My two cents on iPad 2

Now that the iPad 2 announcement is a few days behind us, it’s time for me to add my two cents to the mountain of thoughts, commentary, rantings and fanboy drooling which have been published on the Internet. So, read on if you’re interested.

First, Apple didn’t make any changes to the amount of storage space in iPad 2 because they want to evolve away from on-board storage altogether. They’ve successfully eliminated the hard drives which earlier generations of iPods relied on, and now they want to quit cramming flash memory into portable devices.

What’s their long-term vision? All media will be stored on a non-portable device at home (Mac Mini, iMac, Windows PC, maybe even a portable-but-not-in-an-iOS-way laptop) and you’ll just stream it from iTunes to your iOS device or Apple TV. Even when you’re away from home, you’ll just stream media over the speedy 4G networks which will be a reality by the time Apple fully realizes their vision. They may even be considering making iTunes cloud-based and completely eliminating the need for storage at home.

Also, iPad 2 is the final nail in the coffin of the netbook segment. Really, does anyone even talk about netbooks anymore? There’s no point to buying an underpowered miniature laptop to do  things like check email and browse the web, all of which are better on an iPad anyway. Face it, iPad simultaneously created the tablet market and killed the netbook market. For proof, look at Chrome OS. It was supposed to be the heart of new web-connected netbooks. Discussion about those has pretty much vanished and been replaced with buzz about Android tablets like Motorola’s Xoom.

Google, Ima let ya finish, but Apple has the best tablet on the market.

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  • http://www.phxrailfood.com David Bickford

    Good post, Kanye. I completely agree that netbooks are dead. I listed mine on eBay the same day iPad 1 was announced in 2010.

    After hearing the announcement of iPad 2, I was disappointed that the storage on the most expensive model hadn’t gone up to 128GB. Call me old-fashioned, but I still like the idea of carrying all my music, photos, & video with me on the tablet. With 64GB, I limit myself to a playlist of favorite music and seasons of TV shows I’m currently working my way through. Of course, I kept buying CDs & DVDs until recently. It took me a long time to get past the idea of owning physical media, and it will also take me a long time to get past the idea of owning a file stored locally on my device.

    • http://matthewpetro.name Matthew Petro

      I’ve had a difficult time completely giving up on physical media myself. I never carry CDs with me, but I buy almost all of my music on CD, then rip it to iTunes.

      I think Apple won’t eliminate the ability to add physical media to your iTunes library, regardless of whether the library is stored locally or in the cloud. Ultimately though, Apple builds devices which allow you to access your media in the easiest possible way. Having to sync devices and put media on local storage just puts up a barrier that Apple wants to eliminate.

    • http://www.phxrailfood.com David Bickford

      I wonder when Apple is going to introduce wireless syncing for iPad, iPods, and iPhones. Wouldn’t it be great to pair the mobile device with a desktop computer just once and then have it sync up regularly when in range?

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