When I was writing up the post for the iPad and watching the event video I realized that’s exactly what the iPad is made for and that’s what I’m looking at in terms of it’s primary use at least initially. I do think we’re going to see some genuine game-changing desktop-level apps written for it fairly quickly, just like what happened with the iPhone App Store. Yeah, it is basically just a much bigger iPod touch but that’s a Really Big Deal in terms of the types of things you can do on it.

One thing I’m not worried about is speed, especially after reading this from John Gruber (http://daringfireball.net/2010/01/ipadbigpicture):

“But: everyone I spoke to in the press room was raving first and foremost about the speed. None of us could shut up about it. It feels impossibly fast.”

I still don’t have a feel for the weight. I found a book that should be close if much thicker and it actually feels OK but maybe heavier than I’d be willing to hold by one hand for an extended period of time. I’m holding off final judgement until I can hold an actual iPad in my hand.

It’s pretty much exactly what I expected, a natural evolution of the iPod touch/iPhone rather than a revolution.

Did anyone else notice that Jobs actually seems to linger on parts of web pages that showed missing Flash content? I’m still perfectly OK with that. Flash video is a hack that’s outlived it’s usefulness. I’d much rather see sites migrate to better standards based ways to show video.

The output the iPad and iPhone/iPod Touch support is application specific. You can output a movie, or a Keynote slideshow etc. but I believe the apps have to be written specifically to do this. What you can’t do is what Steve Jobs and Co. do EVERY TIME they demo one of these devices which is to output EVERYTHING to an external display. I have to resort to jailbreaking in order to do things like how-to demos.

After watching the presentation and doing a little more reading, I’m SLIGHTLY more impressed. It appears it will now be easier to share files between applications (at least iPad optimized ones) and some of the UI improvements (particularly in Calendar) are very welcome. You almost HAVE to buy a case in order to solve problems like how to prop it up when your body gets tired of holding / supporting it so factor that into the price. Despite the form factor, I’m not sure enough people are going to want to look at a backlit screen long enough to read conventional books on it and Steve himself really didn’t pitch the book concept as hard as I thought he would.

For me, the plusses still don’t outweigh the minuses. We’ll soon see how many Dennis’ there really are in the world.

Bill

Support for 1024 by 768 pixels with Dock Connector to VGA Adapter; 576p and 480p with Apple Component AV Cable; 576i and 480i with Apple Composite Cable H.264 video up to 720p, 30 frames per second, Main Profile level 3.1 with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats; MPEG-4 video, up to 2.5 Mbps, 640 by 480 pixels, 30 frames per second, Simple Profile with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats

Carolyn

Dennis

Less powerful than a laptop AND less portable than a smartphone. Since it runs iPhone OS I still can’t use it as a presentation tool since there is no way to output video. If I want built in cell networking I’m STILL stuck with AT&T and ANOTHER monthly bill (the argument for mobile hotspots grows and grows!).

On the plus side, Apple surprised me with the low starting price. Other than that, it’s just another tablet with all the good and bad that goes with that. Perhaps Steve will convince me when I watch the keynote but I’m not optimistic.

Bill

http://www.apple.com/ipad/#video