Is your boss a PC or a Mac? If the latter, he or she will no doubt be aware of Apple’s latest product, the iPad.
Such was the hype around the device – rumoured to be a tablet-style computer - that bookmaker Paddy Power was offering odds on its likely name, with iSlate the favourite at 4/5 and iCan’t believe it’s not paper at 200/1.
When Apple CEO Steve Jobs finally unveiled the iPad at a press conference on 27 January, he raised a laugh by showing the Gustave Dore engraving of Moses holding a slate aloft, with the slogan: “last time there was this much excitement about a tablet, it had some commandments written on it,” a quote from August 2009’s Wall Street Journal. Thus far only a lucky few Stateside have been able to try out the iPad, so now is the time to impress your boss with a prediction of whether it might help him or her work smarter.
Looking like a giant iPhone, the iPad’s screen is 9.7 inches across. But it is remarkably slim and light - half an inch thick and weighing only one and a half pounds. And it costs less than expected, starting at $499 (at the time of writing UK prices are yet to be announced).
It works just like an iPod touch. The user selects and operates different software programmes, known as Apps, by finger touch. In keeping with Apple’s reputation for sleek, ergonomic design, those who have tried the iPad confirm that it offers a delightful web browsing experience. Its touch screen has over a thousand sensors, so browsing an online newspaper offers something like the intimacy of the real thing with the benefits of digital journalism such as slide shows and video.
Rotate the iPad and it will automatically adjust between portrait and landscape orientation, and the technology behind the display offers an exceptionally crisp, vibrant picture.
Email is made easy by an almost life size touch screen keyboard popping up in the lower half of the screen.
Every Apple App has been refined to take advantage of the sensitivity and size of the iPad’s screen. In iPhoto, for example, digital images appear as stacks which can be spread out by making a splaying movement with thumb and forefinger, so one can look for a shot in a way that mimics spreading out a pile of photographs.
Completely new versions of Apple’s iWork suite of programmes have been written for the iPad, offering intuitive interaction such as, in Keynote (software for producing presentations) the ability to move more than one slide at once with, in Apple-speak, ‘multi touch gestures’.
Apple is also launching into the electronic reader market with the iPad, via an App called iBooks. This will link to the iBookstore, a literary version of Apple’s uber-successful online music shop, iTunes.
Like the iPhone and iPod, the iPad can be synchronized with Apple and Microsoft computers. Its battery lasts an impressive ten hours a time, and the device can be left on standby for a month.
All iPads will have Wifi connectivity. Customers willing to pay $130 dollars more will also get 3G, to access the internet on the go. And there will be three grades of memory - 16, 32 and 64 GB. Each jump in capacity comes with a $100 price hike.
Accessories include a keyboard dock which charges the iPad while providing a full size keyboard for users who do lots of typing.
Critics have wondered whether the iPad is worthy of all the fuss, pointing out perceived shortcomings such as the lack of a camera. When it goes on sale (due in late March, with the 3G models available a month later) you can pop into an Apple store and decide for yourself.
