My thoughts on the iPad

Yes, it’s a horrible name, let’s get that over with now. The HP Slate has a way cooler name, but Apple probably couldn’t have used iSlate. There’s netbooks and notebooks, maybe this could have been an iBook? Moving on…

Apple’s newest product has created a 3rd pillar, fitting between the iPhone and the Macbook. And it fits in between pretty well, or it seems so for now. It’s part iPhone/Touch and part Macbook. Although, it’s probably way more iPhone/Touch. It also really just looks like an oversized iPhone/Touch except without the camera or ability to call anyone. Even so, I’m still extremely excited about this thing, and here is why.

It’s a giant iPhone/Touch! Ok, enough of this / crap, I’m just going to be saying iTouch from now on as I have an iPod Touch. But ya, most people seem pretty down on this topic, but I see upside to it. The iTouch is a great piece of hardware, having it larger and stronger is only good. Bigger, brighter display, what’s not to like? I’ve seen complaints how playing games on the thing is going to control awful. I couldn’t disagree more. Now rather than having a tiny space for any kinds of controls, there’s way more room. I feel that with the bigger screen, you’ll be able to control games like on a PC. Shooters would benefit from this immensely. NOVA is kind of set up how I would imagine a shooter on the iPad, but there’s not enough space. So on a bigger screen you’ll be able to have more controls, and have them bigger without cramming the screen. I just feel you’d be able to get a better mouse and keyboard feel with the bigger screen. And it’s still got the tilt and all that stuff so any fun quirky games on the iTouch will work here. Oh and another good point, the iPad will be compatible with almost every single app out there, so you won’t have to rebuy anything. Sure you’ll have to scale the images up, but from what I’ve heard it actually doesn’t take much away from the visuals. Visual, another good point. The iPad is stronger so games can look better graphically. Basically I love this because it’s a giant, more powerful iTouch, and I love my iTouch. It’s also not huge, about the size of a pad of paper. So still simple enough to handle and carry around.

Although there are two huge drawbacks about this for me. The first is the fact that there is no flash support. Ridiculous, how is this suppose to take down netbooks without flash? The major online media source. The only logical reason that comes to mind is that Apple doesn’t want you playing flash games, because they would work to perfectly and Apple wouldn’t be making money from them. That’s the only thing i can think of, the only games Apple wants you playing on the iPad are games from it’s own app store. But a whole lot of sites use flash on them to display news and various other things like video, but you won’t be able to access that on the iPad.

The other big downer is the price. I read somewhere most people are surprised, it actually costs less than they expected. The starting price is $500 for 16GB of flash memory. Really? Only 16GB for $500? That doesn’t seem fair to me. The iPhone 3GS has 16GB for only $200 (or for the same $200 you can get an iTouch with half the memory and half the capabilities, wtf’s up with that?). Does apple really think making it bigger and cutting out the camera, phone calls, and 3G support equal $300 extra? I sure don’t. Although you can get a model with 3G built in, it’ll just cost you an additional $230 for a total of $630 plus a data plan starting at $15 a month. And this is what is really turning me off. It’s not the monthly fee for 3G, I understand that. It’s the fact you have to pay so much for a larger screen and less capabilities. At $500 I’m kind of thinking about a purchase, although for $400 I’d be greatly considering it. But then again, you know Apple. They’re just going to drop the price and add more memory and other stuff with the next generation, just like they do with every other product while pissing off everyone who bought the originals. So I might have to convince myself to hold off.

One last thing, I see the whole $#99 rather than $#00 theory taking effect very nicely here as $499 just looks and sounds a hell of a lot nicer than $500 for me.