Laptops are cool. But just a bit too delicate. If you pay all that money and store so much personal info on it, do really want to carry it all over the house or dorm and risk losing everything you don’t have backed up somewhere?
The TV is still king, but I can’t take it to the can and get my Al Bundy on (keep it real; if you need video, etc, on your phone, no way your gonna let that QT pass without checkin’ a few must see clips). And the iPhone is cool, but I don’t really want to watch or read anything on it if there’s a bigger screen around.
The iPad makes up for all that. Really, it does what the Macbook Air was supposed to. I mean, you can’t do much but view web pages, check emails, watch movies & listen to music on the Air anyway — which is why Apps are so important. The cheapest Air would cost you $1,500+. What’s the difference? A keyboard & processing power used for applications that are now, for the most part, web-based? Air has an audio out, which isn’t much different from the iPad’s headphone jack with the right peripheral, and not much more.
But, how many people bought the Air? Don’t recall seeing news clips of anyone sleeping in line for that one. Who really needed a laptop so slim, so expensive, but capable of doing so little?
Geeks like me that bought the Sega Saturn on release day (read = not enough to keep the lights on), most likely.
This is why we need the iPad. We need the net with us at all times, and we need it in a form factor that’s easy on the eyes and handled with two hands. Add geo-location & apps, and the iPad suddenly becomes much more powerful than a laptop to the majority of the consumer market.
Remember, computers are tools, like hammers & screwdrivers. But thanks to a lack of intermediary machines like the iPad many folks have been buying jackhammers & powerdrills. Now, for a couple of hundred dollars you’ll be able to do all you need.
It’s ok to leave processing power & drive space concerns to people who pay more for software suites than most HP or Dell laptops cost.
Think about ;-)
