The real iPad

Today we look at the iPad.

It's wonderful! It's amazing! Its... going to save the publishing industry!! Okay, now that we've consumed the Kool-Aid, we'll move on to a more real view.

Since this blog attempts to focus on writing and publishing...and how technology affects it, we'll discuss the iPad as a reader. We'll start with the iPad's display, which is a capacitive-touch LCD, back-lit by LED technology. 

Say what?? Well, that means it is very similar to a touch-screen tablet or laptop PC. That also means that it will be harder on your eyes than an e-ink technology reader. Although the WSJ disagrees, I do not. I stare at LCD monitors all day for work. It tires my eyes in ways that ink-and-paper does not. E-ink technology, as Gizmodo puts it, "it's an arrangement of pixels on a screen like you would draw on an Etch-a-Sketch." It uses ambient light to highlight the black-on-white paper which many think is the reason its easier to read from. The good news for iPad fans is the next-generation of iPad will include OLED technology, which allows for higher contrast ratio between black and white coloring.

The iPad is made up of a very similar motherboard one can find in the iTouch. It's got an Apple A4 CPU (ARM based A8), Samsung DDR SDram, Broadcom BCM4329 a/b/g/n bluetooth/wifi, and a larger battery than the iTouch. This means the innards are not cutting edge by any stretch. Compared to the Kindle, Nook and Sony reader, the battery life is far shorter, even though it's estimated to only draw 2.5 watts (that's crazy low).  On the other hand, the iPad can do other cool things... like the thousands of apps made for it.

The overall cost to manufacture the iPad is around $230-$340.00. You pay twice that or more because, after all, Apple does have to pay their software engineers, manufacturing, procurement and other personnel.

Sadly, Apple chose to limit you to a lifetime-limit of purchases.  Quite an odd decision, no?

~John Kurt