one year of the iPad

It has been over a year since we first saw the iPad. It hasn’t quite been on the market for a year, but I have to confess: I expected more.

I didn’t expect more from the hardware – it seemed like the RAM was lacking but honestly it has turned out to be a non-issue most of the time. The thing that surprises me is how uncreative applications have generally been given the potential power of the iPad.

It seems like an incredibly good thing that the iPhone preceded the iPad, because I think the lack of creativity that would have been displayed in that case would have been even worse.

The iPhone was small enough to not be considered a computer. The iPad is too small to be a “computer” in the sense we know it, but too large to be pocketable and contextless like the iPhone. I think that has constrained the domain of problems that people want to tackle with the iPad, but I think that’s short-sighted.

There are certainly instances of specific tasks that have been revolutionized by the iPad, but not in the kind of all-encompassing vision one might have initially had. Is this simply down to the time it takes to develop such applications? Perhaps.

In any case, I hope the rumors of decreased prices are true. If more devices make their way into the hands of people, perhaps those sorts of all-encompassing applications in various domains will happen. I’m convinced that the existing hardware is completely adequate – we need better software to realize the potential of that hardware.