Filtered Geek

Apple's new tablet the "iPad" has now just been announced by none other than Steve Jobs himself. The whole world held it's breath and waited for what is set to change the world, FilterGeek however let out a sigh of disappointment.

No Excitement For Me

Well lets start from the obvious, the iPad looks to be around a 10" touch screen that has the exact same interface as a iPhone (similar or same OS I would imagine)

(All Images used from Engadget's Live Apple Feed)

First lets look at how Steve interacts with it:

Look at that QWERTY keyboard, how can anyone hold that in their hands and type? You can't, you will have to lay that on a table or your lap to interact well. This worked fine on a iPhone where your thumbs can reach all the keys in any orientation, but at that size, you can't do that anymore. So that leaves it with no good way to type while the device is held.

 

Look at Steve's hands, to hold the tablet and type.... would be one hand, or thumbs only.

Screen Interface

I can understand that Apple didn't want to have a totally new OS for the tablet, so they went with the iPhone interface, but look at how much room there is between the buttons, there has been like no attempt to optimize the screen space, it's simply the iPhone with more space. It took years to get to this? A bigger screen iPhone could have been done day 1. If this tablet would have run a modified version of Snow Leporard, then think of the power and abilities that this could have had, but instead it's watered down and boring.

Of course the device does all the same iPhone stuff only bigger, multitouch, video, web (no Flash), no suprises there because it's a big iPhone.

Who uses flash anyhow? Oh EVERYONE!

I do think that the iPhone interface is a great one overall, but this feels sort of lazy in implementation.

Overall

Ok, 10 hours of battery, one month standby, ok, so that's respectable, but not groundbreaking in the world of batteries today (You can get netbooks that do that)

The idea is cool, but I don't think that you will get any better use on your lap than your iPhone. Sure you get a big screen and for watching a video or looking at pictures, that's great. However trying to use the web, you would be better off with a laptop that has a keyboard that you can actually use.

Pros

• Big screen great for videos and pictures
• Clean and sleek
• Good battery

Cons

• Can't use keyboard well when holding (thumbs or one hand pecking)
• Same UI as a iPhone, with no attempts to make it unique
• Can only use on your lap if you want to use any keyboard intensive features

This isn't ground breaking, this is size scaling with hype. Hype that makes a device that does media well, but interaction poorly.