Dr. Ware

Yesterday’s announcement by Steve Jobs was exciting to say the least. For anyone looking for a portable browser, reader, and multimedia device, the iPad is a game-changer. It also promises to be extremely handy for managing personal data like contacts, calendaring, and email. However, if what you need is a portable ‘primary’ business device, this will likely not be it.

The iPad’s stand-out features are its multi-touch screen, extremely light weight (a little over a pound), all-day battery, and low price ($499 to start). It does everything you can currently do on an iPod Touch but on a 9.7 inch screen. For games, reading an e-book, or surfing the Web and emailing from your favorite coffee shop the iPad is almost untouchable (pardon the pun) except for not supporting Flash or Silverlight which knocks out a lot of Web content. For students, scientists, artists, and business professionals, the iPad lacks the tools for serious data entry. The on-screen keyboard is not a full QWERTY and is too small and uncomfortable to use for more than just a few minutes. The iPad also does not come with a stylus and does not support handwriting recognition. This kills any extended note-taking for meetings and classes. While Steve Jobs touted the iWorks business applications one wonders how you can seriously work on a spreadsheet with just your fingers. To address the problem of losing significant screen real estate when the keyboard is launched Apple announced a plug-in external keyboard. However the iPad does not support the use of an external monitor and amazingly the iPad does not have any USB ports. Expandability is limited to a dock for the keyboard and a SIM card tray – that’s it. Also incredible is the lack of a built-in video camera so video conferencing is out of the question.

The iPad comes with a 1 GHz processor, 64 GB flash memory, and the iPhone’s operating system. As you can see this is not really a Tablet PC or a Slate PC but a large handheld device that is extremely powerful for its niche. Having no stylus, no ports to speak of, no expandable memory, no Adobe Flash support, and no way to work on more than one application at a time, means this device is impractical for real-world business applications. So don’t trash your laptop, Netbook, or Tablet PC just yet. However if Apple includes the aforementioned features in future versions of the iPad watch out!