Late For Tea

Today was the unveiling of the Apple’s official foray into the tablet market. I can’t wait to get my hands on this device, and I’ve already downloaded the SDK. Read on to see why I think the tablet is an excellently placed device in the market.

The iPad already has access to many of the applications that I’d like to use in a tablet platform

From a software perspective, I think that the decision to have the device run the iPhone OS rather than full blown OSX is a great move. The tablet is first and foremost a mobile device; by forcing the iPad into the same category as the iPhone and iPod Touch, Apple is ensuring that the expectations for the device remain clear – it’s not a replacement for your laptop and you’re not going to be able to run iMovie on it.

Using the App Store, the iPad already has access to many of the applications that I’d like to use in a tablet platform on the go. SSH, VNC and Remote Desktop clients are already on my iPhone, but will become much more usable on the bigger screen. Software developers will soon start to port applications that were previously impractical on the iPhone – They’ll be geared to run on a multitouch platform and scaled to the computing capacity of the device. I’m looking forward to apps like Coda, which would allow me to be productive without hauling around the MacBook that I use for heavy lifting.

I’ve also seen complaints about the hardware being underpowered. I’d agree if this was a desktop device, but it’s not. It’s got plenty of power for basic apps and browsing the web. I wholeheartedly agree with their decision to use custom silicon, as you get much more efficiency from using hardware designed to do a specific task. While I’m skeptical of their battery claims, there’s absolutely no way you’d get anywhere near those numbers if they’d used an off the shelf solution. The opportunities for power management are also better when you’ve got something that will only operate in spikes.

I’ll be ordering an iPad as soon as they’re available in Canada, and I look forward to the innovative things that the App Store developers will bring.

Related posts:

1. My take on the iPad in the Apple ecosystem I’ve had a chance to catch up on the talk...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.