Well, titles are not exactly my strong point. It's been nearly a month now since the official launch of Apple's latest foray into life-changing gadgetry, the iPad, and it appears to be a true Marmite occasion. I've had conversations with iVangelists telling me that it will change the way I live my life by making everything easier/more connected/more synchronised (note the smooth, space-saving transition between those benefits), and I've been told by Charlie Brooker that it's just a bigger, clumsier iPhone that can't make calls or take photos. Personally I'm on the fence, and my biggest questions lie around its other, more trumpeted functions. Seeing as this much vaunted launch has done little more than show us a video of a man in a turtleneck grimacing with an air equal parts contempt and expectation-of-admiration, I don't feel like any of my questions have been answered, and that's annoying. A launch that tells me that I might be able to see a real in six months in a shop near me is not a launch, it's a hyped billboard.
Let me address for a moment the problem of the Apple fanboys. I am not, contrary to my tone, an Apple-hater. I own an iPod - my second in a row, in fact - and I like its simplicity and its slim design. I've had other MP3 players but apart from the dearly departed RioKarma none has come close to the efficiency of Apple's original market-dominator, and so I am not a Macaphobe by any means. I would buy an iBook or a MacBook if I had the money as I've used them before and they are easy, fast and reliable, whereas Windows Vista turned me against Microsoft-based systems and Linux...well I'm not completely stupid.
That said, I cannot understand the mindset of the assembled media who attended the launch of the iPad. When Steve Jobs said '...and we call it "the iPad"' the assembled masses, presumably there by invite only, whoop and cheer and applaud like drunks in a strip club. What amazes me even more than this spontaneous outpouring of affection is that when Jobs finally holds a full-sized real-life iPad up in his hands, like the baboon presenting Simba in the Lion King, the crowd repeat their rapturous applause. They managed to restrain their enthusiasm for all of 23 seconds between hearing 'iPad' and seeing an iPad in a grumpy-looking man's hands. Similarly, tablet computers have been around since the early part of the last decade, but it appears that only once Apple throws its oar in can certain people get excited about the technology. It feels as if, in an effort to justify their own excitement over a new product by their favourite company, Apple disciples need to over-cheer something as seemingly mundane as being told the name of a product, which of course any self-respecting Apple disciple already knew.
Leaving these petty asides, I want to get to the real nub of my interest in this product; its capability as an e-reader. The iPad has already been hailed as a 'Kindle-killer', and its aim would certainly be to dominate the marketplace for electronic readers in the same way as it does with MP3 players. The addition of a patented iBooks store as an app for the iPad (basically iTunes store with Books) is sure to make the lazy consumer, which is all of us in fairness, stick hard and fast to the Apple line. With total sales of Amazon's (US only so far) Kindle e-reader reportedly reaching 3million over Christmas and the recent row between Amazon and publishing giant Macmillan over the pricing of ebooks, it is clear that the e-reader market is a burgeoning one. Ian McEwan, prize-winning author of Atonement, has recently agreed an exclusive deal with Amazon for the electronic rights to his entire back catalogue which excludes his publisher, and the potential for other authors to follow suit in order to cut out the middleman and increase their own earnings is palpable.
I love holding a new book in my hands, getting the smell of a fresh copy of a book as I open its pages for the first time and flicking through the bright pages, and even with second-hand books I enjoy the dodgy bindings and imagining what stories might lie behind the previous owners' relationship with the book. That said, I also loved my CD collection, the joy of unwrapping the plastic and taking the disc out once to make sure it was real, flicking through the liner notes as the CD began to swirl in the player and I listened to it for the first time. I now have an iPod with an alarm-clock docking station, and CDs are reserved for annoying iPod-incompatible rooms and times. In short I enjoy reading a lot more than I enjoy books themselves, and the iPad claims it will sell as a basic model for somewhere in the region of $500, whereas the basic Kindle already sells for $259 and competing e-readers from Sony and Elonex can cost as little as GBP£129 direct from Waterstones. Furthermore, the iPad has a backlit LED screen which, as any regular computer user will tell you, strains the crap out of your eyes after any extended period of time reading, whereas all the competitors in the e-reader market have opted for an easy-to-read eInk paper-like display.
Detractors will say that I'm being overly unfair to the iPad by looking at it solely as an e-reader, which is a fair criticism. I do as a rule dislike the iPhone and the iPod Touch because they try to be a phone/MP3player/photoframe/camera/browser/gamingsystem all at once, and I feel that they suffer from being a jack of all trades and a master of none. I prefer having a mobile phone in one pocket and an MP3 player in the other. I would also prefer to bring an e-reader with me than carry around a conglomerate of all three mixed with a web browser too, I fear. However the real reason for my insistence on looking at the iPad from an e-reader point of view is the amount of work Apple have put into it; they have created their iBook store and signed deals with five of the biggest publishing houses in the US - Macmillan, HarperCollins, Penguin, Simon & Schuster and Hachette - and Steve Jobs personally trundled around print publishing houses and newspapers in New York last week looking for them to develop apps and sign deals for iBooks and the iPad, leading to an errant tweet from a Wall Street Journal editor which reportedly sent the Apple CEO into a rage. Apple wants this capability of their new pride and joy taken very seriously.
Personally, I can't see the iPad not being a commercial success; as Charlie Brooker points out it's the perfect utility for sitting on your lap wasting time on the net while watching TV or listening to music. I personally would be more interested in any of the companies taking the e-reader concept a bit further, diving into the realm of academic publications more and allowing for some form of interactive note-taking, e-underlining or an iHighlighter. This would turn a nice idea for easy storage of books into an essential and innovative method of teaching, learning and sharing information, and any company who could perfect these capabilities would be able to sell them to schools, universities, local councils and so forth, lessening our paper footprints and allowing a more connected, synchronised life.
Oh no, I'm starting to sound like on of them.
Links to sources:
Charlie Brooker blog: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/feb/01/ipad-therefore-iwant-why-idunno
Amazon v Macmillan: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/feb/01/amazon-macmillan-ebooks-apple
Kindle sales: http://blogs.siliconvalley.com/gmsv/2010/01/amazon-updates-kindle-sales-figures-from-lots-to-millions.html
Steve Jobs Tweet anger: http://valleywag.gawker.com/5466906/the-ipad-tweet-that-enraged-steve-jobs
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