Web Forum: Internet news

Feb 5 2010 by Andrew Jackson, Huddersfield Daily Examiner

SAY hello to the iPad.

Apple’s latest creation was unveiled by Steve Jobs in San Francisco last week amid feverish geek hype.

The iPad is a sleek touchscreen computer designed for browsing the web, dealing with email, watching video and playing games.

Weirdly, a lot of the geeks hate it already. Within minutes of Jobs leaving the stage, gadget sites all over the web were dismissing the iPad as a failure. With no camera, a locked-down system under Apple’s control and only one programme running at a time they couldn’t see the point of owning one.

However, the iPad is not intended for geeks. Not yet, anyway.

This first version has been kept simple for a very good reason – to keep the price low. At a low price, such a good-looking multi-purpose device is going to fly off the shelves.

The iPad echoes the iPod and iPhone that it evolved from. The system software is invisible. Indeed, the owner need never be aware that there is a system underneath the applications. There’s just stuff that does useful things.

It’s a safe bet that there will be an explosion of third-party applications for iPad, just as there was for iPhone.

Within two or three years the hardware will advance too, adding all the features that the geeks moaned were missing first time round.

Apple’s huge empire, with digital content at the centre of everything, just keeps on growing.

61 REASONS TO LISTEN

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www.hopzine.com

The Blog o’ Beer:www.blogobeer.com

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