For those of you who know me [in the recent years], you'll definitely have a smile on your face when reading this. You'll probably be thinking 'Hmm, what else will RS start his posts with?!'

I'm a fan of Apple products in general. I consider them very thought through and extremely well designed. The best description I have come across about Apple's products is the following quote from Ayn Rand's 'The Fountainhead':

'It was as if the buildings had sprung from the earth and from some living force, complete, unalterably right. Not a line seemed superfluous, not a needed plane was missing. The structures were austere and simple, until one looked at them and realised what work, what complexity of method, what tension of thought had achieved the simplicity.'

I respect the creativity and innovation that their products stand for - Apple somehow has a way of entering an already established market with a new device and then straightway shooting up to becoming a leader alongside players who have been ruling that market for a long time. They did this with the iPod, and they did this on a much bigger scale with the iPhone.

The launch of the much anticipated tablet by Apple was one of the events that I happened to be watching online - someone in the audience was taking snaps using a mobile phone, and uploading them to a published site with short verbal descriptions as the events happened. But unlike the iPhone, where the entire world was unified in admiration for the newly launched device, the iPad received more 'a sigh of disappointment'. A lot of the reactions were mixed, there were a lot of puns on the products name as well.

My own reaction went something like this: 'Huh? It cant replace my phone, and it cant replace my laptop.. What will I do with it? Why would I want to add one more device to my already existing gadgets collection? Is the iPad really 'revolutionary'?'.


Last weekend, I was visiting the local Waterstone's book store buying some novels, when I came across their collection of eBook readers. And then, as I stood there evaluating the readers against the option of continuing to use my laptop for book reading, I had what I call a 'lightbulb moment'.

I own a 13" MacBook, and though the laptop is fairly small and thin, it is still not as portable as I would prefer it to be - it is not portable enough to simply take out from your bag, just flip open, and start reading. It is not portable enough to open and start writing an article when you are returning home on the train [for example, an article like this]. And articles like this are best written when the 'lightbulb' is at its brightest!!

I then realised what market/whom the iPad was targeted at. Now consider for a moment the percentage of users who are using Netbooks for their computing needs. Most of these users need an Internet connection, mail, and a way to view/edit Word/Excel/Powerpoint files. Then consider the eBook reader market - people who prefer electronic versions of eBooks when compared to printed versions. Now what if you had a device that is portable enough and had the needed features to do both the above? What if you had a single device that could become that one 'electronic assistant' that you have always wanted, but thought that laptops were too complicated or 'heavy-duty' for?

I just read through the above post again, and then remembered one thing: to be frank, the lightbulb moment wasn't that bright - if you have seen the launch of the iPad, Apple actually said so in their presentation. I consider the moment important though - and worth writing about - for only one reason: it shifted my perspective from my own view - to Apple's point of view.


So, moral of the story: Will the iPad be a flop? I don't think so.

Why? Because it is targeted as a single device that is aimed at 3 different markets combined - the Netbooks, the eBook readers, and the portable media players.

But is it something that I would buy, being such a big fan of Apple products? Nope. I'll still stick around with my trusted MacBook for the immediate future.

I do wish that Apple had put up a full version of Mac OS X on the iPad though - that would have been a definite killer, because then it could have replaced my laptop. Or who knows - someone might port a version of Linux to run on the iPad. But till the time either of these happens, I'll consider my current machine as the one that comes closest to my 'dream machine'.

Wistfully.