Posted by Raphael on Feb 1, 2010 in Cool Design Tech, Design News | 0 comments

I guess for anyone that cares, they’ve already weighed in on the Apple iPad that was announced by Steve Jobs last week.

Here’s my take…I’ll wait and see.

First, I’m not underwhelmed about the product. I think it fits snugly as a Amazon Kindle competitor. I wouldn’t be surprised if the 3rd or 4th generation of this product might eventually find itself in the hands of a lot of school kids. Every college student faces hundreds of dollars each semester buying textbooks that are ridiculously overpriced…if something like this can eventually put e-textbooks in the hands of students at a reasonable price than I’m all for it.

Am I underwhelmed because Steve Jobs himself stated that this is one of the most important projects he’s ever done?  Yup. But then again, Jobs has one of these in his hands and who knows what his brain is cooking up for this product 2 or 3 generations down the line. As a guy with credentials a mile long to back up his statements, I’m not going to second guess him just yet.

I still think the name of the product is pretty weak though. When the first image that your market conjures when they hear “iPad” is a feminine hygiene product, I don’t think that’s a good thing.

Is any bad publicity just as good as any publicity at all? Perhaps. Did the snickers for the “Wii” name blow over after a while? Perhaps. I don’t think this will hurt the product’s sales in the end, but still…to put so much effort into product, just to have attention turned negative just because of a name must irritate Jobs to some degree. I guess they had to keep this product so secret they couldn’t even have a focus group put together on the name.

In the end will I ever get this product? Yeah I can see myself with this one day maybe in the 2nd or 3rd generation. If it turns out to have as many book titles on it as the Kindle, AND it can multitask more than 1 application at a time, I’m there.