Will the iPad be a success?
I am not going out to buy another gadget, but Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal thinks the iPad does a bang up job of replacing a laptop for a lot of people. And it gets 11 hours of use on battery power. That’s outstanding.
I’ll tell you this, the iPad will do a good job of replacing those video players people use for their children or for airplane trips. But, without USB or multi-tasking, it’s not going to cut the grade for me.
Here are two videos of Mossberg reviewing the device. Below that is a link to his column at the Wall Street Journal as well. Also see Paul Kedrosky’s "Bloomberg Goes iPad." Enjoy.
Source
iPad Opens a New Frontier – Walter Mossberg – WSJ.com
I have a 2-year old Sony Reader (PRS 505) which I really like, but the small screen is not adequate for all of the reading I need to do. So, I want a full page-sized reader. I probably will buy a Plastic Logic Que, although it is more “pricey” than the iPad. I am do research using Google/Books as a primary source of historical texts. For the most part, they have cleaned up their OCR code so that the .epub versions of most books are “readable” (but with frequent errors). However, many of the older books are best read in full page mode (because they were printed with marginalia, lots of tables, or multiple columns which do not convert well to a single column format for the small screen Sony. Hopefully the full screen Que (or iPad) will make reading these ebooks (in .pdf format) possible.
But if I can not download the iPad from my Laptop, then the iPad is a non-starter for me, even tho it does look like it has “moved the ball” down field a bit.
I currently have about 1200 books/papers/stuff on my Sony. I would like to put all of my research on it. With the second memory slot that will hold an 8Gb memory chip, I can hold everything that I have collected on my Sony. Will have to wait to see what the iPad will allow. But it sounds like my use is not going to be supported.
I wish them luck tho .. and hope the Plastic Logic people get their product launched soon. It’s been almost two years since they demoed it in San Diego.
Yes, the iPad will be a success. My bet shortly after the announcement was 5 million units or more in 2010 alone (which was very optimistic back then).
We will see multitasking in some form in 2010 (OS 4.0), but for most people a single task is more that they can or want to handle.
I’ll buy one. I do enough things on my laptop that are rather passive (reading your blog e.g.) and all of them will move to the iPad. Better form factor, more fun.