Dave Thorp's Blog

So apple are now taking pre-orders for the UK version of their 4 iPod Touch’s glued together and with those pre-orders are the prices that the UK are being charged for the revolutionary 4 iPod Touch’s glued together (aka iPad)

Before we reveal them lets just take another look at our expected prices. These were calculated using the exchange rate between US$ and GB£ at the time of the 4 iPod Touch’s glued together announcement.

Now in fairness the exchange rate has changed since they were published so lets update them for todays exchange rate

Now let’s put in the figures Apple got from their calculator

Steve, the calculator is in the post!

After the disappointment of Apple launching their revolutionary iPad (basically an oversized iPod Touch) I was expecting Apple to come up with something really revolutionary with the new iPhone 4.0 software update. Seems I was expecting too much and having initially been deeply concerned I jumped ship too soon having moved to the Android powered Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 last week my thoughts now are that I jumped ship at just the right time.

So what did Apple announce in their software update. Well the following 7 things to be precise

Multitasking

I went into some depth as to just why I feel this unnecessary when I talked about the oversized iPod touch and basically my feelings were (and still are) that there is simply no need to have multiple open tasks on a mobile phone. Mail polls in the background, the iPod continues to play in the background and calls and texts still come through in the background. On a mobile phone that is more than sufficient

Folders

The first of many “new features” where Apple have merely jailbroken their iPhones and then decided what are the best ideas they can use. Useful yes. Revolutionary… hardly

Unified Inbox

All your email now in one place. Useful no as I only have one email account set up on my phone and if I did have more than one email account such as for work and personal I would want to keep them separate

iBooks

The book reader announced for iPad (but only available in one country… the USA) comes to iPhone. With a free Winnie the Pooh book. Unfortunately as I don’t live in that one country, this is as much use as a chocolate fireguard

Enterprise

No not the starship but some business features that are as standard on any other business phone. Some people may care…. I don’t!

Game Centre

Social gaming similar to xbox live, PSN or the open feint system (that many games already use) comes to the iPhone. Meh

iAd

Do not get me started on this “feature” of the new OS as if there was ever a reason not to upgrade this is it. Yes I know this site uses ads but in over two years of having them on I have made the net sum of £52 of which I can’t get at £26 until I reach the withdrawal limits with those affiliate networks. However I do not want ads on my mobile phone and there is a damn good reason why I use adblock plus with firefox on any computer I use. There is also a good reason why nearly 800,000 other users download adblock plus every week. Because we don’t want ads!

Sorry Apple but if this is the best you can come up with I really am glad I jumped ship to Android. I’ll end this post with my tweet which sums up my thoughts on this new OS

“So to summarize a load of features ripped straight from jailbroken iPhones and adverts. GET IN!!”

So yesterday saw Steve Job, CEO of Apple announce a new product which turned out to be the widely expected tablet device. Like many others, I was hoping for at least an update to the iPhone OS also if not a new iPhone to be announced and normally these speeches tend to cover one or two products and then have a little surprise at the end. In this case the surprise at the end was that they managed to spend an hour and a half talking about just one product.

So onto the product itself, dubbed by Apple as a revolutionary and magical device, named the iPad (and opening up to a large number of iTampon jokes that actually managed to trend on twitter above anything actually to do with the device or Apple). Ok I haven’t had one in my hands yet but to me it seems that what Apple have done isn’t revolutionary or magical. Indeed this device has been around for nearly three years already and is called the iPod Touch. Because what Apple have done is taken their existing iPod Touch, blown it up to 4 times the size, put a faster chip in it and created some word processing, spreadsheet and presentation software for it.

A lot of people are slating the device because it cant multitask, much like the iPhone and the iPod Touch. Personally, I cant see the appeal of multitasking on a device like this. On my PC currently which can support multitasking, I have the following open

1. Thunderbird – as the mail app on iPad can be set to poll automatically or even push if supported, there is no need to keep mail open on the iPad
2. iTunes – the iPhone will continue playing music even if you exit the iPod app. As the iPad is based on the same OS as the iPhone/Ipod Touch there is no reason this wont still be the case. And I have iTunes open but aren’t even listening to music so no idea why its open
3. Firefox with 12 tabs open – Safari supports multiple tabs on the iPhone so presumably will on the iPad. Of the 12 tabs open half of them don’t need to be, I just haven’t bothered closing them yet
4. Sticky Notes – Fair enough the iPad wont support notes on the desktop BUT of the sticky notes I have the majority of them serve no purpose anyway and there’s no reason they cant be hidden away in an app

The price of the device whilst looking reasonable is unlikely to translate well to the UK as is the normal case with Apple devices. For example based on the US price, the iPod Touch 64GB retails for $399. This should translate to a UK price of £246 but it actually costs £60 more than that.

Based on the US prices, the UK prices of the iPad should be

We’ll see how well that translates over into UK apple money. As for if I’ll be buying one, I can see this device replacing my netbook which as Steve Jobs pointed out is slow and not better than anything BUT that will depend on if

1. The price translates over to the UK well
2. If the Wifi only model will support tethering to the iPhone, something which strangely never got mentioned at the keynote last night

The iPad, whilst being a large iPod touch, probably isn’t too bad a device. I’m just disappointed there was nothing else announced like a new iPhone (though this could be because I was hoping for new iPhone as I have an upgrade due next month)

Oh and anyone buying this as an ebook reader who doesn’t live in the US may want to check the small print at the bottom of THIS PAGE