What the iPad really is

[David Randolph]

While we may look at the iPad as a portable computer or a large cell phone, the reality is different. To understand the iPad, you need to know that Steve Jobs has more of his personal wealth tied up in traditional media companies than in Apple stock.

The iPad is a device to help consumers purchase media provided by large corporations.

That is also where the other devices are going: allow consumers to purchase media. Games are media, not software. That means that in the Apple line, the software market is not significant and never will be.

I just read a "Business Insider" column mentioning that many of the Fortune 100 companies are buying iPads for evaluation. That is a non-issue. In my experience, those companies buy tons of devices for "testing" that they never put into production. There will be a number of niche companies that will use them.

If you want to have a business selling mobile software, don't focus on a specific mobile device. Instead, build a network of people who can write such software and sell to businesses that think that they can use the devices in their network. Almost nobody will be able to make a business on just one platform (until such time as a consensus emerges as to a "business platform").

[The Original Henry]

The iPad is a device to help consumers purchase media provided by large corporations.

If that's true then it's doomed to failure. Media is just an abstract form of information, and the trend is moving away from centralized information outlets, especially ones that charge a fee.

I recently spoke with someone who had an iPad and he gave me a tour. It was a really impressive device and was a lot of fun to play with, but when it came down to nuts and bolts neither one of us could come up with a legitimate use for it. The best we could think of was doctors could use it as an interface tool to their central record systems when they're working with patients, or insurance adjusters when they're out in the field. The price of the iPad is way too high to justify the minor mobility gain over a regular old laptop, though.

[Carrie Cobol]

I started using mine as a "productivity tool" for my adoption group work.  I downloaded a todo list app, a calculator app, and it comes with a decent calendar and notepad.  I also downloaded a mini-spreadsheet which as it turns out is unusable because I can't figure out how to enter text into the cells (like for labels and column headers).  I'll have to get another one, I guess.  So far it's working very well.  I can swap between the apps quickly and type easily with the onscreen keyboard. It's a fair device for note taking because it's not as heavy as a laptop and you never have to wait for bootup.

There are also a few games on it, of course.  And the iPod app, ibook and the kindle bookreader, youtube app, etc. Seems a fair mixture of toys and productive applications to me.

[Richardk]

To understand the iPad, you need to know that Steve Jobs has more of his personal wealth tied up in traditional media companies than in Apple stock.

I thought someone stated that Apple makes more money from it's media sales than it does with it's computers. I don't know if that included all their 'toys' or strictly computers but not the ipad, ipod, iphone. Did I miss any i's?

That makes a lot of sense from a strategy point of view. People really want the media and all of Apple's i's are simply a delivery mechanism, churning out new versions every year.

It's interesting that people want the newest Apple thing while Windows remains a workhorse that just keeps going and Microsoft is shoving people off of Windows XP and trying to get them to move on. I guess different markets, different people.

[codger]

I use an iMac. I never thought about it. I assumed that the "i" related to the Intel processor it uses.

[Carrie Cobol]

I could be misremembering, but wasn't the first imac on the motorola chip and got changed to Intel later? 

I have an iMac too, but am required to use Windows for work.  My mac has always been faster and more reliable than any windows machine.  You pay a little more for the Apple hardware, but in my experience it's worth it.  I'll go through several Windows machines in the lifespan of one Apple machine.

I'm not really religious about it, though.  I use both pretty equally.  And just recently installed Windows XP on my iMac with BootCamp so I could run Quickbooks for my adoption group.  There were business reasons to do it that way, and I had no problem doing it.  (Although I did have a little cringe the first time I saw the low-res Windows logo come up on my sparkling high res Mac screen.  lol )

Ugh, I'm off topic as usual.  I think Apple and Microsoft are both competing to be media companies, but Apple does it better.  So far.

[Carrie Cobol]

Okay, I stumbled upon a problem with my iPad today, googled it and found that it happens fairly frequently.  Given that it's a fairly new device, Apple had better fix this!

I used my pad this morning over breakfast.  Didn't spill anything on it, and didn't drop or bang it.  Turned it off nicely when I was done.  Then at lunch tried to turn it on, and...  nothing.  Apparently they sometimes die and have to be hard-booted.  When I booted mine, the battery display came up showing 48% which was about where I thought I'd left it.  So it's not a dead battery, but seems to be some sort of odd power problem.  Annoying.  I'll have to keep a closer eye on it.

[ArnoldW2]

RichardK wrote:
....ipad, ipod, iphone. Did I miss any i's?


Codger wrote:
I use an iMac. I never thought about it. I assumed that the "i" related to the Intel processor it uses.

In 1998, when the first iMac was introduced, Steve Jobs declared the 'i' in iMac to stand for "internet", and for "individual".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imac


Macs didn't get intel processors until 2006.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple–Intel_transition


As we all know, Apple has kept the "i" in the front of many of its product names since then.

A few other companies followed that trend, sometimes in stupid ways.  One product, called the "iGasm", was a toy for women.  The ads for it copied the look and feel of Apple's ads, featuring a silhouette of a woman and white wires.  Unlike the iPod ads, the wires didn't go anywhere near her ears.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-9722136-1.html

I also listened to a talk given by an author of a biography on Steve Jobs.  The author said that an idiot in the publisher's marketing department had the "bright" idea of changing the book's title from "Icon" to "iCon".

Have a look at the book's cover to see how bad that choice was.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICon:_Steve_Jobs

[unix]

My major complaint with these new devices is low battery life. I have a smart phone with an abysmal life.

I want a tiny laptop.  I like the idea of a lid you can close and the angle between keyboard and screen, with a long battery life.

Know nothing about IPad and what problem it would solve for me.

[The Gorn]

Have a look at the book's cover to see how bad that choice was.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICon:_Steve_Jobs

"I Con". God, that's bad. Or good, depending upon how one leans.