The website and blogs have been quite busy the last couple of days and are still filling up with entries about Apple’s tablet the ‘iPad’. Quite a few of the various rumors and apparent leaks that came before the unveiling were wrong so the device came as quite a ‘surprise’ to the technology community. Unfortunately for Apple, not in a good way. Like the iPhone before it, there’s a certain uncertainty, for lack of a better term, about how and where the device is going to be beneficial. The mobile computing community seems to be generically enraged by Apple’s choice of features.
To understand the device a little better in this respect, let’s look at it from the Indian perspective, after all we’re as tech savvy as the next country and are always open to new technology. But here’s why Apple would find it quite hard to sell the iPad in India -
The Cons -
- 3G technology still seems like quite far ahead into the future and the micro SIM isn’t even here yet. So we can stick to Wi-Fi of course but hot spots still aren’t very easy to come by.
- The iPad also doesn’t support tethering so it’s not like you can connect your iPhone or other handset to the device to use EDGE or GPRS.
- In this country we love cameras. Taking pictures is a big deal. If an expensive handset like the iPhone could incorporate a 2MP camera, why isn’t this one equipped with one.
- The Keypad is not optimized for the MultiTouch display. It’s such a large screen so it could have had a full keyboard like UI and have the use of Shift+ or Ctrl+ functions enabled.
- Quite a few Indian sites incorporate the use of Flash technology, including ours. Apple’s browser doesn’t support this content.
- The Pen drive and portable hard drive is a very necessary tool for us and with a device like this that has no USB ports or memory card slots it’s just not going to work.
- Let’s face it, the Indian mentality is to get as much done as we can in a given time, multitasking is therefore part of our personality. The iPad isn’t capable of multitasking. No wonder reports are talking about how quickly things open and close as the processor isn’t really doing too much, except running one thing at a time.
- The worst part is that it’s going to be tied in with iTunes. Which means each device can only be synced to one computer. So if you're thinking of getting stuff from your office PC to your home the iPad is not the solution.
- This may be a neat looking device but it’s not something you’d see an Indian businessman whip out at a meeting. Pictures of his family ok, presentations I doubt it. It’s not professional enough.
But it isn’t all bad of course, so here are a few of the positive points.
The Pros -
- The design is by far as sleek as one has come to expect from Apple devices. Its Wi-Fi/3G model weighs in at 0.73Kg and is just 13.4mm thick making it both light weight and almost as slim as the iPhone so portability will never be an issue.
- The 9.7-inch multi-touch enabled touchscreen display looks clear and vibrant enough for very comfortable viewing, menu navigation, reading Ebooks, Emagazines et al and of course web browsing.
- Since it’s running an iPhone OS (3.2), iPhone users will have absolutely no issue with a transition. But for non iPhone users, the OS is nevertheless extremely easy to use.
- One of the biggest selling points of the iPad is that all your iPhone applications can easily be ported to it. With the device's ability to ‘pixel-double’ the apps can be run on the devices larger display without looking stitched and pixelated.
- The iPhone is one of the most popular handsets for mobile gaming and the same games can be played on the 9.7-inch, accelerometer incorporated, gesture-based iPad. The demos look fantastic and game developers are looking to create specific games specifically for the device.
- The Ebook reader has taken it’s time getting to India but it’s here now and it seems like the technology is catching on quick. In this case the iPad with its luxuriously large display and the fact that Apple has launched an Ebook Store will help the device fit right in.
- Apple is promising that the iPad will provide users with about 10 hours of battery life. That may be a bit exaggerated but even if it clocks in at 7-8 hours that’s not bad.
- With Bluetooth v2.1 + EDR on board we could be seeing data transfer between the iPad and other devices as well as A2DP for wireless audio.
The price is the one aspect that is neither here nor there at the moment. The US prices seem very reasonable for the iPad but we can’t expect the device to be priced the same here, so let’s not get carried away. It’ll be a while before we see it here although Apple has stated that the world wide launch would be sometime in the next 2-3 months but we haven’t even seen the 3Gs yet. But here's a quick look at the US prices -
The Bottom Line
So the bottom line is the Cons may not outnumber the Pros but they do out weigh them. Suffice to say the iPad is no more than an overgrown iPhone or to be more accurate an iPod Touch, a glorified PMP more than a fully functional mobile PC. Just like its mobile counterpart, the iPad is a luxury device that one would tend to use it more for recreational reasons rather than just getting their work done. But the big question really is – is it really such a bad device, or are we just upset because we built up so much hype from rumors that our expectations were just too high to be met? At least there’s a certain amount of consistency in Apple devices shortcomings.
So enter the iPad, exit stage right...
Source: The World Wide Web! - Back to Homepage
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