On January 27, 2010, Steve Jobs announced Apple’s newest product: Apple iPad.

Some our clients have already asked me for my thoughts on this new technology. As a service to all of our clients, I’m sharing my thoughts here for your reference.

What is it?

iPad is a tablet computer. It’s flat, with a touch-screen. In a lot of ways, it’s like an iPod Touch or an iPhone on steroids, but it’s designed to support productivity. Apple’s vision is that iPad will replace a paper tablet, allowing the user to have their entire set of notes and electronic resources at their disposal, no matter where they are.

For connectivity, iPad has a wireless card (to connect to the Internet at hotspots and home wireless networks), and includes software to browse the Internet, watch YouTube videos, check email, and take notes.

Apple also announced the iBookstore, which many are comparing to the service Amazon released with their Kindle. The iBookstore allows the user of iPad to browse a virtual store of books, and purchase and then download the books they want directly to iPad. The idea is that the user will always have a huge selection of books at their disposal, and won’t need to go shopping to buy their books any longer. Instead, the user just turns on their iPad, finds their book, and downloads it (for a fee).

What’s my take?

I think the iPad is making a much smaller splash than many people had hoped it would. I am hearing and reading of many people who say they likely won’t be purchasing iPad for a miriad of reasons:

• no handwriting recognition (you can’t “write” on the screen and have iPad recognize it and change it to text)
• no camera
• “wasted” space with the bezel (the black frame around the front is quite large)
• not replacing any devices (it’s not small enough to replace a phone, and not feature-rich enough to replace a laptop — it’s simply another gadget to carry around)

I personally am not going to be buying anytime soon. I simply don’t see a good use for it in the enterprise, and I don’t think I’d ever use it. When I want power, I use my laptop. When I need portability, I use my BlackBerry. There’s never a time during my week that I’d expect to need the “powerful portability” of this device.