When Steve Jobs was first showing off the iPad I wanted a little more. I knew he was going to get to the end and show us something that would blow us away and make us want to start camping out for 60 days until it came out. But it never happened. I came away less than impressed based upon what I wanted it to be.
Having the chance now to step back and re-evaluate all of what the iPad is and isn’t, I see that the iPad was not meant for me. It wasn’t even meant for you. It’s meant for the person you know who is scared of computers. It’s made for my grandparents who have a Quad-Core computer with 6GB of RAM to send emails, and most of them are spam forwards. It’s made for the person who has a computer just so they can get on Facebook, send email, and browse the internet.
They don’t need shell access. They don’t need to edit videos. Heck, they don’t even need to manipulate the photos they get because Flickr does this for them.
This is also for the person that are scared of a full blown iMac. They don’t know OSX and heard that it is very different from the Windows PC they know. This helps bridge the gap. Although this was looked at as the middle pillar for Apple between the iPhone and the iMac, this could be the entry “computer” that people need in order to make the next step. Apple says, “Oh, you like how easy the iPad makes things? Do you know it is running the same operating system as the iPhone?” Or they might say, “You say you like what the iPad does, but you need to edit videos? The iMac is just as easy to get up and running.”
This is just the first generation iPad. When has any Apple product done everything you wanted it to on the first iteration? Yeah, I can’t think of one either. It’s easier to accept the iPad as what it is if you remember that the iPad is not for you. It’s for the person you know that uses a computer for email and web surfing.
