I had a lunchroom conversation yesterday with a couple of my coworkers, who are admittedly hardcore techies. Their argument was that the iPad was just a stretched out iPhone or iPod touch which offered nothing new and in fact took away a few popular features such as GPS and a camera. My stance was that indeed it is a larger format device with many of the same features of it's little brothers but that it's meant to go head to head with the netbook and in that arena the touch interface will be a winner. To emphasize my point I explained that my 75 year old father recently asked advice on the purchase of a new PC. He and I sat down and listed the things that he used his current PC for:
Surfing the web;
Checking gmail account;
Keeping up on the stock market; and
Viewing pictures of the grandchildren, generally e-mailed to him;
The decision was easy... a netbook! The biggest concern we had was the screen resolution and his 75 year old eyes, but after looking at a few we came to the conclusion he'd be alright.
This is the market that Steve Jobs is targeting! No, not the elderly but people with similar requirements! Not the coders and hackers, not the spreadsheet masters. The average user with a facebook addiction and the desire to read a little, thumb through old photographs, and keep up on the news. Not to mention a great big geeks who would rather pick this little beauty up and tote it around than stay glued to his office chair when the desire to surf hits him.
That's my opinion and I'm sticking to it. Thanks for the banter guys, but it's time to think outside of the server rack :)
