The iPad: What's the appeal?
Posted: Sun Jul 11, 2010 12:03 am
A thought struck me at work today; A customer was sitting at a table with both an iPad and and iPod Touch (Or possibly an iPhone, I didn't want to stare and make him uncomfortable) and it make me wonder, what's the point in the iPad? Especially if you already own an iPod Touch/iPhone. I almost asked the customer myself, but we were a bit too busy for me to be chit-chatting.
I've got nothing against Apple, they've made some fine products (Not used a lot of them, mind, they always seem to be slightly needlessly expensive) and like any other company they've done good and bad however, I just don't understand the appeal of the iPad: It just seems to me to be a giant iPod touch.
Surely what makes the iPod Touch a great device is that it does (almost) everything (as long as Apple approves of it, unless you're naughty and jailbreak it) and it fits inside your pocket, allowing you, in theory, to do anything, anywhere. So what's the appeal of taking the convenience out of it? Some people say "Oh, but it's great for if you don't want to carry a laptop around everywhere!" but, isn't that why netbooks were created? Heck, some netbooks are even lighter than the iPad! So it can't be that.
And the price! Seriously; £429 for the basic model? The laptop I'm typing on right now wasn't even that much! (Fair enough, I did get it from Aldi, but it's still a decent lappy I've never had an issue with electronics from Aldi.) So why should I pay and extra £140 to buy the most basic iPad model instead of the most advanced iPod Touch which does almost everything the iPad does? What makes the iPad special?
I've got nothing against Apple, they've made some fine products (Not used a lot of them, mind, they always seem to be slightly needlessly expensive) and like any other company they've done good and bad however, I just don't understand the appeal of the iPad: It just seems to me to be a giant iPod touch.
Surely what makes the iPod Touch a great device is that it does (almost) everything (as long as Apple approves of it, unless you're naughty and jailbreak it) and it fits inside your pocket, allowing you, in theory, to do anything, anywhere. So what's the appeal of taking the convenience out of it? Some people say "Oh, but it's great for if you don't want to carry a laptop around everywhere!" but, isn't that why netbooks were created? Heck, some netbooks are even lighter than the iPad! So it can't be that.
And the price! Seriously; £429 for the basic model? The laptop I'm typing on right now wasn't even that much! (Fair enough, I did get it from Aldi, but it's still a decent lappy I've never had an issue with electronics from Aldi.) So why should I pay and extra £140 to buy the most basic iPad model instead of the most advanced iPod Touch which does almost everything the iPad does? What makes the iPad special?