E-mail debate: iPad

Last week, Apple unveiled their newest gadget that will help them eventually take over the world, or at least fight Google for control of our minds: the iPad. Introductory analysis has been mixed, so we asked Kaleb Havens (pro) and Chad Quandt (con) to discuss their positions on the matter.

You’re sitting in lecture, and your Professor is flying through quotes in an article you were supposed to have printed out before coming to class. You justify your laziness with platitudes about saving the environment and try to keep up as your classmates flip pages, highlight and scribble while you text search in Adobe Acrobat, your keys clicking noticeably, only to discover that this is one of those lurching, inbred products of multiple-generation off-center copy jobs littering academia; no ‘Find’ command in the world could help you.

You scroll a little... a little more... too far! You jumped to the next page. Now go back and find your place while the discussion has moved on to the next article. Your computer beeps loudly to warn that it’ll be crapping out on you in a few minutes because you couldn’t land a seat next to an outlet.

Reading stuff on bright computer screens sucks. The iPad doesn’t change how our eyes work, and it doesn’t beat a laptop or an iPhone in most situations, especially for a lot of us who already have both. But it’s not competing with those devices. The iPad is an answer to two devices, the Netbook and the Kindle, and I think a capable and definitive one.

Offering 3G capability in an interface that, yes, could be accurately described as a giant iPhone or iPod touch, the iPad weds an intuitive web browsing experience with eons of battery life at half the price of a laptop with comparable specs. When you think about customers who have been attracted to the slimmed down specifications of Netbooks, the iPad puts up a strong fight.

For $14.99 a month you can do all the web browsing that customers in the Netbook demographic would want, for a fraction of the cost of a high speed landline. And who can deny that Apple, number one in touch interfaces, has outdone the Kindle with the slim, capable, affordable iPad. The cheapest version costs a hundred dollars more than the Kindle did when released two years ago, and only slightly more than popular netbooks on the market now.

I agree with Jerry Holkins’s assessment on the Penny Arcade blog; yes, the iPad reveal was the least impressive moment Jobs has ever had on the Apple stage. Because we’re comparing it to devices that have invariably revolutionized much larger industries. The iPad has a smaller niche, and I think we’ll see that fills it well.

–Kaleb Havens


It might have helped if the “leaked” Apple press before the presentation didn’t seem to feed the desires for a new Apple tablet. This is the dangers of the internet hype machine.

Most of the benefits of the iPad are already met with their other machines - though not as optimized as you’ve referred to with the iPad’s interface. The device seems best suited in the category with the MacBook Air: an add-on to a user’s electronic tools. No one will have just an iPad. Whereas the iPhone can work as an excellent phone for any user who has a computer, the iPad’s function and design is going to be hindered by this dependence.

I was really looking forward to a standalone tablet to give a real competition to products like Wacom (especially considering Apple’s history as being the go-to computer for artists) and something that could work easily in the classroom and business meetings like the EEPC.

I’ve accepted that Apple designed something for mainstream consumers and not the computer geeks that represent their old user-base, much like Nintendo did with the Wii. I’ve moved on. Someday they will. But looking at the iPad with this in mind, it's still not enough largely due to Apple’s restrictions.

I’d love to curl up on a couch and surf the web with the iPad, but without Flash support I can already think of many sites that won’t be usable. It has become a vital tool to browse the internet, and Adobe seems to be surprised as we are that they’re not on the iPhone or iPad. Without it, sites like Hulu are unusable on the device, and perhaps that's intentional to drive sales to iTunes.

$14.99 does not cover much at all for data usage. I’ve hit that mark easily on my iPhone with casual browsing. If I’m going to need to stay in familiar areas to use free Wifi, my main computer is likely to be around.

–Chad Quandt

I’m not convinced the iPad is dependent on anything; the vast majority of the millions of Netbook users are satisfied with less capable devices that aren’t supplemented by conventional laptops or desktops, as we can see in the market shift towards lower end, more affordable devices. For the functions it cannot perform, Apple has proven with the iPod and iPhone that synchronization of applications across multiple hardware platforms is much easier than it sounds. But again, high performance is not the primary concern for customers in the iPad’s target demographic.

Similarly, in reference to the 250mb/month limit at the $14.99 price, the Netbook market has much lower data needs than an average college student. I’m not surprised that you ate through that amount in no time, but Netbook users are less likely to be high data consumers; otherwise they would have been using laptops and desktops to access the web over a decade ago.

I’ll admit that lack of Flash support is a gaping wound in iPad software, but that’s what updates are for. When the ASUS Eee PC first came out in October of 2007, it didn’t support flash browsing either, an oversight that wasn’t corrected until over a year later in November of 2008.

As for limiting Flash in favor of iTunes sales, I think the larger observation in the iPad’s release is Apple trying to make iTunes more accessible to the Netbook market. In trying to reach a market yet to be saturated by online media, Apple is closing in on a demographic that, unlike the vast majority of its customers, may never have illegally downloaded a song or movie in their life. I think Jobs is reaching for a group of consumers who may be the last law-abiding citizens online.

The iPad isn’t trying to replace your laptop, but that’s not to say that for many it wouldn’t be up to the task.

–Kaleb Havens

If the iPad is for mainstream consumers, for people who are somehow going to use it without main computers, it's going to encounter problems.

Even with an optimistic view, the iPad is going to require programs and applications that we haven’t even heard of yet. It seems like wishful thinking. It’s dating the fat girl in middle school in the hopes she loses the weight and becomes a babe by high school.

After watching the iPhone’s struggle by its user-base to meet its users wants, I’ll be waiting for the iPad 3.0 or 4.0 before I even consider dropping money on it.

I don’t think Flash is going to come along with just a regular update. The iPhone has been lacking it since its inception and that was a few years ago.

The iPad isn’t really a netbook, and we shouldn’t really compare it to such. It’s main competition is the Kindle: a device for viewing preloaded data through an intermediary like Amazon. This isn’t about obeying the law as there are many other legal ways to view media. Mp3s are rather transferable from service to service, but movies and television are going to have to conform to Apple’s strict guidelines.

Because Apple requires movies and television to be in specific file formats, many will have to use the Apple store and purchase new copies of their titles. There is no DVD drive for you to put in your favorite title. I know how to use handbrake to rip my DVDs into the specific iTunes codec, but mainstream consumers (what this device seems to be designed for) are going to have no idea.

This would be akin to Apple saying “you can’t access Gmail on the iPad. It must be through your MobileMe (are they still doing that?) and your .mac e-mail accounts.”

–Chad Quandt

That’s a fair point; Adobe and Apple might be having turf issues across platforms. If we don’t see a Flash patch in six months, you can bet I’ll never own an iPad either.

The Sydney Morning Herald, among many others, are already making the comparison whether they think the iPad is a better product or not. Steve Jobs made the comparison in his keynote before the iPad had even been revealed. I think it’s safe to say the iPad is competing with the Netbook as well as the Kindle, and featuring improved capabilities over both I think we’ll see customers opting for a synthesized product over piecemeal gadgetry.

Neither Walmart nor Best Buy, the other two largest online retailers of digital media, command the sort of market share belonging to iTunes. In a world where 95% of music downloads online are illegal, I can understand if not directly sympathize with Apple’s restrictions of media playability. This is a question of copyright in the digital age. Speaking of which;

Rather than a shortcoming, the lack of drive might reflect an eventuality that industry executives are already planning for, stating that Blu-rays are more like ‘training wheels’ for an age of digital media downloads. Yes, you may have to repurchase your favorite titles; just like you had to when VHS went to DVD. But also like that media changeover, you’re getting higher quality from your media in the form of HD.

Copyright protection is, however, intrinsically linked to this business model, and it’s never been easier to illegally distribute media than it is today. So we see what we’ve always seen; increased security that limits a user’s freedom to do with their media what they wish in an effort to protect media producers. The iPad has plenty of restrictions on purchased media, but they’re no different than the ones that didn’t stop consumers from purchasing over 200 million TV episodes, nor did it prevent the triumph in 2008 of iTunes content over Blu-Ray and HD-DVD movie sales.

Again, while not the best device for everyone or the one many expected it to be, the iPad is a better device than its competitors; maybe not by the vast margins we were expecting, but that might say more about us than Apple.

--Kaleb Havens

So that’s it. Your thoughts on the iPad?