January 27th, 2010. A day that will live in infamy. Well, at least for those concerned with the latest and greatest technology. On this day, Apple, a company known for it’s often-revolutionary ideas, unveiled their latests product, the iPad. For weeks, the iPad, previously known as the iTablet and iSlate, was billed as “the most revolutionary device ever”, one that would “change the face of computing as we know it”. On that fateful day, however, many of those writers in the tech world were left severely disappointed. The iPad, it seemed, had not lived up to the hype by a long stretch. However, this did not stop many from writing in defense of the new device. “You simply aren’t getting it” many of them say. “The device isn’t supposed to be what you want it to be”. I invite you to read one of these such blogs written by my esteemed colleague Cameron Banga. His blog can be found at this URL: http://cameronbanga.com/post/359262430/about-the-ipad.
Mr. Banga makes several points points criticizing the criticism of many other tech writers. Over the course of this post, I wish to address many of the points Mr. Banga makes regarding just why the iPad is, in fact, the most revolutionary device ever.
The Bezel
Much professional criticism has been leveled against the sheer size of the bezel around the edges. Many writers have complained that this severely restricts screen real-estate, and the exclusion of it would lead to much more screen space on the same sized device. On this particular point, I actually agree with Mr. Banga. He points out, correctly, that the bezel is so large in order to provide an area to place your thumbs. You don’t want to rest your thumbs on the screen. That would result in inadvertant imputs, making the divce do things that you dont want it to do. Apple was perfectly right in makeing this area so large in order to make the device easy to hold and to use.
Multitasking
This issue is the precise reason why I find the iPad to be considerably less than revolutionary, and why I hold that it will not sell nearly as well as others hope and think. The OS for the deivce is based off of a slightly modified version of the iPhone OS. As most should know, this does not allow for the running of multiple apps at once. This drastically limits the device as you are really only able to do one thing at a time on it.
Mr. Banga asserts that multitasking is not really needed as there’s really only “one app that [you] could effectively use multitasking and that’s Pandora”. On this I wholly disagree. This device was billed as a replacement for the traditional netbook or laptop and indeed, possibly even the computer. If thats the case then, this device has to be as useful and productive to business people, students, and housewives all the same. Of these three demographics, the housewife is the only one who could honestly replace their other deivces with it. Imagine this scenario: Say your a new college student. Rather then invest in a laptop for school, you decide to go with the new, revolutionary, iPad. Well, you’re 3 weeks into classes and its time for your first research paper in History 235. You rush home to begin researching on your shiny new iPad. Sure, the research runs is fast. Safari runs quickly, web pages load in an instant. Suddenly you stumble upon a page that has a paragraph you think would be perfect for a direct quote. You copy that paragraph and go to paste it into the iWorks document you have op-oh, sorry, no you don’t. You close out Safari, open iWorks, and paste. But you’re still not done researching, so you save, close iWorks, re-open Safari, and lo and behold, your back at Google because you had to completely close the program. SO you have to start the research all over again. This process repeats over and over ad nauseum. Your wasting time and energy doing this. Its not nearly as efficient as being able to have 2 apps running at the same time. This could be even worse for a business person who may have to make some last minute change with updated data to a presentation. The fact that you cannot run multiple applications significantly reduces your productivity and nearly completely negates the device as a work-machine.
Mr. Banga points the the Android OS as an example of why multitasking apps is not ideal: The apps will constantly run in the background, reducing battery life and making it run slower. I personally have a Motorola Droid, which runs Android 2.0, so I can attest to this. Mr. Banga is correct. A third-party application is required to kill the apps. However, I am more than willing to have this as a trade-off in order to multitask. I can research and write blogs or even papers at the same time by being able to run a web browser and a GDocs or Tumblr app.
Sans multitasking, the iPad completely loses out on being a productive device. Is it a fun toy? Sure. Im sure theres some people out there that this is perfect for them. But for the vast majority of the population, there is no way this could ever replace a laptop, or a computer. It simply cannot do nearly as much.
As for the other points Mr. Banga makes, I am inclined to agree with him, with the exception of his point about the camera. I feel the lack of a camera is a mistake as it makes Skype significantly less useful, and most of the other tablets coming on the market have one. If the iPod nano has a camera, why can’t the iPad? Other than that though, he is largely correct about its features. Many of the complaints leveled are unfair, and miss the point. However, the lack of multitasking is such a glaring flaw when viewed alongside all of Apple’s claims that, ultimately, I must agree with the critics and say that the iPad, as a whole, is not at all revolutionary, but rather is an wholly lackluster product that is more suited to be an iPod Touch for the elderly rather than a “revolutionary, computer killing powerhouse”
