I’m not planning to get one. I mean, even if I was planning to spend some money and get something cool, I wouldn’t get the iPad. Not yet.
At the moment, I use a laptop for laptop things and a phone when I want mobility and a Reader for eBooks. But I recognize that things will probably change. The haters keep saying that the iPad is just a big iPhone (but without the phone). That’s true, but misses some big points:
1. Just an iPhone? The iPhone is fantastic. It’s fantastic because of all the apps that let it do all kinds of things that it couldn’t do when it first came out. It can do things that no one had even thought of then. We didn’t imagine the things it can do. The hardware is the same, but thousands of programmers out there made it better.
2. A bigger iPhone will have apps that take advantage of its size. There will be programmers who had great ideas for the iPhone, but didn’t develop them because the iPhone is too small. I don’t even want to predict anything, because the truth will be better than I can imagine.
But for now, the thing doesn’t offer me anything I need for $500. It looks pretty, though, and three years ago we all would have been amazed by what it can do.
“I don’t even want to predict anything, because the truth will be better than I can imagine.”
I used to tell my students that prognostication in IT is easy, but accuracy nearly impossible. Between Moore’s Law and the complex interplay of technology and culture, it’s like the current view out my window: clear enough up close, but foggy and indistinct just across the street.
Here are two posts that support my belief that this release of the iPad is not about features, but about the experience.
http://daringfireball.net/2010/01/ipad_big_picture
http://cruftbox.com/blog/archives/001592.html#001592
I really don’t think I can say anything more until I get to play with one.