During a keynote session at Storage Networking World in Santa Clara,
California on Monday, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak said, that tablets are the culmination of
what Steve Jobs wanted to create at Apple from the beginning, noting,
"The tablet is not necessarily for the people in this room
. . . It's for the normal people in the world."
Obviously, a lot of folks have decided that tablets - mostly iPads -
are the PC for them, so it appears that Wozniak has a point.
So how normal are you?
I've been trying to decide for myself and have come to the
provisional conclusion that I want an iPad. Indeed, I probably would
have bought one by now if I had caught one of the last first generation 16 GB WiFi iPads that Apple
Canada sold off for Can$369. You can still get a leftover 3G model for
Can$549, but that doesn't seem like much of a bargain for my purposes,
since there is no 3G coverage within 35 miles or so of where I live,
and the new 16 GB WiFi iPad 2 is listed for Can$519, but there's a 2-3
week wait. (More than a bit annoying that the price is higher in Canada
with the Canadian dollar trading at US$1.04 and heading for US$1.09
according to the financial pundits. I digress.)
At those prices, the iPad 2 with its greater speed, sleeker form
factor, and expanded feature set makes more sense for
future-proofing.
My Next Apple Product?
I had been anticipating a main system upgrade for late this year or
early next, with the new Core "i" Thunderbolt MacBook Pro or perhaps
the 13" MacBook Air taking over for my now two-and-a-bit year old 2.0 GHz
unibody MacBook, but an iPad purchase in the meantime could incline
me to postpone that move as long as the MacBook continues giving the
flawless performance it has for the past 25 months.
So I've pretty much decided to go with the iPad 2, preferably a white one, but not badly
enough to stand in line for one. I'll wait until the availability
backlog clears a bit more and also keep checking the availability
(currently zero at the Apple Store Canada) of Apple Certified Refurbished 16 GB iPad 1s, which would be tempting if the price was
right.
With the second generation, you get the A5 dual-core CPU in place of
the original iPad's single-core A4 silicon and claimed much better
graphics performance, plus the cameras, 
but unfortunately the number one item on my iPad wish list - a
USB port - was not delivered, so iPad 2 users are still stuck with
dongles for the 30-pin dock connector (such as this one) and bereft of a
really satisfactory file transfer interface. You'll also need a dongle
in order to to get HDMI support for connecting your iPad 2 to a
television, and there's no SD Card slot for data storage overflow and
transfers. Consequently, I still don't find the iPad irresistibly
compelling, but it is compelling enough that I'm ready to climb
aboard.
At this point I'm not seriously considering joining the "post-PC
era" whole-hog; I anticipate that the iPad will not be a laptop
substitute, but a complementary device, with a laptop remaining my
primary production tool. I'm keeping an open mind, and it's possible
the iPad will surprise me once I have my own, but its manifold
limitations make me doubtful of its practical utility as a production
platform.
What I do expect I'll use it for is general Web surfing, Googling,
Binging, and email, and perhaps for some reading, although I still much
prefer ink-on-paper hard copy for that over any electronic screen.
However, hard copy magazine subscriptions are getting more and more
expensive, and I can envision switching some of the several I take to
electronic delivery, with the iPad a more convenient and
comfortable-to-handle content consumption device for relaxed content
consumption. It's notable that that In 2010, digital was the only media
sector realizing audience growth.
The Only Growth in News Media
The Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism's
2011 State of the News Media
annual report on the health and status of American journalism finds
that news media increasingly follow the rules of device makers and
software developers, such as Apple and Google, to deliver their
content, and that In 2010, digital was the only media sector realizing
audience growth.
The Pew researchers found that as of December 2010, 41% of Americans
cited the Internet as their primary source for "most of their news
about national and international issues," more than doubling from 17% a
year earlier, with 46% of respondents saying they now get news online
at least three times a week, surpassing newspapers (40%) for the first
time, and with local TV news the only more popular news platform (50%).
Additionally, the survey finds that 47% of Americans now say they get
some kind of local news on mobile devices such as cellphones or other
wireless devices (such as iPads), and that as of January 2011, the
number of Americans owning electronic tablets (7 %) had also nearly
doubled, but in this instance in just four months, while the audience
for cable news has declined substantially over the past year, with
median viewership falling 13.7%, and prime-time median viewership by
16% in 2010 - CNN suffering the most (37% decline), but Fox News and
MSNBC down as well.
Network news also continued its three-decade downward trend, and
print newspapers weekday circulation fell another 5% and Sunday
editions 4.5% year-over-year, while newspapers' online audience grew,
although not enough to compensate for print losses industrywide, and
another Pew Research Center survey for the People & the Press,
finds the total audience that reads newspapers, in print and online, at
least three times a week dropped by six percentage points over the last
two years, with just 40% of Americans reporting reading a newspaper in
any form, down from 46% in 2008 and 52% in 2006, while the metric for
those reporting reading a newspaper "yesterday" - print or online - now
sits at 37%, down two percentage points from 2008.
Circulation for the six news magazines covered by the report fell
8.9% - subscriptions fell 8.6%, and newsstand sales were down 17.7%,
while circulation for the magazine industry as a whole dropped
1.5%.
Consequently, as Bob Dylan observed nearly 50 years ago, you don't
need a meteorologist to discern which way the wind is blowing, and it's
becoming clearer that those who don't join the tablet or ereader
revolution are going to be left behind, perhaps more rapidly than they
imagine.
Planning Ahead
However, I didn't want to buy two new devices within a few months of
each other, so with my three-year target for a main system upgrade
approaching next winter, I'll maybe have to rethink things a bit,
perhaps buying my iPad 2 by late spring and postponing replacement of
MacBook for a bit, at least past the next 13" MacBook Pro and MacBook
Air refreshes, which might make more sense anyway.
