Do you really still doubt the significance of the iPad?

There are Apple-haters and geeky critics everywhere: but the brilliance of the iPad is that the device does the talking!

Apple invited me last Friday May 28th to side-step the queues outside the Regent Street Apple Store and to collect my own iPad from them on a one-year loan. It’s all part of the PR effort of course, but Apple were in no doubt that if I didn’t like their new toy I would say so.

Of course, within minutes (seconds actually) I was hooked.

Well I’ve lived, worked and played with it for five days now, and whilst I wouldn’t claim it had changed my life yet, I would certainly stand by my prediction that the iPad is a game changer in the world of mobile technology.

For a start it’s beautiful in the way that only Apple products are in a world where virtually all other computing and comms devices are dog ugly.

And it’s not just beautiful to look at, it’s a delight to handle and to use.

I don’t need to tell any Apple fans that this device is both important and thrilling: but others seem to need some persuading.

It doesn’t have a camera say the naysayers. Correct, it doesn’t. But just how many cameras do you need? Besides which you can bet that the second gen version will have put that right. And it doesn’t support Flash. True, and mildly irritating. Ironically, my website (this site) has a lot of flash movies on the video page… so my movies don’t work (at this precise moment) on the iPad. But it isn’t, frankly, very expensive or difficult to add a player to my site which will take over on the iPad and iPhone (mine will be up and running in a few days)

Besides which to dwell on these criticisms is to miss the much bigger picture. This device (which has already sold an astonishing 2 million units in 60 days) has changed our expectations of mobile computing. In a couple of years we will look back and laugh at the size of the laptops we carried around in the noughties, just as now we laugh at beige boxes and early mobiles in films of the 80s and 90s.

The iPad isn’t a workhorse, but it was never intended to be. It’s a companion device. And it will instantly absorbed into our lives (working, social and home) in a way that has never been achieved with the laptop.

If you doubt me, there’s one simple test, try one out… I defy you not to be seduced.

Date posted: Wednesday 2nd June 2010Back to news home page >