone.
I asked fellow Hotties what they thought of the iPad. Here’s some of their comments:
I will wait until it comes with a camera.
I tend to communicate better visually – but I’m always stuck between paper and the computer. There’s a lot of labor moving things between those two spaces. I also spend more time moving around than I do sitting with a laptop. My phone is too small, my laptop too bulky. I hate reading on my laptop and would like to snuggle up with something that at least feels like a book.
I worry about Apple’s DRM for the books. I prefer the BN Nook to the Kindle for that reason.
I don’t think this is going to be a huge hit. No lines around the block and unit sales in the tens of millions. More like a million or two; on par with eReaders.
Amazon might have to worry — the price point is close to the Kindle, and there are way more features.
I don’t yet see the need for an $600-800 device to watch movies and read books on. I’m already worried about getting mugged, I don’t really want to have more to lose! Take my crappy old iPhone and my Teen Beat magazine and my empty wallet, just take them, man! I ain’t got no iPad for you.
The game-changer is in the iBook library sales model and the fact that Jobs wrestled five publishers to the ground and got them to agree on a consistent way of selling digital books.
I think the iPad is eh. I hate the fact AT&T is tied to it.
The ongoing challenge still persists: Humans love paper. The psychological draw to the printed word vs. reading on a screen is definitely a gap that is closing, but the iPad –again, to me– is not going to be the major shift.
Everyone complaining about it will buy one.
But that’s our perspective; what’s yours?
A big downer is the inability to run multiple applications. I wonder if this is another “copy/paste” feature that just wasn’t ready for primetime.
Steve also stressed that iPhone/iTouch users will already know how to use the device, which is surprising. The form factor alone needs an expanded library of gestures, but we only saw the basics demoed. It will be interesting to actually use the iPad.
Oh and what about the max storage size. 64GB seems small for a device like that. I wonder if that has anything to do with the recent acquisition of LaLa or a move to cloud storage?
I think we humans always want and complain too much.
iPad is awesome to have, but I’d get it mainly so I can read my books on travel. Everything else is icing on the cake!
Features almost aside, I was surprised at how half-baked the thing seemed. The Apple fanboys shouldn’t be able to outdo Ive with their Photoshop comps, but they pretty much did–at least met him at eye level. No new design language or form innovation, which was a letdown. Remember how amazing the iPhone was at introduction? It wasn’t even described as ‘magical’.
The interface also seemed unfinished. Any schmoe would have naturally taken the iPhone interface and then just spread out the icons to fill the space. That doesn’t take any thinking at all. I certainly expected more from what I thought was one of the premier problem solving groups on the planet. They either should have rethought it or held it back to get some more content ready.
And then the name. I think it was made worse by the fact that Steve kept a straight face the entire time. No wonder Ive was spotted drinking brandy at 9:30 in the morning.
Of course this could be the Scion of mobile devices–targeted at youngsters/hipsters and adopted by the middle-age crowd instead. No wonder I don’t get it. Maybe it two months time it will mature and I will be pleasantly surprised.