Apple has done it again with the iPad, creating a revolutionary device that the consumer electronics market has never seen before, and will undoubtedly spend years trying to imitate.
Or they haven’t done anything really, taking an iPhone, enlarging the screen, speeding up the processor, and adding a few unique features here and there to make it seem like an original, brand new product.
Only time and consumer’s buying habits will tell, ultimately, what people really think of Apple’s new creation, when the WiFi version tablet, with starting price of $499, hits the market in late March.
The iPad can do many things, from watching movies, to word processing on a special version of Apple’s iWork, to creating slideshows and running iPhone applications.
What truly sets the iPad apart from other devices has to do with the world of newspapers and magazines.
Before the iPad had even come out, Sports Illustrated created a digital concept magazine for use on a tablet, combining text with video, creating a more interactive publication.
The New York Times has also created their own version of their magazine, specifically for use on a tablet. Many have hailed the tablet, now with the more specific name iPad, as the ultimate culmination of the print and digital media world, creating salvation for the failing industry.
“From a news standpoint, I think that this could be something that is going to help the news industry in a way that, perhaps, the iPhone wasn’t as helpful, because you can have more of a news experience on this bigger tablet,” Retha Hill, the director of the New Media Innovation lab at ASU’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, said. “It looks more like a newspaper. You can tap through sections more easily, you can pull up slideshows.”
“You can do a lot more and it might be easier for folks to manipulate than using the iPhone,” Hill said.
Is the iPad really the future of the journalism world? With a starting price running at $499 and devices running on a 3G network starting at $629, will enough people purchase the device to entice media companies to pour money into creating new ways of discovering their product on this fancy piece of hardware?
“They should have made an iPhone with an external something to hook up to a screen, and use your iPhone as a computer type thing with high resolution,” said Danny Martinez, a graphic information technology senior.
“It would pretty much be what the iPad is without it being a separate device. You could choose how big you want your device to be,” he said.
Also featured on the iPad is an application called iBooks, which is set to rival Amazon’s Kindle in the emerging world of E-Reader devices.
What sets apart the Kindle from the iPad is the Kindle’s use of e-ink technology, whereas the iPad, according the Apple’s Web site, has a “high-resolution, LED-backlit screen [that] displays everything in sharp, rich color, so it’s easy to read, even in low light.”
This may prove to be a downside, with an LED-backlit screen being much more difficult to stare at for long periods of time than e-ink, which is akin to staring at actual paper.
“Is it practical in today’s world? Does anyone want to carry around this big tablet thing, when you could just do it one your net-book or on your laptop?” said Michael Tucker, a journalism and political science senior. “Don’t get me wrong, it’s pretty cool, though.”
Reach the reporter at pmelbour@asu.edu
