Nik Rawlinson
After all the hype the iPad is here, but is it really a new class of device?
The iPad is great, but it was set up to fail. The media hype that preceded its announcement was so great that no product, whatever it was and whatever it did, could ever hope to live up to it. There was talk of an HDTV tuner and even solar panels, which was so outlandishly unlikely in a handheld device with today’s technology that they should have been discounted out of hand. But they were not.
Why? Because Apple is now the world’s pre-eminent technology company. Once it was Sony that wowed us with the most desirable, most innovative products (MiniDisc, anyone). Then it was Microsoft (for some) with the rise and rise of Windows. Today it’s Apple, and that’s a heavy burden.
That’s why the iPad is better, even, than we suspect. The Apple brand has attained celebrity status. General interest consumer papers have realised that splashing that iconic logo on their mastheads shifts copies, and when we’ve eaten our fill of hype and speculation, it’s time to tear it all down. Rubbish the product for only doing half of what we want: it’s too big, the ePub format might include DRM, why is it still tied to the App Store?
That these criticisms, such as they were, were so mild and predictable is testament to the iPad’s genius. That most were cast by hacks who had not even touched the device, felt its heft and swiped their fingers across its multitouch screen, does much to confirm, not refute, its brilliance.
Whether the iPad is truly a new class of device, as Jobs claims, remains to be seen, but even without having lived with one myself, I can see where it would fit in the home. You’re watching TV and recognise an actor, but can’t say where from: pick up your iPad and check out IMDB. You’re in bed, iBooking, and remember a job you’d forgotten to do: switch apps and tap out a note to pick up at work tomorrow. You’re in the garden, digging your vegetables and want to know what you should make with your sprouts: grab your iPad and click on to Delia.
The iPad won’t, I don’t think, replace the iPhone. Neither will it replace the MacBook. We won’t see them by the thousand on trains and buses as we do the iPhone, but we will see them in peoples’ homes. The iPad, to me, is a reference device, a modern day Library of Alexandria, giving instant, fingertip access to anything I could possibly want to know, more conveniently than an iPhone and quicker than a MacBook.
In that sense, then, Jobs is right: it is a new class of device, and one that deserves to thrive.
