And as with the Touch and iPhone, Apple created an ecosystem it calls iBooks that allows iPad customers to consume hordes of electronic books offline by buying these online. This is Apple genius repeating itself. For sure, it will create tons of money for Apple from online book sales. If the newspaper content generators can do it right, it should also allow the millions of newspaper readers to consume their daily thirst for news online with the iPad. Sports Illustrated’s purported egazine is a very nice piece of software engineering if they can get it out the door.
So let’s be clear, the iPad is a couch potato’s dream device (well almost). You can listen to music, watch a movie, surf the Internet, write your memoirs, and read a book. It would also be great if it had a tuner built-in so you can watch TV. Then it becomes the American man’s dream – an all in one device where you can sit on your couch, eat chips, drink beer and do just about everything else without standing up.
There is one important caveat though… it doesn’t multitask well. You can’t write your memoirs while surfing the Internet for quick references or cut and paste that favorite youtube video (like I’m doing now).
A few other things it doesn’t have… a built-in camera so you can take those quick photos. But then it would look funny holding this 10″ piece of metal alloy in front of you to take a picture of someone (just looks really odd).
Apple is not claiming that the iPad will replace your laptop. Heavens no, otherwise it would kill the goose the laid the golden egg – the MacBook and MacBook Pro series – that so many people covet until they figure out that they can’t install that favorite software that was purposely built on the Microsoft Windows platform (oops! Apple marketing didn’t tell you that.).
So if you want to multi-task applications as what most young people (I am still young at heart) do, then you need your laptop or desktop computer beside you. If you like walking about and don’t like carrying anything larger than something you can put in your pocket or pouch (or purse for the ladies), you want an MP3/MP4 player that also happens to be a phone (all smartphones do this, including the iPhone).