Tag Archives | Tablets

The iPad reviews continue to roll in, and while most are extremely favorable–here are Engadget and Macworld–there are certainly voices of dissent out there. Dave Winer agrees with Cory Doctorow that it’s a toy. And Paul Thurrott, disappointed by the non-widescreen design, lack of cameras, and weight of the thing, says that folks who think the iPad is a game-changer are tools.

Is the iPad a game changer? It looks that way to me. But I already know that products don’t have to be perfect to be landmarks. The original Mac, for instance, was so short on RAM that it was barely usable for everyday tasks. The first iPhone was a 2G phone that arrived when there were plenty of good 3G phones out there. But does anyone out there want to make the case that they weren’t game-changers?

In both cases, the products’ deficiencies didn’t matter, because the things that were right–especially the software–were brilliantly right. And within a year or so, Apple followed up with upgraded versions that fixed the biggest issues.

Would a widescreen iPad with two cameras and less heft be more appealing than the machine Apple released on Saturday? You betcha. Will there be tablets from other companies with wider screens, cameras, and weight? Sure–but it’s rare that any product becomes a breakthrough via impressive specs alone.

Before Saturday, when people asked me how important the iPad was going to be, I told them to judge it not by the sum of the device that Apple released this week. iPad is a platform, and platforms are processes–so if you’re trying to figure out if iPad is a big deal, envision the one that Apple will release a year from now. Then decide.

Apple said Monday that it had sold over 300,000 iPads on Saturday, which could be taken as a good sign of the device’s potential success. One big wildcard here–these sales also include not only pre-orders for the Wi-Fi-only iPad but also deliveries to the company’s retail partners as well. In other words, not every one of those 300,000 iPads may be in the hands of a consumer yet. On the other hand, the figure doesn’t include pre-orders for the 3G iPad which is due out late this month.

Apple’s new book store did well too, with a quarter million books downloaded on Saturday, and CEO Steve Jobs said in a statement that new iPad owners were downloading an average of about one book and three applications within hours of unpacking the device. All in all, iPad’s launch numbers were very similar to the launch of the initial iPhone.

Some analysts had gone way overboard in their predictions, with Piper Jaffray’s Gene Munster being the most overly aggressive with projected sales of 650,000+ in the first 24 hours. Much of this probably had to do with the overwhelming hype surrounding the device, which arguably was unwarranted in most cases. Lines for the iPad, as described by our own Harry McCracken, were in most cases much smaller than that for the first iPhone.

The real test for the viability of this device remains in these weeks following the launch. Will the device continue to sell after the initial flurry of activity? Will we see another spike in purchasing when the WiFi+3G model releases late this month? It’s hard to say. Price will likely play a large part in how this does, and the company has not been shy to say publicly it will tweak prices to meet its sales goals.

The answer will come when we get a better look at the demographics of its buyers. If its just the techie/Apple faithful/Gotta-have-it crowd, the iPad could be Apple’s next Cube. However, if Ma and Pa begin snagging their own iPads, then we know Apple’s onto something.

As much as I can’t wait to get one myself, I’m still undecided here on how I think it will do. It’s a big gamble for Apple, one I’m sure they’ll hope will pay off.

In the end, you have to try it for yourself. The world is full of people who formed fierce opinions about the iPad not only before they’d used one but before they knew anything for sure about it. But this gizmo is something new. And if you think you can come to any conclusions about it by thinking of it as either a giant iPhone or a netbook with the keyboard chopped off, you’re wrong.

I woke up at 5am on Saturday, drove to my neighborhood Apple Store, and ended up near the front of the queue of first-day iPad buyers. I was out the door with a unit in hand at 9:15am, and spent the rest of Saturday (and Sunday morning) with it in hand, exploring the built-in apps, downloading a gaggle of third-party ones, and generally trying to form more definitive impressions than I was able to get during my brief hands-on time with an iPad at January’s launch event.

This isn’t a comprehensive review–I’m not going to bemoan the lack of Flash, multitasking, and a camera, or repeat any impressions that you can come to without spending time by yourself with an iPad. I’m just going to tell you eleven significant things I know about the thing that I didn’t know–at least for sure–on Friday night.

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Greetings from the outside of the Stonestown Mall in San Francisco, where it’s cold, dark, and desolate–and I’m the fourth person (and third adult) in line to buy an iPad. I got here at 5:30am, about 90 minutes after the first gent in line. And there’s some very sophisticated discussion of iPads, iPhones, and iMacs going on ahead of me.

The Apple Store folks, who have showed up late in the game when I’ve been here to buy iPhones, are already here. They just set up a velvet rope line for us to wait behind–hey, we’re an unruly bunch, and there are so many people here at 6:20am for reasons other than to buy iPads–and have supplied us with free water.

Other than that, not much is going on here. If anything newsworthy happens, I’ll report back, either here or on Twitter. See you later today with more iPad stuff.

I’ve enjoyed reading the early iPad reviews, but much of what they have to say–pro and con–simply recaps things we already knew about the gizmo. Tomorrow morning, Apple Store willing, I’ll have an iPad of my own. And I’m going to do my darndest to spend relatively little time repeating stuff you already know. (This may be a wild rumor, but I’ve heard it may not support Flash!)

Got any questions about it that you haven’t seen answered by anyone just yet? Lemme know–and I’ll do my darndest to answer them as soon as I can…

Two smart people have written stirring pieces arguing against buying an iPad. And the fascinating thing is, the two arguments have almost nothing in common.

Over at Fast Company, Gina Trapani says you shouldn’t buy an iPad because they’re too pricey and aren’t fully baked yet. Hold off until they go more completely mainstream, she advises.

Meanwhile, Boing Boing’s Cory Doctorow thinks you shouldn’t buy an iPad because they’re already too bland and commercial: He wants an iPad you can crack open and hack, and one without any DRM and the App Store’s limitations on what you can install on the gizmo.

And me? Well, I agree with points in both pieces without buying either argument. Like Trapani, I think lots of intelligent folks won’t even consider buying an iPad until the second-generation version comes along. (I said so in a piece I wrote for FoxNews.com, and have never regretted holding off on the iPhone until the 3G model arrived.) And like Doctorow, I’m unhappy with both the idea of Apple being the only distributor of iPhone/iPad software and many, many things about how it’s performed in that role.

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