The Apple iPad is coming to Australia. Hmm.

edwin — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 10:15:29 +0000

The iPad is coming to Australia. But will it live up to the hype? It has some serious issues and, to my mind, may just be Apple’s final hurrah. , you need to be really close to your wi-fi hub in order for it to work. This problem can’t get fixed with a software update because of a tiny receiver behind the screen and most people use the iPad on their laps / cushions etc. – further reducing the signal.

The other issue is compatibility. While the iPad uses a workaround for Flash movies embedded in YouTube, a lot of other sites use flash for buttons, rotating image banners and a bunch of other content. This means that sites with some animation on their front page may look a little static on the iPad. More worrying is that other websites may actually lose their navigation all together (unless the clever web designer has allowed Flash to degrade gracefully for the iPad – which is highly doubtful this early on).Flash has been through the ringer for years and has finally earnt its stripes as the go-to middleman for streaming media over the web. But for the iPhone and iPad, Flash applications are way too heavy on battery life. For PCs and Macs, Flash processing is sent to the graphics card, so that there’s less ork for the CPU, but on the iPhone and iMac, the CPU has to do all the work.

Whatever you think about Apple as a company, they do tend to come up with 100% usable products. I would go as far as to say that they are a company more into usability than the technology itself. The fact is, that for most Macs, you are spending nearly double what you’d spend on a PC with the same specs. I’m not writing this to add to the PC Vs. Mac debate. They are both massive companies who seem to behave like little babies. Perhaps that’s what competition at this level does to us. At the very successful release of the iPod, Bill Gates (most probably in a fit of jealousy after his Zune music player bombed) announced that Microsoft were no longer going to support Internet Explorer (IE) for Mac computers (Ne-ne-ne-ner-nerr!). And the black turtle-necked Steve Jobs comes over as an absolute tyrant when it comes to secrecy about his latest Mac products.

In short, time will be the great leveler, but the issues with the current iPad seem to be getting worse by the day. We’re in a world where products are realeased way before they are ready. It’s cheaper to get your loyal (in the case of Mac, super loyal) customers to do your testing. They’ll prolly upgrade to the later version anyway. I’m going to wait until the iPad (which should retail here for around $650) has been around for a few generations before I buy in. In the meantime, keep watching.

Steve Jobs’ Six Sneakiest Statements
Jobs: “Flash Will Murder the iPad”

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The Apple iPad is coming to Australia. Hmm.