Apple’s New iPod… I Mean iPad

By: Michael Hunter (Contributing Writer)

I know pretty much any site you log onto today, is talking about it but the long waited iPod… oops I mean iPad was announced today and I want express my feelings about it. I myself have mixed feelings about this device and I’ll tell you why in a bit. The iPad comes in 3 different sizes, 16GB, 32GB, and 64GB and the specs are as follows: 1Ghz Apple A4 chip, 0.5 inches thin, 1.5 pounds, full capacitive multi-touch 9.7 inch IPS display, Wi-Fi 802.11. The listed battery life is amazing sitting at 10 hours of usage time with over a month of standby time. iPad will run the same OS as the Apple iPhone, which at the moment is OS 3.2 and comes in two different flavors, a 3G version running on the At&t network and a Wi-Fi only version with no cellular data. All iPad versions come preloaded with Apple’s App Store and are backwards compatible, meaning they can run all of the available apps. For now all of the available apps will run in the same screen resolution to as the iPod Touch and iPhone (which looks rather silly) or you have the option to double the pixels and make it full screen. Screen resolution when running older apps won’t be an issue for long though since OS 4.0 SDK was released yesterday, allowing developers to make their apps more iPad friendly.

With pricing starting at $499 the iPad is slated to ship in 60 days and the iPad 3G in 90. Another notable feat is that all of the 3G versions of the iPad come GSM unlocked. When Steve Jobs announced that it was unlocked I was thinking “Hmm, so I can use my T-Mobile SIM card with it?” Boy was I wrong (for now at least), even though they come unlocked, as of right now there are no other networks that are compatible with it due to a change of SIM card technology. The iPad doesn’t use your every day GSM SIM card, it uses a new micro SIM. Nothing against At&t but isn’t their network already having issues from the amount of data the iPhone eats up? Other than the listed specs what we pretty much have here is an iPod Touch and nothing you can say will make me think otherwise. Don’t get me wrong, Apple’s technology is pretty innovative and groundbreaking but I don’t see where all the hype comes from.

Will people buy it? Of course they will! Will I buy it? No, and I’ll tell you why. There are a few reasons as to why I have mixed feelings about the iPad (besides the fact that it looks like a computer monitor) beginning with the inability to multitask, I understand that Apple wants their devices to run snappy and lag free but what is wrong with a little multitasking? The next issue I have with it is (and this is a Big one) the lack of Flash support in the web browser, how can you label this as the “Best browsing experience ever, better than browsing on a Smartphone and a laptop”? Really, this can’t even be possible without support for Flash or Silverlight. I would love to be able to use it to do my school work on the go but my school site is very flash heavy.

Having used Apple products on multiple occasions in the past I would love to try it out because though it may have its setbacks (at least in my eyes) I’m sure it is a great device and I’m a sucker for technology. Well there you have it, my thoughts on Apple’s iPad. Now enough about what I think, I would like to open the discussion to hear more about what you think about Apple’s “Revolutionary” device. Sound off in the comments section below.

(via: Apple)