The new iPad – Bring it on!
Posted by Steph / 28th January 2010
Posted in Innovation, Interactive
It’s just been announced: Apple is finally letting everyone know about its iPad. We were all waiting to get the official Apple word on this and although some may want to stay away from any first generation products from Apple, it is hard to want to stay away from this! Ok, I personally find it hard!
The iPad boasts many cool features. First, it’s almost as big as a small laptop but a lot more versatile and transportable. And with its wide touch screen, it makes it a really cool way to show off work for designers, photographers, filmmakers, and so on. In the official promotional video from Apple, they say “the iPad “fits” the user, and you don’t have to fit around it” – I think this is kind of clever.
The iPad also has all the iPod/iPhone features, you can get the same apps you may already have from your iPod Touch or iPhone. it’s an e-book (so you are saving trees while still enjoying reading your books), and in April they will release a 3G version which will make your iPad your Internet companion wherever you go. So all in all, it looks like an awesome gadget!
On the not-so-cool side of things, the iPad just like the iPhone/iPod touch doesn’t support Flash. And that’s a real weakness. Mason Herber, course leader of the Diploma of Digital Media at Media Design School comments: “Steve Jobs announced that the iPad was an amazing web browsing experience. If the iPad does not support flash content then I don’t see how this can be true. That means no embedded video on web pages, no animation and no flash games. This may not seem like such a big deal, but if you are one of the 28,417,879 people (every day) playing farmville on facebook this would be a real inconvenience…”
So it’s time Adobe and Apple work together on a solution. But would that mean all the iPhone/iPad apps woud not be as successful?
But to wrap it up, OK! I am biased when talking about the iPad. I am an Apple fanatic, I love my iPod Touch, and now iPhone 3GS and would love to have one of those new gadgets. Sure, it might make my iPhone a little obsolete, but what a great way to share photos, videos, and keep in touch with everyone! I will certainly wait and see for some reviews from users once it is on the market and available but with a big birthday coming up around the end of the year, I might have to voice my interest in getting one of those!
But you, what do you think?
As an aside… there are more people playing Farm Worlds on facebook than there are actually farming in the world. Rather than waiting for – and spending up on – one a new iPad, perhaps one might consider a new chicken run, several chickens and a big bag of feed as a suitable replacement.
It’s so funny watching a chicken crash…
That’s a point! Thanks for making it Ramon
I’m actually in the middle of writing a post for my personal blog, but I thought I would share some thoughts on the Flash problem.
While I agree with Mason Herber that the iPad should support Flash (make it an optional preference) I don’t agree that it’s essential to the browsing experience any more, or at least it won’t be soon.
YouTube and Vimeo have just launched HTML5 Video Beta’s which completely remove any need for Flash. This means that any device that supports HTML5 + the H.264 codex (Android, iPhone, WebOS, iPad) and any browser (Chrome, Safari) can now watch videos without Flash.
So if you remove Videos from the scenario that leaves games, advertising and some websites. Games are clearly taken care of by the App Store, not seeing advertising is a bonus and finally how many sites that people visit regularly are predominately Flash? I’m willing to say not many.
So those my thoughts regarding Flash on the iPad and while I’d like to see some form of optional support I don’t think it’s really going to stop the iPad being a success, there’s already 75million+ iPhone OS users out there who have decided to go without it. What’s a couple million more?
Im not sure about all the attention involving farmville. I know one thing for sure if you have tons of free time to waste then this the game for you
My cousin is taken up with it . Fine post by the way
Great post, after checking out the ipad and with the speed of technology being developed now, my Robot Butler might be able to start blogging on my behalf.
I want this Robot Butler once you have it. Let me know!
Just wondering if you guys are going to offer iPhone app development short courses?
We have been thinking about it for a quite a while and hopefully this will happen. It all depends on how busy our current game programming tutors are… and they are busy. Yet, I know this is something they wish to implement.
The best would be that you register you interest with Suzi, our Short Courses person… You can find her on suzi at mediadesign dot school dot nz.