Britain takes a bite of the poison Apple

The Apple iPad is finally here. Or rather, it isn’t. Given all the attention it has attracted over the past couple of weeks you could be forgiven for thinking this was something you could go out and buy. But no, all those reviews are simply speculation based on Steve Jobs’ presentation at the Apple media event in San Francisco on 27 January. Including, I’m sorry to say, this one.

As a designer, I find it rather wonderful that an electronic product can generate such interest. I have followed Apple launches closely for years, but I can’t remember quite this level of excitement or anticipation, even for the iPhone, the success of which has put the company under a spotlight stronger than ever. The iPad appears to have excited everyone, even those simply out to rubbish it. Of course, it is more than a console, but how much more? 

'The iPad on one hand is clearly way bigger than just a new product. This is a new category,' Jonathan Ive, Senior Vice President Design, tells us in the promo video. Not quite. This is essentially a media player-cum-browser; a category pioneered by companies such as Archos, followed by companies such as iRiver, and soon to be joined by HP (Slate pc), Sony (Dash viewer), and Dell (snappy name T.B.C). In contrast, IBM's successful Thinkpad X series has been around in one form or another since 1993. These do the sorts of things you would want to do on a laptop but enhanced through the ability to format the device as a tablet.

The giveaway here is that the iPad is branded as an Apple product rather than a Mac, and as such is more closely aligned with the growing media empire rather than the machine that revolutionised desktop publishing and graphic design. We saw Steve typing on a screen keyboard (rather carefully I thought), and we saw him tipping it this way and that, but we didn’t see any stylus input, or handwriting recognition. Jobs has previously shunned the use of a stylus in favour of what he describes as the ‘ultimate pointing device’—your finger. But I want to do more than point at and drag things, and can’t help thinking that a stylus might improve the interface for more complex tasks.

My (completely uninformed, unresearched) verdict: The iPad will be a huge success. The ability of this device to work with other Apple technologies at home will mean that people will soon be using it for all sorts of unexpected tasks. It has the potential, for starters, to really change the way that photos, music and videos are stored, managed and viewed in a way that will finally start to make sense. Of course it has lots of flaws, which have been endlessly pointed out; titchy memory with no expansion facility, no camera, usb. 

But why bother at this stage if you can make it for a decent price and capture the market. Guess what? That giant glossy black bezel will gradually disappear and turn into a screen, it will get a camera, it will get more memory, it will get better battery performance. That’s how Apple will ensure you keep buying them. My hope is that they introduce stylus input and the ability to run Mac software at some stage, so that this can be a real alternative to this laptop I have to lug everywhere.