iPad - Mark's Opinion

The iPad, in my opinion, is going to be very important. Think about it, a $499 'computer' that does almost everything that a cheap full-size laptop or everything a netbook is designed to do, but better, smaller, lighter and brighter. There is nothing especially new about the hardware in the iPad; the Apple A4 chip is actually nothing more than a repackaging of off-the-shelf processing cores from PowerVR and Samsung; the screen technology (S-IPS) has been on the desks of graphics professionals for more than a decade now; the multi-touch technology already trialled in the iPhone and iPod touch. But despite this, the iPad is something new, the first time that all of these have been brought together in one package that can both be learned in minutes by Luddites, and be tinkered with for years by the most ardent technophiles.

But, there is another thing that the iPad will do, or has done even on the power of the hype machine alone. When the iPhone was announced, there was only one other full-screen-no-keyboard mobile device: the LG Prada. Yes, there were BlackBerries and the horrendous WinMo devices that have been there since the beginning of time, but they were designed for enterprise use. No real games, no proper media. After the iPhone, everyone came out with consumer smartphones, from HTC to SonyEricsson to Palm, although everyone was too late to prevent the iPhone from becoming leader. The iPhone even managed to all but destroy Motorola, who had just been resting on the laurels begotten though RAZR fame.

What about with the iPad? Well, this time the speculation of it was enough to get companies to spend billions on a competitor to a product that may have never launched. At the time the iPad was launched, there were tablets coming from mass-market PC manufacturers such as Hewlett Packard and Dell, and the typical Shenzhen manufacturing units pouring out old netbook-part tablet reheats and the onslaught of Android devices. What is going to happen now? The iPad will launch in typical Apple fashion, and the fanboys will lap it up in their millions.