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Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last few weeks, you have heard that Apple planned a huge announcement today (1/27/10) of a revolutionary new piece of technology. Rumours have been all over the Internet about the release of an Apple tablet PC. A device that would blend the grey area between a mobile phone and a full blown PC. Tablet PCs aren’t anything new, many companies over the years have had tablet PCs that were basically fancy laptops with a stylus used for on screen input. They were clumsy, and came off more as a novelty than anything else. Would this new product from Apple be as revolutionary and mind blowing as everyone thinks?

Tech blog, Engadget was at the Apple event today and broadcast the event live. All photos are property of their website.

Right off the bat, I can’t get past the horrible name they chose for the device. iPad. There were rumors of iTablet and iSlate, which sound much better than iPad. It sounds like Apple has released a product for women only, if you catch my drift…

Apple makes it clear that they are going after the Netbook segment with this new device. Netbooks have been out for a while now, and are basically low powered small laptops that are very portable and can be used for lightweight and cloud-based (internet) applications.

However, Steve’s statements aren’t completely correct. While most netbooks are slower processors than full blown laptops, they are adequate enough to be used for web surfing and email. Which seems to be this segment they’re going after with the iPad. However, I am intrigued to see what they can do with this device.

As the demo goes on, it gets more and more clear that what we’re looking at here is a giant iPhone/iPod touch. There isn’t really anything significant here, especially when they show this little titbit of information…

It appears that the iPad suffers from the same limitation its smaller iPhone and iPod touch cousins do. The inability to display flash media!! This is a huge draw back that even those “Slow, Low quality Display” Netbooks can easily do. To its credit, the iPad does look like it has a nice and easy to use email client, iTunes store, and its own version of mobile safari.

The hardware specs are somewhat impressive, however what concerns me is Apples own propitiatory processor. Instead of going the way of the netbooks with an x86 capable processor, such as the Intel Atom or any of the Intel Core Solo/Duo series, they’ve made their own. What do I think this means? The ability to port applications from Snow Leopard to the iPad will be about as easy as porting them to the iPhone. The 10 hour battery life claim is impressive, but like all Apple products the batter doesn’t look to be removable. Heavy users aren’t able to throw a spare in their bag like they can with their laptop/netbook.

While we’re on the subject of applications, the iPad is able to run any iPhone/iPod touch application that is available today. However, it does it in a sort of “compatibility mode” to handle the difference in screen size. Not to worry though, the iPad is able to upscale the application to full screen.

This will work well for games, I guess, but for text heavy applications like Facebook its really awkward. Good luck keeping your neighbor from reading your status over your shoulder.

Another ability of the iPad is to go after products like the Kindle and the Nook, with their iBook store. I believe that the E Ink technology in the Kindle and the Nook will be easier on the eyes then using the iPad to read a novel.

Lastly, price and wireless connectivity. This was supposed to be the big Verizon announcement everyone was waiting for, and the lead in to a Verizon iPhone. Apple unholsters their pistol, takes aim, and promptly shoots themselves in the foot…

Yeah, a no contract, pay as you go, wireless plan is nice. But why further clog up the already hurting AT&T 3G network with all this new traffic. This further confirms that the iPad is just a giant iPhone, without a camera, or the ability to make/receive calls. How about pricing? Rumor was that the iPad was going to be $800 subsidised (with a wireless contract) and $1,000 unsubsidised (without). Clearly this isn’t the case, because of the pay-as-you-go nature of the AT&T plan.

Starting at $499 is decent. It puts the base model iPad close to the pricing of the popular Netbooks. I got my Dell mini9 with Ubuntu for $249. However, go get the full iPhone-like experience you will have to spend at least $649. At this point you can almost step up to a full blown MacBook and run real applications, instead of these watered down alternatives.

After all the anticipation and hype that the iPad generated for the last few weeks, I think that the newest Apple device is a bit of a disappointment. What we have is a mobile device, with many of the similar capability and limitations of the current iPhone. Features I would have expected from this device are things like a camera, multitasking, flash compatibility in the browser, with a more Snow Leopard experience than an iPhone experience. All of these things can be done with an inexpensive netbook, which have even been hacked to run OSX natively. I’m surprised that Apple wasn’t able to deliver a product that could do these things today.

UPDATE: Engadget has just posted some pictures from their hands-on. Holy crap the Facebook app is HUGE!

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