Had a bit of a thread with some facebook friends / geeks who are piping out about the iPad’s locked-down, non-flash nature…
I agree that it’s not really a ‘tablet’ and that it’s tied to the appstore; but it DOES have a keyboard and prop stand (how it recharges).
However I don’t see it so much as trying to fit in the netbook/tablet space so much as how it’s going to change the way we deal with the CONTENT so much.
First off I think — though there will ALWAYS be books – books will go the way cds/vinyl has done; I see this fitting in a place specifically for tech, or students; people who have an awful lot of books that they might be needing to access rather than cart around huge tomes at all times. Or the medical profession; one server on an internal network, and all your files can be accessed right there. YES I understand it can be done today; but one app store app to fit in that market and it’s golden.
I also see a space where there will be MUCH more self-published works; if iTunes sets up the same sort of schema for pdf as they have for music, more indie writers will put up pdf and people might be more willing to purchase something for $2 that they can read right there, rather than buy online and ship, or in a bookstore. Just a thought.
Even the pay as you go cellular is great – buy the cellular, never use it until you’re on vacation, pay for that month and .. it’s great.
Past all this, as a musician, I see this multitouch being a new way of working with electronic music/samples etc. On top of that, I think it’ll really bolster gaming and how one would interact with games.
Don’t get me wrong – there are things I think that are wrong with it, and that might change in the future. I don’t know what politically is going on with adobe/apple but lack of Flash is just some kind of gameplay. I can’t see that staying that way if apple really wants to make this the ‘best browsing experience’. Lack of usb ports are another issue… but it’s def more of an extension of a computer than a computer itself — at least for now. Perhaps devices might be made using the dock port… I think apple is also trying to come up with some firewire/usb/dva/rgb standard port.. so…that might come into play here.
Finally – as an artist, I think the multitouch is great for drawing on screen, but if they had only added pressure to some capacity then one wouldn’t have to buy a $3k cintiq wacom. I personally would ask some hardware developer to create a very simple bluetooth pen that would send pressure senstivity from the pen point to the tablet; the tablet itself could handle the tracking, and combined with the bluetooth data in the driver, give an artist a real experience. Any takers?
