iPad: Over-hyped or Underestimated?

“Magical and revolutionary.” Perhaps a bit overstated and a wee bit premature, but give Steve Jobs credit, the man knows how to launch a product.

In case you forgot to exist on Wednesday, you’ve probably heard that Apple has announced the launch of the – unfortunately named, in my humble opinion – iPad. A sleek 9.7”, 1.5 lb tablet, this little beauty holds the hopes and dreams of many an Apple investor in 2010. But, is it really worth all the fuss?

Yes.

It’s the Jan of Apple’s bunch, and say what you will, middle children do have their place. When you want more speed, power and size than an iPhone can provide, but don’t necessarily want to tote your heavy 15” Macbook Pro from meeting to meeting, the iPad is your man (well, gadget).

No.

Spoiler alert! It’s not perfect. The infinitely long list of wishes by Apple’s many fanboys and fangirls find many left unchecked. No multitasking, no Flash, too many adapter cables required, no camera. The first-generation iPad is incomplete for sure.

A bit of the good:

  • It runs iPhone apps. This is, of course, more interesting to iPhone owners who, for example, have 11 screens worth of apps on their 3GS and don’t want to pay for them again. It also has the potential to inspire a whole new development industry for iPad-designed apps.
  • $10 iWork apps. Pages, Numbers and Keynote (the Word, Excel and PowerPoint equivalents for Mac) can run right from iPad, very inexpensively. You can take notes, build a spreadsheet and run a presentation without lugging in your heavier laptop, and look darn good doing it.
  • It’s fast. Word is the Apple A4 chip is smoking speedy, bidding farewell to the lag of traditional (including the iPhone) smart phone devices.
  • Prices start at $499 (16gb with WiFi). This is half of the rumored $1000 price tag we all thought it’d be. Depending on storage and whether you want 3G capabilities, the price steps up accordingly, topping out at $829 for 64gb with WiFi and 3G.
  • Opportunities. For organizations, businesses, publishers, and designers, the iPad takes the potential strated by the iPhone app to a bigger scale – literally. The possibilities for creating communications tools in app form are exciting and endless.

And some of the not-so-good:

  • Multitasking: Seriously, Apple? You want to take on and destroy the army of netbooks, you have to include multitasking. For those who may not be familiar with the annoying one-app-only capabilities of the iPhone operating system, this means no listening to iTunes or Pandora while surfing the web. One thing at a time, such a quaint, and inexplicable, concept.
  • Still no Flash. Again, you can’t take on netbooks without offering the most basic features users expect. Without Flash, you’ve removed important functionality from countless websites and denied users the ability to stream videos and television programming. Not cool.
  • 3G unlimited plans will cost you $30 per month…at AT&T. Only at AT&T (US). Even the lack of a contract requirement and an unlocked product doesn’t make Apple’s decision to keep AT&T as the sole service provider easier to swallow.
  • No camera. Not in the front, not in the back, no video, no still photography. Nada. All my dreams of having face-to-face staff meetings over Skype while sipping a latte at a Starbucks while the rest of the team looks on enviously from the office have been dashed.
  • Too much pressure. The publishing and news industries are already looking to the iPad as their potential savior. Mac lovers had dreams of magical technology fairies dancing in their heads before the gadget was even announced. I’m sure there were even some that hoped the iPad would end the recession, create millions of new jobs, stop world hunger, and fix the environment. Alas, it will not be able to do any of these things…yet.

Having personally experienced every single generation of the iPhone, I’m more than familiar with the room-for-improvement release of a new Apple product and the subsequent decision-making confusion – buy now, wait for the next generation, find an alternative, or stick with what you have. But let’s be honest, where’s the fun in waiting to see if something better comes along? Life is short and technology will change; so just keep reminding yourself, there is always hope in the next software update.

For better or worse, we at 3fold are looking forward to the iPad’s release (which you know if you followed us on Twitter on Apple event day). While it may not be all we hoped and dreamed for, you can be sure we’re still going to be clamoring to play with it…er, use it for important business things.

Want to know a bit more: Check out Mashable’s Apple iPad: A Comprehensive Guide.

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