So at this point, with iPad pre-order deliveries less than 12 hours away, you’re either sick of hearing about it, or so excited you can’t stand it. Put me in the latter category. Much like a kid on Christmas, I doubt I’ll sleep much tonight.
You might recall that back in January, my enthusiasm wasn’t quite there yet. (I even got the ship date wrong by about 3 months.)
Well, for 2 months we’ve been talking about it and debating it and now the thing is finally here. A lucky few have their iPads early: David Letterman who keeps hitting the “off” switch without realizing it. Stephen Colbert, who give his kidney to get one early. The big names in Mac journalism (Andy Ihnatko, David Pogue, Walt Mossberg) already have theirs and thus, their reviews are better than any I could give you right now. Even Time and Newsweek have the iPad on their covers. (Yes, I linked them all for you in case, like me, you just can’t get enough iPad.)
Even Phil on Modern Family…well, I won’t ruin the ending- click here if you missed it.
So, at the risk of beating it to death, and because I still have to go into iTunes and download the iPad apps that starting showing up yesterday (including the piece de resistance, iWork for iPad)… allow me to sum up BestMacs’ position on the device.
I can pin the success of the iPad in business on two things that it will either do really well or really poorly: 1) printing and 2) accessing file servers.
If it has a universal print mechanism – and it doesn’t even have to support every printer; just a set of common Bonjour and/or gutenprint network printers would be fine. But even more important is the ability to access all those saved Keynote presentations and Pages documents that are sitting on my file server – not MobileMe, not Dropbox – my internal, secure, highly available, well-backed-up file server. If iPad can access that seamlessly across apps, we’re in business.
And if the iPad is in business, BestMacs will be best for your iPad-powered business, too.
See you tomorrow with some first impressions and the answers to the above.
Posted by brian on Apr 2, 2010 in Mac News, Product Reviews | Comments Off
