• Share
  • Sharebar
  • Share

I took one day to take in the comments of friends about what they think of this device. The thing is that they have no idea why they would need such a device in their lives.

Most of the comments ranges from “its a big iphone” to “how do you bring this out?”

How you need this would not just depend on what you do on your present computer or laptop or phone but what you want to do but cannot do previously.

The measured yard stick is that they mostly think about what they can do on the computer with this iPad and not venture out of their comfort zone.

Most of my friends  own a netbook and most of what they do is

  1. MSN
  2. Surf Net
  3. Facebook

They don’t really do much other than these on their netbook. I sometimes seriously think you really don’t need a full fledge keyboard for such stuff.

The advantage of tablets like these are

  1. They are ROM based. You don’t need to boot them up and wait like netbooks
  2. You don’t need to worry about putting netbook in your lap and frying your little tadpole friends
  3. For ipad you get a bigger viewing angle then your netbook

Some would feel the netbook and ipad and tablets are limited:

  1. do you expect to do programming on the ipad on the go?
  2. do you expect to edit pictures and photoshop on your ipad?
  3. do you expect to play world of warcraft or mmorpg on your ipad?

If you are such an intense user then perhaps an iPad is not the one for you.

The beauty of this ipad concept

thats quite an unfair comment. essentially, for those that use an ipod touch before, you will know the strength of the ipod touch:

  1. Great hardware with sturdy and solid multi touch.
  2. App Store enables you to access to tons of apps (whatever you need)
  3. Great gaming device since app store have so much games
  4. Great reading device since Stanza and Kindle App enables you to assess to tons of books
  5. Great media player
  6. Good for surfing web
  7. good for checking email ( i check 90% of my mail on my ipod)
  8. no need to boot up. ready assess anytime

So what are its short comings

  1. No multi-tasking
  2. Screen size while big is not really big enough for easy web surfing
  3. working with excel is a problem on the small screen
  4. not easy to transfer stuff
  5. no consolidated storage

Essentially the iPad addresses the screen size issue while preserving the strengths of the device. I believe that fans such as me who enjoy the ipod touch or iphone user experience will enjoy the ability to do almost everything sans what i mention on the iPad.

If you never use an iPhone and iPad you would probably not know what i am talking about here. App Store + 10 inch solid hardware is going to be good.

What i don’t like about it

it is not without flaws. for one thing, no multi-tasking is a decision that Apple have made. my defence for this is that really, i don’t encounter alot of situation where i need to swtich here and there.

push notification is good enough for background notifying of internet messaging status such as stock news or friend’s beeps.

the pricing is off i feel. USD 499 equates to SGD 730 and its double what i paid for my iPod touch 8GB at SGD330. A more reasonable price is SGD 600. That will be the sweet spot.

Conclusion

At the end of the day, i feel its down to how much value one sees this product. I don’t see it as expensive at SGD 730. Its just not a value buy at that price. I value a 7 inch size improvement so much so i will pay SGD 150 more for it. Thats SGD 500. The ability to port all existing purchase games and software over will save you an alternative of at least USD 50 dollars if you opt for an Android device. so add that up and it comes close to SGD 600 dollars.

I would rather wait for a device cheaper than that or wait for 1-1.5 years for the price to drop till that range.