The Ipad faces a formidible competitor
by Sam Redman
The Ipad will certainly define the next evolutionary step for the personal computer and I can see it being a phenomenal success. But, unlike the dominance enjoyed by the Iphone for several years (because they leapfrogged every other cell phone), the Ipad is going to have some serious competition against contenders in this new touch screen, net book category.
What’s coming? In June comes the HP Slate. It is a touchpad computer too, looking and functioning very much like the Ipad (similar screen sizes, Slate 10″ and Ipad 9.7″), but, the Slate comes with many of those “must have” features which Ipad inexplicably chose to leave out. They both will be amazing ebook readers, Ipad with its very special Ibooks and special store and the Slate fully supporting Amazon Kindle, plus it also supports other online book stores.
But, here are ways that the Slate has real advantages.
The Slate supports any browser; Ipad only allows Safari.
The Slate does multitasking (for example you can listen to your music while browsing the web or reading your email); Ipad does not.
The Slate features a standard 2.0 USB port and therefore expandable storage, plus peripheral appliances; the IPad has no USB port or expandable storage.
The Slate supports Adobe Flash, present on millions of websites (including the NYTimes); the Ipad does not support Flash.
The Slate allows for video chatting with a built in Webcam/video camera; the Ipad does not have a camera.
The Slate has a replaceable battery (we all know that batteries go bad); the Ipad battery is not replaceable.
The Slate has the Microsoft Windows 7 operating system, which has been named the fastest selling operating system in history, due to its amazing features including remarkably advanced multi touch capacities. This means the Slate provides work compatibility with software products on 90 percent of the personal computers in the world (that’s a lot).
This time Apple has not caught the competition with its proverbial “pants down.” Surely these two devices are both going to be having remarkable success in 2010, but the question is, which is closer to where this concept should be? It almost seems that the Slate engineering and feature-set at introduction is what you might expect to see in a future Ipad.
This is going to be an interesting competitive battle.
Sam Redman's Musings 
Apple has been riding a wave of fandom . Yes , they have been very creative and innovative, but you can only ride that wave of popularity for so long .
Without innovation Apple will be just another player in a competetive netbook/slatebook market.
They will gain some new comers but I won’t be one. Why choose a closed system like Apple when you can an open system.
Sorry but this offering by Apple won’t be enough to persuade me to join the Apple family. It just does’nt have enough innovation for me to jump aboard. Basically you are getting a large i-phone with an ebook reader.
Case in point.
It was announced a few days ago that Google and Adobe have reached an agreement to partner up .Now Flash will be fully intregrated into Chrome operating systems that will debut with the tablet device that Google will bring to market sometime later this year. Its not official yet but you can bet its coming.