A little while ago, I wrote a rather scathing (also slightly incorrect) article on the iPad just after it had been announced. A few months later (and still no sign of it coming to Australia as of yet), I’ve had a bit of time to think about it.
And I’m thinking… I definitely want to buy one.
When the iPad was announced, there were two things I was upset about. The first was its silly name. Tampon cracks aside, it’s still too close to iPod. And the second was the fact that instead of us getting a minified MacBook, we’re instead getting a magnified iPhone (Well… iPod Touch). This stang the most since when I originally envisioned a tablet by Apple, I was expecting something I could easily whip out anywhere, and do complex things like web development or programming easily (Although, that may not be impossible 😉 ). One last thing was the lack of USB ports… making any kind of peripheral integration (excluding Bluetooth) totally impossible.
Either way, the more I think about it, an expanded iPhone seems to make sense. At a current technology level, I don’t think it’s actually possible for Apple to make a tablet PC of these dimensions, that can successfully run Mac OSX (Or at least, not without being extremely pricey), as well as integrate touch technology at the same time. For a device like this, the multi-touch features of iPhone OS just make total sense. It also makes sense in the fact that for a mobile device of this kind, a full OS like MacOS would take way too long to load, ultimately degrading the experience. So on reflection, hoping for MacOS on a tablet like this is a bit far-fetched to say the least. XD
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