Jan 27 2010
So Apple made an announcement today…

After months, if not years of hype, Apple finally announced their tablet. And it has an awful, awful name: iPad. Look, I’m a marketing major and the first thing we learned is never give your product a name that sounds like a feminine hygiene product, unless it is actually a feminine hygiene product. It’s just asking for bad news. In fact, iTampon is already the #2 tending topic on Twitter, ahead of Apple, Steve Jobs and iPad.
Despite the horrible name, there’s a lot to like about the iPad.
1. Price: I think the $499 base price was far below what anyone predicted. Sure, no one will actually buy that version – you really want the $830 version with 3G and 64 GB of memory, but the $499 base price was astounding.
2. Looks: Sure, it looks like a big iPhone, but the iPhone looks good. The iPad has a 9.7” screen, but is still only 0.5” thin – that’s not bad at all. Early impressions of the build quality of the device were mostly positive, and I’d have to agree that the iPad is a very slick-looking device.
3. Support for iPhone/iPod Touch Apps: The iPad can run all current iPhone apps. Since these apps are currently designed for a smaller screen, the iPad stretches them out to fit the larger 9.7” screen. That’s not perfect, but it does give the iPad a pretty large application base to start off with.
With that said, there are quite a few problems I have with the iPad.
1. No multitasking: I don’t understand Apple’s aversion to multitasking on its portable devices, but this is a big negative. The inability for the iPad to run two apps at the same time really limits the device’s usefulness. As Steve Jobs pointed out, netbooks are really just cheap computers – sure, that’s true, but even cheap computers can run two apps at the same time.
2. No Flash: This is another feature that Apple has continually failed to support. A ton of websites, not to mention Hulu, use Flash – so why doesn’t the iPad support it?
3. GPS: Jobs demoed the lovely Google Maps functionality on the iPad, but the lack of GPS really diminishes the value of Google Maps, not to mention half of the apps I currently rely on heavily.
4. Codec support: I like laptops because I can download a bunch of movies without worrying about the format, and then just play them with VLC player. The iPhone can’t do this, and apparently neither will the iPad. This means a lot of file converting – a tedious process.
Overall, the iPad was pretty disappointing. Unlike the iPhone, the iPad doesn’t really break new ground. More importantly, it’s hard to see how the iPad would fit into my life. Sure, it seems great on planes and when I’m taking a deuce, but $500 is a lot to pay for a device that covers those two scenarios.
I recently bought a netbook for around $500, and frankly this device does everything that the iPad can do, and more. Plus, it has more storage, Windows 7, and I don’t have to worry about converting files.
My guess is that the iPad will be a popular item, but I don’t think I’ll get one when it comes out. While the device is less expensive than expected, it’s just too expensive for what it delivers.





