The week of the iPad begins
So, the iPad is coming out on Saturday (the Wifi only version, at least; those of us who are holding out for the 3G-enabled version have to wait until late April), and naturally tons of new information about the device is surfacing.
First and foremost, Apple itself released a series of videos showcasing various applications. For the most part they work just the way you’d expect, although everything looks pretty seamless and the interactions are slick. The Keynote and Pages demos are great places to start, as they show how the iPad could go a long way towards replacing laptops for day-to-day tasks.
The iBooks demo highlights the eBook reader, which is going to be pretty huge competition for the Kindle. They also give us a glimpse of the Books store, which, as predicted, works much like iTunes music. As I’ve mentioned before, the real potential of the iPad is not its technology, but its potential for creating a new ecosystem for media consumption - books are where we’ll first see this play out. Fastcompany is already predicting that the model will revolutionize publishing for smaller companies and unknown authors.
Aside from Apple’s offerings, we’re starting to see screenshots of independent developer apps for the iPad, and they look amazing.
The other big news so far this week is Apple’s rumoured announcement of iAd, a mobile advertising platform that would directly compete with Google’s offering. Rumor has it that the platform would be highly location-aware, which at the moment is a technology that seems to be largely untapped by mobile marketers. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.
