Karlin Lillington certainly loves her iPad

Tom Dunne

Link to today's Irish Times here.

One thing that struck me about the article was this line:

And honestly, I am having more fun with the iPad than I have had with anything since my very first Mac in the early 1990s.

This is interesting. I love my gadgets (and by the sounds of it, so does Karlin). So if somebody like her is loving the iPad so much, I think it says a lot about the device. There's another article in the paper about how a Microsoft based tablet device isn't going to happen any time soon and how Android is possibly the only viable competitor, but there are no devices available yet.

Looks like the iPad won't have any real competition for a long time.

kmick

Its debatable whether or not anything Karlin says would sway me either way most of the time in her articles she starts off with one opinion and by the end of it its changed 180 degrees. Its got some way to go before I would buy one and a lot of techies are getting a bit tired of the locked in apple model but in fairness it looks good and the interface is typically brilliant. The competitors are miles off.

Fat_Fingers

Ipad is brilliant concept for Granma, Granpa and kids and as sort of quickly check internet while i'm watching tv. I think its going to open internet and email to lots of old people who are scared away by perceived complexity of computers. I include PC and Mac here. To be honest i like it i would love one. BUT i already have Ipod and Iphone so another gigantor Ipod is waste of money in my situation. And i have learned (of boy have i paid for this lesson) never buy Apple product until you see version 3. :D

Dades

Shame she won't be able to the do the Irish Times crossword on her shiny new iPad.

justsomebloke

I really think slates could be huge in a few years time and could potenitally outstrip laptops sales in the non to distant future.

A lot of people compared them to netbooks and say that they don't do nearly as much as a netbook does and that is true BUT do most home users actually need those additional extras? Most home users want to check their email, surf the web watch some movies and listen to some music and in my opinion something like the ipad gives a better experience to the non techy. Also with Microsoft offering online versions of Word etc one of the other main reason you would need a netbook over a slate is taken away.

At the moment what is holding the market back (well besides the fact their is only 1 decent slate on the market) is the fact that their isn't a specific slate OS. I think the iPads lack of flash support is a major issue. Yes on the iphone it isn't a big issue but on a laptop replacement it is something that can't be easily overlooked. Yes I think HTML 5 is the future but I'm looking at webpages in the present so I want something that will let me see the current generation of webpages no future ones. So to this end I think android is probably going to rule the market especially with the sheer number of providers that are going to bring out android slates. (on a side note the N8 with hdmi output to TV and USB on the go gives it IMO the potential to be a fantastic slate).

I think one of the thing that could really make the slate market is if good docking stations are made for them to make them the multi media hub of the house, be it bluetooth stero systems, HDMI docking stations which take advantage of USB on the go so that you can play movies stored on external hard drives or even "laptop" cases which replicate the feel of a laptop when needed.