iPad Reactions
So, Apple released a shiny new toy today: The iPad SDK. Oh, and they announced the hardware. But it doesn’t come out for 60 days. Yawn.
But in all seriousness, Apple’s new tablet is pretty neat. Is it cool enough to justify the sheer amounts of hype that it garnered before being announced? No. But I’m pretty sure Steve would have had to invite Jesus Christ himself on stage to announce Half-Life 3 for the hype to be justified. That doesn’t mean the iPad isn’t a great piece of hardware. Essentially a large iPhone with… well, not much else, the iPad is meant to bridge the gap between your phone and your computer.
“But it’s just a bigger iPhone! How is that useful? It doesn’t do anything new or special!” That’s where you have Missed The Point™, my friend. It is just a bigger iPhone, yes, but that extra screen space allows so much more. As an iPhone developer, I know that there’s only so many features you can embed before your user interface starts getting unwieldy. There’s only so much room for buttons.
I was underwhelmed by the keynote up until the point that Phil Schiller came out to demonstrate three new applications — the iWork suite for iPad. Those apps finally demonstrated to me what the true purpose of the iPad is; it’s hardware large enough for desktop-quality applications. The big draw of the iPad isn’t going to be the applications Apple includes. The big draw is that you’ll be able to have full featured apps that rival their Mac or PC apps. Throw in external keyboard support, and you have a netbook killer — a simple computer for people who don’t need more than a few small apps.
It doesn’t multitask. It doesn’t take pictures. It doesn’t have HDMI out.
…
It doesn’t need to.
