The iPad has HUGE potential…. an example.
Most of the backlash over the iPad is regarding it’s lack of Flash, no multitasking and its looks. For those reasons they say that it will fail and that it isn’t a replacement for a netbook or laptop. For me it will replace a netbook for others it won’t, but what about its potential as a completely different category of technology, it has huge potential for every walk of life if only you look at what it can do and not focus on what it can’t.
Here’s just one example
Middle aged couple. Wake up in the morning and read the daily paper on the device while having breakfast, quick look at the weather report and check email. Receive an email from their son/daughter with photos of their grandkids and save the photos to the photo gallery. One of them has a look through a recipe book or recipe online and spots something nice for their evening meal. They decide to go shopping so put the iPad in a dock in the living room. Come back from shopping and turn on the iPad to listen to some music via speakers plugged into the doc, activate the slideshow and it’s now a 9″ photoframe displaying the photos that were received in the email that morning. Later on one of them is watching tv so the other decides to do a crossword on the iPad. It’s late afternoon by now and they are both getting hungry so the ipad goes into the kitchen while a meal is being prepared using the recipe that was found on it earlier that day. Later that night they go to bed, one falls asleep while the other is reading a book on it.
That is a perfect example of how it could be used by an average person who has no need for it as a laptop replacement. Not only that but in that scenario it’s been used at its very basic, no additional software other than the crossword app, and it hasn’t even left the house. Add in the wealth of apps already available and its ability to be used at home, work, school, on the road etc. and this opens up the device to be used in thousands of different ways by anybody of any age group.
Yes the iPad does have a few drawbacks and a few things that I would like to be different. But no product it ever going to be 100% perfect for everyone. It is what it is, so don’t focus on the negative (all too common in today’s society especially on the Internet) and focus on the things that it can do… its potential to be huge far outweigh its potential to be a failure.
I completely agreed with you. I wonder why so many people make joke about this new device. It is not the brand Apple that matters. It is about the concept of using a tool doing what we want to do best without the need to know how it works. To many people, they do not care how the computer works but just want to do their own things like communicating with others, getting information, paying bills, doing personal financial matters, entertaining themselves or others, writing, organising or planning activities, etc using a too called computer. Without computer we all have those activities in the old days. Computer should just helps doing these activities much easier or more efficient. We do not have to know how a car functions in details to drive it on the road. We just need to know how to use it and not the technical stuff about the car. It is about designing a computer that we can do all our own activities without realising we have a “middle-man” there. The concept of iPad will revolutionise the computing experience. The concept and not the iPad will replace the laptop and desktop today. Why it happens in 2010? It is because the technology is not maturing to make a device like iPad viable if we see it as a tablet which development has been a failure for the last decade. It is the technology advancement that will change how people use information for their daily life. If human do not resist change (most will resist), the era of computer without physical keyboard and mouse but using only voice, fingers signal or handwriting, and virtual keyboard will come sooner than later. All current form of desktop and laptop will become history. The new “laptop” (or mobile computer) will become lighter, more powerful and more user-friendly. There will be merging of “desktop” and “laptop”. How about the virtual keyboard? If anyone has experience in Universal Studio’s “Back into the future” would know the vehicle we sit on has not really move much but we can experience it moving by what we hear and see on a giant screen. The virtual keyboard could have typing sound to trick our sense and after few trial we will get used to it. While you may not accept iPad as your ideal product, we must accept the concept and vision it will bring to change our computing experience or rather the way we do things in an information age. Do you still drive a manual car or use a computer that runs on legacy operating system today if there are better choice to do your activities (not computing)?