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David Poland

By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

The IPad: Load & Dump Groundbreaker?

For those of us who are already iPhone addicted, the iPad is the obvious next-gen must-have opportunity. It’s not very complicated. Having a realistic sized screen for movies, television, and reading is a huge step forward. The joke about watching movies on a 2″ inch screen are over.
The big question for Apple, newspapers, and everyone else is whether the major subtext of the story, the wireless Load-and-Dump use of content, is going to take hold as this product and a parade of imitators flood the market. With a max hard drive size of 64g, many of us wouldn’t be able to keep our full music library on the iPad, much less dozens of movies and music and images sized for this pad, etc.
So unless you want to watch Up every day, the expectation will be that you will put the movie (or last season of “30 Rock”) on the iPad until you have watched it and then dump it to create room for what you want to watch next. iTunes really would like you to rent movies.
iWork is another key element. Will iPad become the start of the long anticipated use of programs, like Word and Excel, online instead of as permanently downloaded programs? (One concern I read was that there is no external keyboard or mouse… but the iPad is a Bluetooth device, so won’t those be options, even if Apple wants to keep the “revolutionary” idea of the touch screen up front?) Apple presented 3 new iWorks apps for $9.99 each. In a world in which light users don’t need every bell and whistle. will this become the standard for most software?
My iPhone experience has been greatly colored by apps like MLB’s At Bat, which not only offers up to the minute content about all the games in play in the moment, but has offered radio to all game from all markets for free as part of the $9.99 annual price as well as games in real time, either at 99 cents a pop or for an annual fee… 30something dollars, I seem to recall. The reason I’m not sure is that I didn’t buy it this year. But with MLB on DirecTV at $140 a year or more, blacked out on Saturdays because of Fox’s broadcast deal, $40 for the same games on the iPad is looking pretty attractive as an alternative, while I would rarely even watch highlights on the iPhone’s small screen. The gimmick becomes functional.
Likewise, DirecTV’s Sunday Ticket package in HD has included free iPhone and web access. Suddenly, watching a game on a 9.7″ screen is worth the time, not just a way to sneak a peek at a game you really want to watch instead of being stuck at brunch with the in-laws.
And of course, hotel porn may be the most damaged business model in all of this. Businesspeople are the ones who will spend the money to buy and get 3G web access on the iPad without even considering the cost. Hundreds of millions are spend on “movie” every year. Even if people don’t want to risk keeping porn on the iPad, erased histories will be all the rage.
But let’s look further… I still carry a Blackberry because my iPhone is not up to snuff for e-mail and phone. Am I willing to pay two 3G charges a month to have internet access for both products or do I dump the iPhone… or start using it like an iTouch? Or do I dump the Blackberry with an iPad offering a fuller form of Mac Mail that lives up to the quality of a regular computer experience? (Again… memory is an issue. How much of the memory can be allotted to mail on iPad and will there be a “save” function so priority e-mail can be held onto?)
iPad is not really a new technology. It is an expansion of a technology and an idea… and it seems, a wonderful and useful one at that. It expands the idea of how we use the technology we have available to us. That said, as we saw with the iPhone, most of the early buyers replaced their other cell phones with the new tool. When Mac has brought in “new and improved” products with narrow uses, like the MacBook Air, there was resistance to spending big bucks to not quite fully replace what people already had… in that case, pretty light, intensely functional laptops. Mac has been changing sizes, improving pricing, offering bigger hard drives, etc and every new product is a real consideration, the way that you used to look at the new TVs every few years. But how many laptops or desktops can you use?
We can only consume so much at one time. And the iPhone experience, for most people I know, includes at least half their app downloads being, essentially, unused and uninteresting within months. Functional programs in the content mindset.
What will the iPad replace for users? And will people now, with a realistically functional size for visual interaction, start to really get on the Load & Dump train in a real way, not just buying a la carte, but getting used to the idea that owning and using can be mutually exclusive, but still satisfying ideas?

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17 Responses to “The IPad: Load & Dump Groundbreaker?”

  1. Me says:

    I think you’re getting at a big idea Dave, but I’m not so sure about this device. For a lot less, people can get a netbook with a real OS and an internet browser that allows for Flash (so people can actually watch content on Hulu and the like). And, sure, you can hook up a keyboard, but how do you get the thing to stand up in all the places you want to use it while balancing the keyboard. Seems awkward.
    Also, for the size, it isn’t nearly as portable as your iphone or blackberry. It’s also not really a kindle, as the kindle’s selling feature has been the book-like look to its display, which this doesn’t have.
    I just don’t see the niche that this fills. It’s not like the iphone, which made my cell phone better. It’s something new, and I need to be convinced that I need something new to fill a new niche.
    Then again, I’ve learned not to bet against Apple, so maybe it’ll be a hit.

  2. Brian says:

    There’s a stand and dock for keyboard usage, but my main issue with this thing is what it’s missing – cause those things are glaring.
    No multi-tasking, no flash capability, no camera (regular, vid, or even webcam/chat) – it just seems odd.
    I guess I was hoping this was going to be a more portable and slick computer, and just not a bigger iPod Touch. There are definitely reasons to want and love it, but it could be so much more with some simple additions.
    Maybe the next version…
    I’m interested to see what the Android and Chrome tablets start to look like and do.

  3. Telemachos says:

    I’m going to assume watching movies will be the same as it is through iTunes-iPhone/iPod/iEtc: you can choose a “sync only unwatched” shows or movies and iTunes will manage the media every time you sync.
    Multitasking also won’t be a major concern (IMHO)… it might be, but it’s one of those things where I need to play around with it to see if I miss multitasking or not. I’m not surprised at all at the lack of Flash capability: Apple can’t stand Flash and it’d be a major change in their entire mobile approach to suddenly offer it. Frankly, I find my non-Flash web-browsing more enjoyable than all the Flash-enabled crap that constantly starts every time I open a site on my laptop.
    It’s definitely not a replacement for a laptop. However, I can see it being a big hit as a casual mobile viewer and entertainment platform. The $500 entry point is actually very reasonable (even if with no 3G and only 16gb). I also think the pay-as-you-go 3G dataplans are quite reasonable as well (at least compared to general US domestic plans).

  4. Joe Leydon says:

    I read about this thing, and suddenly I remember what New Coke tasted like. I’m probably wrong to second-guess Apple — in fact, I’m almost certainly wrong — but I can’t help having just the shadow of a doubt…

  5. Telemachos says:

    Well, it’s not like Apple hasn’t stumbled badly before…. I mean, this could certainly end up like the Apple TV or the Cube: gorgeously engineered devices that wouldn’t/couldn’t fit enough niches to really break out.
    But I think the killer deal for this isn’t the hardware (which, in typical Apple fashion, is wonderful for what’s included yet missing a couple things that most people think are important), it’s the app software. App developers can upscale/design apps that could be tremendously powerful and cool. Gaming on it should be a blast. And the elegant e-book software (at least, from the marketing video, it looks great) and iBookstore could be huge huge huge.
    What student wouldn’t want one of these (even the “cheap” $500 Wi-Fi-only ones) for e-textbooks/class notes/media browsing, for example?

  6. Me says:

    Tele, I think you’re right about this finding a possible niche – like students – but think it’s a generation or two of improvements away from that. What student would want this if they knew that they can’t multitask? You can either do class notes or do e-textbook or do media browsing, but no combination of those. And EVERYONE who talks about the Kindle talks about the e-ink/paper look. Reading on this thing is going to be eye-straining after a while. I just don’t think it was fully thought through.

  7. Telemachos says:

    Given the speed at which apps launch (again, from the marketing video) I’m not sure multitasking is a big deal. It looked like hitting “home” and the new app would be almost as fast as alt-tabbing to another app.
    I don’t own a Kindle, but I’ve been very underwhelmed with the e-ink displays I’ve seen on the few Kindles I’ve played around with. But, of course, I haven’t compared the experience of reading for a long time on that versus an LCD screen.
    Of course, I’m sure the iPad v2 will have a whole bunch of killer new features. Since (apparently) the iPads on display today were running iOS 3.2 and 4.0 is due out soon (with rumored multitasking and other various bits) that may all be moot.
    At $700 or $800 for a low-end version, I agree it’d be pointless. At $500, it becomes a very interesting experiment.

  8. Me says:

    Yeah, good points. I also think you make an interesting point about gaming. If the Wii can make such a success out of their controller, I would imagine Apple could find a way to sell the unique gaming experience on the iPad.

  9. David Poland says:

    I know that one big reason that my Kindle has been sitting in a drawer for 8 months or so is because the lack of light, the lack of image, the size of the pages, etc, made it less thrilling than I wanted it to be. I was willing to pay for subscriptions on the Kindle, but when the newspaper experience turned out to be link… link… link… blech.
    As far as multi-tasking, I don’t care. I don’t expect it to be a computer. I would love to have something like this on which I could use few key programs. But it’s not that. More and more, I have online instead of program-based systems set up.
    I don’t think you can compare this to Apple TV because Apple TV sucked when it landed. Maybe it’s better now, with HD coming through it. But when I went to buy it – and I was ready to – I saw the demo at the Apple Store and I never went back. (Well, I did look at it every few months for a year or so.) The iPad will not be everything all of us want… but I don’t expect many people to be surprised by what it doesn’t do either.

  10. MarkVH says:

    I don’t really have an opinion on the iPad, but I would totally watch Up every day.

  11. storymark says:

    Reeks of a cool toy/status symbol rather than something actually useful. I’ll stick with my netbook for portability. This has nothing that really appeals to me.

  12. christian says:

    This thing is useless.

  13. Mostly Lurking says:

    Is it just me or does an iPad sound like Apple’s gotten into the business of selling feminine hygiene products?

  14. Mostly Lurking says:

    Please ignore my above comment, just saw that Mad Tv apparently beat me to it by a few years.

  15. Kim Voynar says:

    David, this was a great analysis, especially for someone like me who is so techno-retarded that I’m barely aware that this iPad thing exists. You did a great job of breaking down what it is and isn’t. When it comes to technology I am a complete “late adopter” of new gadgetry. My cell phone is functional, not “cool,” and I just upgraded this Christmas to one of those new-fangled flat-screen HD TVs for the kids, etc.
    The iPad, for me, is something I would maybe buy in its next iteration as a tool for my teenager when she goes into high school (though even then I’d be way more inclined to invest in a good laptop for her). Definitely not something I need to spend money on for myself.
    I don’t know, maybe my aversion to adopting and spending money on the latest gadgets will change in a decade or so when the kids are older. Oh, wait, then I’ll be paying for four kids to go to college, so maybe not. šŸ™‚ Clearly, I’m not the target market for iPads, Kindles, etc.

  16. David Poland says:

    About Adobe: They are lazy, Jobs says. They have all this potential to do interesting things but they just refuse to do it. They don

  17. storymark says:

    I don’t really care why Jobss dislikes Adobe. But a device that won’t do what I want because Jobbs thinks the company is lazy makes it a very easy decision for me.

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