Ipad: Revolutionary? Not Yet

On January 27th 2010, Apple introduced its self-defined masterpiece; their groundbreaking new product was a tablet computer designated the iPad. For years people had been speculating when Apple would get into the tablet computing market, and more importantly how large the splash would be when they did. Apple is of course a company widely known for its secrecy and its fierce protection of its intellectual property, nothing can be certain about any iProduct until it is revealed by Apple's creator and mad-genius CEO Steve Jobs. Just as famous as the company he created from scratch back in 1976, Jobs is known for being a perfectionist who is closely involved with all of Apple's largest products. All Apple product releases have become events where there is just as much show as there is tell, often garnering large amounts of press. Apple markets their future products through a combination of tightly controlled leaks and their minimalist mantra "Think Different;" because of this they are unlike any other technology company that exists today.

The iPad is Apple's newest product, joining a family of well-established and world famous devices known as the iPod and the iPhone. The iPod and iPhone are Apple's most highly regarded products and they have unabashedly defined the personal music player and smartphone markets respectively. Apple and its iPad are essentially driven by the rampant success and adoption seen by its other creations and the iPad's smaller brethren. Apple is hoping to deliver an experience that is familiar to its already significant user-base, while at the same time appealing to a wider audience. "Apple is positioning the device, which will be available in March, as a pioneer in a new genre of computing, somewhere between a laptop and a smartphone" (Stone). The iPad is a svelte slab of metal and glass with a 9.7 inch custom LED backlit display, it weighs only one and a half pounds and comes in at just a half inch in thickness. With those specifications it's not hard to see why it can't be defined as merely a smartphone or a laptop computer, but something entirely different. "For all the hoopla surrounding it, however, the question is whether the iPad can achieve anything close to the success of the iPhone, which transformed the cellphone and forced the industry to race to catch up" (Stone). If a products success can be divined solely from the initial reactions of tech columnists and industry insiders, the future of the iPad looks grim.

It's important to note that the iPad has yet to be released to the general public or even to journalists hoping to review the product. With that said, to the media