Buzz has it that it’s nothing more than a larger iPhone or iPod Touch (for brevity, from here on I’ll just refer to the iPhone), and this is both unsurprising and very limiting. An iPhone is a great supplement to a desktop or laptop. With wifi and cellular connectivity it’s great for checking email, light web surfing – anything that doesn’t require long stretches at a keyboard.
The iPad is too large to replace an iPhone. The netbook market has been moving to steadily larger screen sizes, which makes the 9.7 inch screen of the iPad questionable in its appeal. Lastly, there is no keyboard, making this essentially a small netbook without a keyboard. Worse, however, is the lack of USB ports, memory card slots, and a webcam. The lack of these things severely limits the iPad’s usability. Apple is pushing this as a web device, but it has no ability of publishing anything to the web except text. You can’t produce anything with it, as you can with an iPhone.
The original iPod and the iPhone were both incredible successes, and deservedly so, because their user interfaces were amazing well-designed for their intended functions. However, the market has shown time and again that people don’t care for larger, keyboard-less designs. There have been Windows-based tablet laptops available for years. There’s a reason they don’t sell very well – people don’t like using devices that large without a keyboard. (Please, no Mac vs PC fanboi crap.) Most people who buy a convertible tablet end up using it strictly as a laptop – read: using it with the keyboard rather than without it.
An iPad would make a perfect iTunes device. But then, so does most any netbook on the market, and they’re both less expensive than an iPad (for the most part) and full-fledged computers besides. From a hardware standpoint, the iPad is severely lacking. Great computers need more than a great UI.
My prediction: We won’t see a second-generation iPad.
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