To IPad or Not to IPad?

There has been a constant buzz since the official iPad announcement, and even through the rumor mill preceding it, the tech world has been debating the usefulness of a slate/pad device. If you look at the current battles the lines have been drawn and, as often is the case with the Apple fanatics, defense to the death is often the order of the day.

Don't get me wrong. I have one foot in the Jobs camp and another in the Shiller/Gates world. I have both Mac and PC and I use both regularly. My preference lies with my Macbook Pro and we are a two iPhone household. Plenty Kool-Aid has been consumed but the Steve Jobs distortion field has only a moderate effect on me. I can still admire the product without dreaming of unicorns and rainbows or, as Steve Jobs put it himself, the "magical" iPad. That's laying it on a bit thick.

Enough of that, let's move on to the realities of the iPad. The iPad is not the magical desktop (or laptop) replacement that some think it will be. It amazes me to see discussions about how one person or another will sell their laptop and go solely with the iPad. That's insanity. The iPad is not now nor was it ever meant to be a standalone computing device.

The iPad is a media consumption device. It's a computer augmentation device. It's a convenience device. This week Steve Jobs and the crowd at Apple are desperately working out media content deals. They've set newspaper and book media aside for the moment and are working hard on video deals. Apple is not about flowers and rainbows. Apple is about profit and they're working on the best way they can to get more money out of you. Televisions shows, movies, books, magazines, newspapers and textbooks; Apple wants to be your media hub in a nine and a half inch tall device.

Apple plans to port the iWork software to the iPad and Microsoft has hinted (but not confirmed) that they will port Microsoft Office to the iPad as well. That adds honest work to the list of iPad uses but a desktop or notebook replacement? No. How will you print out our word processing documents. Without another computer to tether how will you get other files without being limited to email, iDisk or DropBox. The architecture of doing business would have to bend to the iPad rather than the other way around. Getting a 500MB video file onto the iPad without attaching to a computer would be tedious.

Companies such as Logmein will surely update their iPhone application for iPad use. This finally makes functional remote desktop use a reality. This appeals to me. I use Logmein frequently but the practicality of the iPhone app is absurd. It's tiny and frustrating. Having a real screen size makes it usable. You can have your high speed, high capacity desktop right there in your iPad wherever you have a decent wi-fi or 3G data connection.

On the lighter side, the iPad will likely make an outstanding portable media device with decent battery life. We have yet to see if the battery manages to achieve its 10 hour promise. I'm rather skeptical on this. Battery life promises were made with the iPhone and then came the conditions. Decent battery life could be achieved if you turned off 3G and wi-fi and Bluetooth and the GPS. Oh yes, don't play video too much because that eats through the battery as well. I expect the realities of high depletion activities will set in and the 10 hour number will become conditional too. We'll have to wait until April 3^rd for that and even later to see how the 3G model fairs.

In defense of Steve Jobs, he is a visionary. He has made Apple a lot of money but, during his most recent tenure, he has also changed the media and computing world. The iPod revolutionized portable music. The MP3 player existed but the iPod made it better. Then came new ways to compute and view video in a cross-platform way (albeit in Steve Jobs' playground) with the iPhone and iPod Touch. The iPad will bring a new experience to media.

A myriad of new developers have entered the Apple Development Program intending on making an entirely new experience. Of course, they have to do it by Steve Jobs' rules and they can't color outside of the lines. Large screen size and new abilities in the device will permit users to have applications not yet seen. You will see a transformation of the miniature iPhone toyish applications to a real computing platform experience.

At this point there is an estimated 150,000 pre-orders across the wi-fi and 3G models. That is a huge number of people willing to bet the experience will be revolutionary for a device only a handful of tech journalists were permitted to handle for a few minutes in a monitored environment. I took that bet and ordered a 3G model for myself. I'll be one of those people who has to wait until "late April" before I have my own experience.

I have a concern about Apple's deteriorating relationship with Google. The last couple of months have seen some pretty rough language fired back and forth between the bosses. Much of the iPhone goodness comes from its relationship with Google. I'd hate to see the partnership fall apart,Detractors have challenged the iPad as a "first generation device." Apple hasn't had a great track record with first time efforts but I think this is a bit different. It's not as if the iPad is a new, from-scratch device of the likes the world has never seen. There's a reason it looks like an oversized iPod touch. This is the next generation of hardware development of the Touch and iPhone lines. It's a natural extension not a new device. It's an answer to the long time complaint of the iPhone,..."I wish the screen was bigger." We have been given that and more. Let's hope all of the puzzle pieces come together to make it the promised "magical" device.