I had a plan. When Apple came out with a new iPad I would upgrade and my wife would get this one (I am writing this post on the iPad). Then, they announced the iPad2. I waited around for March 2 (well, it was the third here in Australia). And I was, well, underwelmed.
I use my iPad to write, read, keep up with my social media and search the web. I find it a very versatile tool and have pretty much given up using my laptop for most things. I even use the iPad as my alarm clock. It goes with me everywhere and is often handy to jot a note or occupy the kids. I use it as my e-reader because it is always with me.
The features of the iPad2 have not offered any substantial improvement to the way I use the device. Yes, it is nine times faster, but the iPad is already at least as fast as my laptop. Yes it has a camera, but so does my phone, and by all accounts my phone camera is probably better and certainly going to be easier to handle. Yes the new iPad is thinner and lighter, but the weight has never been an issue for me.
The real spanner in my plan, though, was the price of the current iPad. Apple dropped the price of the current iPad dramatically on Thursday morning. By almost $200 for the 32 gig iPad. By Wednesday evening my wife had her own iPad. Deal done.
Am I disappointed? Not at all. As I explained above, the new iPad offers little to entice me. More exciting, however, is that a lot more people are going to end up with a tablet device, a way to read my game PDF’s, and ebooks. Apple have already sold something like 15 million iPads, and the new one will likely be the push that many fence sitters need to pick one up. Ereaders and tablets are only going to become more and more common. That is a good thing, and I am excited.