Feb 04 2010

10 reasons to pass on the iPad? TUAW fact check

Posted by: in Mac News

Filed under: iPod Family, Portables, Odds and ends

Over at TechRepublic’s 10 Things blog, Debra Littlejohn Shinder has posted an article called “10 reasons why I’ll be passing on the iPad.” Some of her reasoning is sound, but quite a few of her points are easy to refute. It’s worth looking at her post and the points it tries to make, because it’s indicative of a widespread misunderstanding of not only the iPad’s capabilities, but also its intended consumer base.

1. There’s no physical keyboard

Debra’s correct that the iPad has no physical keyboard. But what she fails to account for is that not only will Apple sell a keyboard dock for the iPad, the device can also be paired with any existing Bluetooth keyboard. Apple’s reasoning for not including a physical keyboard on the iPad is even more compelling than for the iPhone, because unlike the iPhone, you at least have the option of pairing the iPad with a physical keyboard. In order to put a physical keyboard on the device itself, there’d be two options: keep the iPad the same size and sacrifice a third of the screen’s real estate, or increase the iPad’s size beyond what some (including Debra) already consider unwieldy in order to include a keyboard.

In landscape orientation, the iPad’s virtual keyboard is nearly the size of a conventional keyboard, too, so while touch typing is going to be a challenge, it’s a fair bet that typing on the iPad will be much faster and easier than the high end of 30 - 35 WPM thumb typing many people (myself included) achieve on the iPhone’s far smaller keyboard. The lack of a physical keyboard on the iPhone hasn’t measurably affected its sales; the iPad isn’t prone to suffer many lost sales from this, either.

(Note: a few people have asked for a source on the Bluetooth keyboard issue, particularly my assertion that you can use any BT keyboard and not just Apple’s wireless models. During her hands-on with the iPad following the device’s announcement, Jacqui Cheng at Ars Technica verified that “You can use any bluetooth keyboard you want, instead of Apple’s keyboard dock. You could use the case/stand with your existing bluetooth keyboard. You cannot use a bluetooth mouse, however.”)

Check out the other nine points by clicking the Read More link below.

Continue reading 10 reasons to pass on the iPad? TUAW fact check

10 reasons to pass on the iPad? TUAW fact check originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 04 Feb 2010 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.