We all know what the iPad is. We’ve all seen the television commercials, the epic speech given by Apple’s CEO, and the hundreds of news articles thrown at us about the new gadget, but are we taking this creation as seriously as we should? The Apple iPad, which has since it’s release sold 2 million.
We all know what the iPad is. We’ve all seen the television commercials, the epic speech given by Apple’s CEO, and the hundreds of news articles thrown at us about the new gadget, but are we taking this creation as seriously as we should?
The Apple iPad, which has since it’s release sold 2 million copies, is defined as a tablet computer consisting of a multitouch touchscreen, which runs the same operating system of the ever-so-popular iPhone and iPod Touch. It’s uses are stated to be for internet browsing, movies, games, various entertainment applications, and reading, and it also has an amazing battery duration of 10 hours; however, this computer is not as simple as it seems.
Since the beginning of the company, Apple has always pushed the envelope with their innovative ideas. It appears that their main initiative is to compete with current technology by 1, upgrading its aesthetic appeal, and 2, the most important factor, transforming it into a consumer product. Examples of this are blatant- first you have the transition of the geeky Windows desktop and laptop computer to the practically luxurious Mac desktop, laptop, and mini. Then there’s the transition of the simple mp3 player to the groundbreaking iPod, which later transformed into the Video iPod. Then the transition of cell phone to everything-in-one iPhone. All of these devices began with the single idea of existing, but Apple turned them into items of everyday use that we can’t live without. Now, finally, we have the big transformation: books to the Ipad. The question is, how did we get here?
The beginning of digitally rendered books was the ebook system. Readers could instantly purchase books online that could be read in PDF form. Soon after, the Kindle, a software and hardware platform developed by the company Amazon, was the first popular tablet made for digital reading. It was designed to run ebook files for easy, mobile reading; a seemingly better idea than carrying more than 1 real book at once. Then Apple looked at the Kindle and saw an opportunity.
They succeeded in all the aspects wherein the Kindle failed. Instead of focusing on the traditional values of the physically published book, Apple looked at how to turn books into a continually updated system, much similar to the busy online news, Facebook, and Twitter feeds we are all so enraptured by today. With the iPad, Apple has created a legitimate threat to the ebook and physical publishers market, and people are beginning to suspect that’s exactly what the company was aiming for in the first place. In light of these new realizations, the iPad could very well be the future of reading, as well as the death of books.