A little while ago, I wrote a rather scathing (also slightly incorrect) article on the iPad just after it had been announced. A few months later (and still no sign of it coming to Australia as of yet), I’ve had a bit of time to think about it.

And I’m thinking… I definitely want to buy one.

When the iPad was announced, there were two things I was upset about. The first was its silly name. Tampon cracks aside, it’s still too close to iPod. And the second was the fact that instead of us getting a minified MacBook, we’re instead getting a magnified iPhone (Well… iPod Touch). This stang the most since when I originally envisioned a tablet by Apple, I was expecting something I could easily whip out anywhere, and do complex things like web development or programming easily (Although, that may not be impossible ). One last thing was the lack of USB ports… making any kind of peripheral integration (excluding Bluetooth) totally impossible.

Either way, the more I think about it, an expanded iPhone seems to make sense. At a current technology level, I don’t think it’s actually possible for Apple to make a tablet PC of these dimensions, that can successfully run Mac OSX (Or at least, not without being extremely pricey), as well as integrate touch technology at the same time. For a device like this, the multi-touch features of iPhone OS just make total sense. It also makes sense in the fact that for a mobile device of this kind, a full OS like MacOS would take way too long to load, ultimately degrading the experience. So on reflection, hoping for MacOS on a tablet like this is a bit far-fetched to say the least.

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