Am reserving judgement on the iPad until I can actually get to play with one and as The Complete Office and the iStore both hope to have a limited number on island this week or next ($799 for the 16GB wi-fi model) hopefully that will be soon. In the meantime, one of my favourite tech columnists, Andy Ihnatko of the Chicago Sun-Times has put up several posts on his experiences with the iPad over the last few weeks. His verdict? The iPad is “pure innovation – one of best computers ever”.
Although I swore I would wait until the 2nd generation iPad, the more I read and see about it, the more I’m leaning towards getting one sooner rather than later. The reason is that if you already lead a heavily digitised lifestyle – and I’m a fully paid up iPhone, iTunes, Apple TV-lovin’ guy – then I can see where this fits in as a device that allows me to read, work, listen to music, watch movies, play games and more, all in one easily portable device that’s comfortable to view as a movie player or an e-book reader. As I see it, all the things I’m doing more of on my iPhone, I can do a lot better and more on an iPad. Even at Bermuda prices, I figure I can get a lot out of it for a year or more before passing onto my kids who will be fighting me for it anyway – even at 9 and 7 they already totally get the iPad – and buying the next version which, if Apple’s past record is anything to go by, will be twice as good for the same money.
I really think that we’ll look back on the iPad as the start of a new era of computing as the first real convergence device. In the months to come the apps that are going to developed for this platform are going to be mind-blowing. Some of the magazine mockups I’ve seen are stunning and I think it offers a real opportunity for newspapers and magazine to reinvent themselves and in the process make a buck on their content instead of throwing it away.
Breezeblog 