Friday, January 29, 2010

What future holds for iPad

Name
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Yes, Name sucks. May be because they have iPod, they wanted to rhyme it too closely with it. Steve Jobs must have written some poems using "iPod" and "iPad" words and iSlate, iNote, iTablet, iLet words did not rhyme. People are making fun of word 'iPad' because of similar feminine health product name. But if they had kept name iSlate, there would have been obscene jokes about that too.

Features
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Yes, its just another iPhone with bigger screen. It sits between iPod Touch and iPhone in a way that it does not offer calling via wireless network but supports 3G.

Those who did not like it say
> It does not have camera
> It has got too big bezel
> Its aspect ratio is not 16x9
> It does not support Flash
> No parallel apps

Those who like it say
> Its not for video chat, you can use laptop for that
> you can hold it without touching something by mistake
> you got 4x3 the standard tv ratio before new hdtvs
> flash is not secure and hogs the cpu
> hiya...hiya...

Look at it this way
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A small iPhone has created an IT market that never existed before. Development for blackberry or WindowsMobile wasn't that great. iPhone really attracted the consumers and the developers that what they can do with the mobile computing.

Now, if Apple makes a bigger size iPhone then its neither magical nor even ground-breaking invention. They just had to do what they did ealier, with a big size screen and rest is imaginable. So, what people can be disappointed with is, its not a 'new' device. Just same but big size.

But the potential for iPad still exists. Previously we used 800x600 monitors and the monitors kept getting bigger while the smaller resolution monitors are still used in many places - specially for point of sale at merchandise stores. Analogy may not be accurate in saying that iPad is an evolution from iPhone. iPhone and iPad has different audience and has different usage.

Applications
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> Doctors/Health staff will be able to use iPad in their day-to-day work. A big screen with enough information about patient, x-rays, facesheets, prescriptions can be viewed easily.

> Sales team can use it on the road for apps like SalesForce.Com or CRM. The main advantage is not the screen size only, but the bootup time. It takes time loading a Windows machine, but this will be always ON. We will see Microsoft Office tools on this very soon.

> Executives will be soon carrying this instead of notepad for their calendar, notes and contact management.

> A UPS or FedEx guy may be carrying this to get delivery signatures. It would be nice if the touch-input can accept some pen size stylus then you can easily sign on it.

> A construction engineer will be carrying this at the site for measurements and inputting data. Engineer on the roof can input the dimension on this and get a drawing easily.

> Devices will be made to attach credit card reader and barcode scanners. So that you can use this at point of sale. If stores don't use it, this can be used at events.

> During exhibitions, stall executives can use this to show off their products to customers walking by. No need to bring them to the stall and display products on large screens.

There is unlimited use of this beyond what people are talking about games, music and books. Don't think of this as an entertainment, time-spending instrument. Think of it as a money making instrument. You no more have to bring your customers to a place where you have hooked up your computer. You can just carry your business with you everywhere.

Future of iPad
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What would have amazed the people, which I think soon should be coming either in iPad or in competitive products:

> Sure, a camera. But two sided camera that you can turn to yourself or backside.
> Sure, parallel applications. no doubt about it.
> Bluetooth capacity with phone. A bluetooth device that you use with your phone should be able to be used with iPad. And iPad should allow video chat via this bluetooth receiver. If not over 3G, this should be possible over wi-fi.
> A pen-like writing tool for notes so you don't have to use keyboard. And the OCR that can transcribe what you are writing. You can store the notes either as image or transcribe and store as text.
> Speech-recognition. Not a major but executives may like it.
> Find another iPad via BlueTooth around you and then throw some of the info to another iPad - something like Bump in iPhone.
> Being able to share the desktop of multiple iPads like GoToMeeting or WebEx.
> Being able to place a regular paper on the iPad screen, and then write on the paper. iPad can behave like a carbon copy of what is written on the paper. That can be then stored as image/text etc. This would be a huge hit seriously.
> Sometime in distant future, iPad can have one side of it behave like a scanner. So you can slide the iPad over a page and scan the document. Wouldn't that be cool? if not iPad, at least a separate device can be made that can plug into bottom of iPad and then scan a document.

2 comments:

  1. My initial reaction when I saw the Apple iPad was confusion. What functionality does this device offer over and above the Apple iPhone? And what market is Apple aiming this device at?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Don't worry Bruce, may be Apple would come out with a better version soon.

    ReplyDelete