iPad: Apple’s Tablet has finally arrived
People in tech were anticipating this device for a long time. In Microsoft we had plenty of informal watercooler discussions on this gadget, and the past year the media has been running plenty of rumours. Finally here is the much awaited device, announced by Steve Jobs yesterday. For most of the jouranlists it was underwhelming and while it is a great device it is not yet a complete replacement for you laptop.
iPad is a bigger version of iPhone with 9.7 inch touch screen at price ranging from $500 to $829. The lowest model has 16GB memory and about 10 hours of battery life. It has a wi-fi model (like iPod touch) that is due to come by March 2010 and a 3G model (like iPhone) that is to come in April. It weighs about 1.5 pounds (700 grams) a lot lighter than most laptops and with a lot more battery life, and you can use all the 140,000 apps available for your iphone & iPod Touch though Apple’s appstore. See more technical specs here.
Here is the rough comparison of the 3 devices.
| Properties | iPad | IPod touch & iPhone | Typical Laptop PC |
| Display size | 9.7” | 3.5” | 10” – 17” |
| Applications | Apple Appstore | Apple Appstore | PC apps dowloaded from Web or installed through disk |
| Play Flash and Silverlight | No | No | Yes |
| Weight | 680 grams | 115 grams(ipod touch) | 1600 grams – 4000 grams |
| Multitasking | No | No | Yes |
| Reading books | Best | moderate (tiny screen) | worst |
| Playing music | play iTunes and better sound features (more locked to Apple) | play iTunes and better sound features (more locked to Apple) | plays wider range of music apps though sound quality might not be great |
| Development on the device | Not easy | Not easy | Good to write apps using it |
| Price | $500+ | $200+ | $400+ |
| Input | Multitouch & keboard dock | Multitouch | Keyboard & mouse |
It is lot better to browse and type than iPod & iPhone, and has almost all the features iPod touch – playing music with built-in speakers, connecting to itunes store, assisted GPS (that approximately locates your position using cellphone signal), and compared to an ordinary laptop it is a lot better to read books, use multi-touch screen, etc. You can buy books through their new service – iBookstore. Unlike a typical laptop it also has accelerometer and other sensors that makes gaming and other applications more interesting.
However, it is still not a perfect device and plenty of shortcomings are present. Most importantly:
no camera, no USB ports, no GPS, no widescreen aspect ratio and no high res video output.
But, for me most importantly there is no multitasking – you cannot run you browser and text editor at the same time, and you cannot watch flash animation on the web. You can read more on the shortcomings here.
(source: Wikipedia)
iPad comes with a keyboard doc that also acts as the charger.
Also read:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8483654.stm
http://www.engadget.com/2010/01/27/editorial-engadget-on-the-ipad/
